The second brain is where it's my tool for collecting all these building blocks. Even if I don't know how they're going to come together, I need a place to store them. Tiago: One reason people like to set this big, hairy, audacious goal and then stay completely focused on that is it's simpler. That's a very top-down approach. What we're describing is a bottom-up approach where you don't know where you're headed.