Building a Second Brain for Acupuncturists
"Second brains" or personal knowledge management (PKM for short!) has become a popular productivity topic online and can be a big asset in the acupuncture clinic! This entry introduces the idea and offers a few suggestions for applications you can try.
Introduction
"Personal knowledge management"(or PKM) is a method of collecting information (such as notes about meetings, classes, from books, etc.) in a program or database, which allows you to quickly sort, retrieve, connect, and use the information, as well as find connections between concepts. Historically, people wrote in "Commonplace books," or notebooks where people took notes on ideas, conversations, quotes, and other information from daily life to reference later. Another, slightly more modern (relatively speaking - we're talking 1700s+) version is a Zettelkasten, which uses index cards for notes and includes tags, categories, and other ways of organizing the notes. In that sense, electronic PKMs are closer to Zettelkasten than Commonplace notebooks. By creating an electronic version, we can sort through information more quickly; there's no need to remember which book or page number your note was on or sort through paper cards - you can just search for the information.
The idea of compiling information outside your brain, whether it is on paper or electronically, is also called creating a "second brain" - a way of externalizing information in your brain to help you recall it later. If you are someone who struggles to remember things later, then having a tool to help you may be a good idea! I deal with brain fog on and off from chronic health conditions, so having a resource where I can refresh my memory or confirm what I think I remember is very reassuring to me.
This becomes a useful resource when you're running a business and working with patients, because you can quickly find information you're looking for, whether it is a point combination you learned in a CEU or a note about an herbal formula you want to double-check. When you're busy, it can often be hard to have the time to look up information you need for a patient. But, being able to quickly search your notes can be a big help!
One of the key features (for me) about PKM or Second Brains is that you can organize the information in whatever way makes the most sense to you, rather than being forced to use another organization system. There are a lot of people online who offer their systems and strategies for creating and maintaining a PKM system, and it can turn into a bit of a rabbit hole if you spend too much time looking into it. I have a bit of a contrarian view on it (as always), but having a PKM has been so essential to me while running my clinic that I wanted to share the idea here so you could try it out, too.