The Fastest Way To Give Claude A Second Brain (Full Setup)

I’ve spent five years building my second brain.

Five years externalising ideas, documenting projects, connecting notes and gradually turning everything I know about my business into a system I can actually use.

And now that my AI can work from all of that context, the payoff is huge.

I can start a conversation about a client, a project or an idea and my agent already knows what I’m talking about. I don’t have to upload three documents, paste in an old conversation and explain the whole backstory before we can do any useful work.

But there’s a question I’ve been thinking about for a long time.

How can I get the payoff for someone who hasn’t spent the last five years building one? If I were starting from scratch today what is the quickest way I could get the benefits without all that work.

This is what I’ve come up with - The Speed Run Your Second Brain Onboarding System. Watch it in action or keep reading 👇

How To Build Your Second Brain FAST…

1. Build your Minimum Viable Knowledge System

I’ve trained hundreds of people to build a second brain, and the first place I see most of them get stuck is choosing the perfect tool.

They spend three weeks comparing apps, designing elaborate folder structures and trying to predict every type of information they might ever want to save.

That is a spectacular way to never start.

So if I were starting again today, I would begin with what I call a Minimum Viable Knowledge System.

Firstly, to make it really simple. I wouldn’t even choose an app. I would setup a folder of markdown files on your computer. It’s the simplest way to start and AI LOVES markdown files. So it’s easy for your AI to use. Claude Cowork, ChatGPT and Codex can all work directly with files and folders, so you don’t need a fancy note-taking app before you can start getting the benefits.

Once you’ve got a folder, you need a minimum viable structure. For most knowledge workers I suggest setting up folders for the following:

• Areas — the major parts of your business, such as content, products, marketing or operations.
• Tasks — the individual actions currently on your plate.
• Projects — the larger outcomes those tasks are moving forward.
• People — clients, collaborators and anyone else your work involves.
• Meetings — the conversations, decisions and follow-ups surrounding that work.
• Notes — your raw thoughts, observations and ideas.
• Docs — the assets and finished work you’re producing.

Once you’ve mastered these you can start to branch out into more complexity later. And the best news is that you don’t even have to set this up yourself. Just ask AI to set up the whole folder for you (if you want the exact prompt, you can download the second brain starter kit)

2. Connect the tools that already hold your knowledge

Now you have a structure, it’s time to start filling it up. And the best place to start is where your knowledge actually lives now - in all the scattered apps & tools you use everyday.

For this you’ll want to start connecting your tools to AI through connectors or MCPs. I suggest starting with the obvious ones:

• Email
• Meeting transcripts
• Google Drive
• Slack
• Docs

Once AI has access to all of this it can start extracting it into your second brain. And the why of this is important. Because I can already feel you asking - if AI can access all these tools, do I really need to pull things into a second brain?

And the answer comes down to two things:

1. Tokens
2. Efficiency

You COULD have AI look through your emails at the start of every conversation, but you would very quickly run out of tokens and fill up your context window. Plus it would just take WAY too long.

Pulling out the key things from emails and organising them into a second brain structure means you save on tokens and it’s faster for your AI to find what it needs (while still having access to all that raw information if needed)

3. Start the onboarding interview

Once your tools are connected the fun starts. You want to start an onboarding interview with your AI Agent. This is where your second brain is going to get filled. And you don’t have to do any of the work except answer some questions.

I suggest running a session like this:

1. Start the session by asking your agent to interview you to get context on who you are (not necessary if you already have some type of context or memory)
2. Ask your AI to go through your external tools and pull everything it can into your second brain
3. Then ask it to ask you questions one by one to fill in the rest of the blanks.

(again if you want the prompt you can grab it in the second brain starter kit)

Then your second brain starts to fill up:

• the active projects it can see;
• the people you regularly work with;
• the areas your business appears to have;
• recent meetings, decisions and open loops;
• useful documents and notes that belong in the new system.

I’d have it show you a map of what it found before it writes anything. AI can do the heavy lifting, but you still want to check that it has understood your business correctly before it starts filling folders.

And I strongly recommend talking instead of typing for this. I use Wispr Flow and have a conversation with my agent while it externalises everything into the right part of my second brain.

You talk → AI organises.

By the end of the session, you will have a pretty good chunk of your business externalised into one working second brain.

4. Run a five-minute daily stand-up to keep it up to date.

Building it once is easy, keeping it up to date is a little harder. But I’m going to make it insanely easy.

I have a skill called the Daily Standup. A five minute session where me and my agent can get on the same page, fill out any gaps in the second brain and get anything currently in my head - externalised.

Because at the end of the day the simplest way to think about a second brain is all the thoughts swirling around in your brain externalised. And once they are externalised - your AI can work with you better.

Teams do standups, so why shouldn’t we do one with our agents. Here is how it works:

1. My agent looks through the second brain and looks for any gaps where it is unsure. And starts asking me questions.
2. I open Wispr Flow and start talking, answering each question and then offloading anything else on my mind.
3. My agent externalises and organises it all into my second brain.

I don’t have to organise my second brain anymore. I just have a short daily conversation and AI does all the work.

Give it a week or two and your agent begins turning up already briefed. It knows the projects, the people, the decisions and the work behind the work.

And you stop feeling like the secretary to your own AI assistant.

If you want to build this yourself quickly & easily, I’ve put the complete workflow—including the prompts, structure and daily stand-up skill—inside my free Second Brain Starter Kit.

Download the free Second Brain Starter Kit →

— Ev

PS. Whenever you’re ready to build a second brain that runs itself, here are three ways I can help:

1. If you want your own second brain that organises itself, check out my AI Second Brain Toolkit. Turn your emails, notes, meetings, conversations and more into an organised second brain managed by AI.
2. Go all in on building a personal agent for your business with the AI Chief of Staff Course. Create your agent, connect your second brain and install the nine core skills your Chief of Staff needs to operate with you.
3. Or go all in with my membership, The College of Knowledge. This is where we build your full agent operating system stack, with ongoing support, office hours, more toolkits and a community of other solo operators to do it with.