What should you do with your random notes?
How Digital Knowledge Management Builds Real-life Legacy
What if the notes you're taking today could become your most enduring legacy?
Last week, I promised to write about legacy and knowledge management.
Today, I want to show you how the notes you're taking right now could become your most enduring contribution to the world.
If you’re like me with a shelf full of physical notes, you may sometimes look at your shelf and ask, “When I’m gone from this plane of existence, will these things be useful at all?”
Well… What if the way you manage knowledge today determines how your wisdom is remembered in the future?
Your mind beyond your brain
As previously discussed, for most of human history, we believed cognition was entirely brain-bound.
The traditional view was simple: the brain receives stimuli, processes information, and generates responses.
But the Extended Mind Theory, according to Annie Murphy Paul, challenges this notion.
It suggests that our cognitive processes extend beyond our organic brain into the external world, including our physical environment, social networks, and digital tools.
In other words, the mind is not limited by the skull.
Instead, it is an active participant in a broader system that includes technology, objects, and even other people.
This theory opens up incredible possibilities for how we think, learn, and build a legacy that outlives us.
Which brings me to the question of the day…
What should you do with all these random notes?
If you're like most knowledge workers today, you probably have notes scattered across multiple platforms.
Like Britto (in this Substack note), you may have ideas, concepts or even day-to-day life stuff jotted down in physical notes or scribbled during a meeting, article highlights saved in Readwise, project documents in Google Drive, and personal reflections in a journaling app.
While some like to see these as fragments of your thinking and perhaps administrative clutter, I want you to see them as pieces of your extended mind.
When properly organized in the right system, they become a powerful legacy projector, a system that allows your knowledge, ideas, and wisdom to influence others long after you're gone.
Now, I know you’re not dying yet… But walk with me… Okay?
What type of thinker are you?
Before diving into tools, let's understand how you naturally process information.
This self-awareness will help you choose a tool and system you'll use, which is crucial for legacy building.
According to Anne-Laure Le Cunff and Nick Milo, there are three primary types of note-takers:
1. The Architect
(structured, systematic)
Architects enjoy planning and designing processes and frameworks. They need a note-taking tool that allows them to easily structure their ideas in hierarchical systems.
Preferred Tool: Notion, with its powerful pages, databases, and automation, is ideal for architects. It allows you to build elaborate systems, from calendars to Kanban boards, all within a structured hierarchy.
2. The Gardener
(exploratory, connects ideas)
Gardeners enjoy exploring and connecting various ideas and thoughts together. They need a note-taking tool that allows them to easily grow their ideas in organic, non-linear ways.
Preferred Tool: Obsidian makes sense here, as it keeps all notes locally on your device as plain text Markdown files while offering bi-directional links and a visual knowledge graph. Its pinned tabs makes it easy to work on many notes at a glance, helping you discover unexpected connections between ideas.
3. The Librarian
(collector, organizer)
Librarians enjoy collecting and building catalogs of ideas. They need a note-taking tool that allows them to easily retrieve their ideas through robust search and tagging systems.
Preferred Tool: Evernote remains a strong choice for librarians, with features like web clipping, rich formatting, file attachment, and tagging. It makes saving and accessing content, whether it's book notes, meeting minutes, or recipes, straightforward and efficient.
Choosing a note-taking app doesn't have to be a black-and-white process.
In my experience, you have to try one for a while to know if it will not work for you long-term.
And yes, your use case is probably at the intersection of several apps, and you may need to use a couple of different ones to achieve your goals - just as I do with Notion and Obsidian.
Digital tools as extensions of your mind
The plethora of technology available today offers us unprecedented opportunities to extend our cognitive abilities. That’s why some of us call them our second brain.
Tools like Notion, Obsidian, Roam Research, Google Keep, Apple Notes, Logseq, Tana, and others are beyond productivity apps, they can serve as cognitive extensions of our limited brain power.
They serve as external memory, idea incubators, and thought processors.
The global note-taking app market reflects this growing awareness.
Projected to grow from USD 17.18 billion in 2025 to USD 44.51 billion by 2034, exhibiting a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 11.15% during the forecast period. (Someone say moneyyyyyyyyy!!!)
Historical examples of extended minds
Throughout history, brilliant minds have used external tools to extend their cognition, leaving behind legacies that influenced generations:
Albert Einstein: The Power of Notebooks
Einstein famously used notebooks to externalize his thinking.
His thought experiments, like imagining riding alongside a beam of light, were not just mental exercises.
He documented his ideas, calculations, and sketches extensively.
His notebooks, now historical artifacts, continue to educate and inspire.
If Albert Einstein had had Notion or Obsidian then, I wonder what he’d have done with them.
Leonardo da Vinci: The Original Second Brain
Da Vinci's journals, filled with sketches, scientific observations, and inventions, are perhaps the earliest example of a personal knowledge system.
His externalized mind has survived centuries, showcasing the timelessness of capturing thoughts beyond the brain.
What do you think would have been possible if da Vinci had a tool like Notion, Canva or Excalidraw?
Building an Extended Mind for Future Impact
By extending your mind into digital tools, you're not just organizing your life you're building a legacy project.
Here's how to start:
Capture ideas effectively: Use tools like Google Keep or the mobile version of your primary app to jot down ideas as they come. Sometimes while you’re walking.
Organize wisely: Develop a structure in your chosen app that aligns with how you think and work, whether as an architect, gardener, or librarian. But don’t be tempted to over-save other people’s thinking and drown yours.
Synthesize ideas: Regularly review your notes and find connections between them using features like Obsidian's graph view or Roam Research's bidirectional links. Schedule weekly "time" where you don't collect anything new. Instead, you review what you've already captured and ask:
What patterns am I seeing across different notes?
What contradictions have I found that need resolving? (My fave)
What unique perspective can I offer on this topic?
For example, I recently noticed patterns across my notes on productivity, spirituality, and creativity that led me to develop a framework I'll share in an upcoming newsletter.
Turn knowledge into actionable legacy by sharing and documenting: Your ideas can't become a legacy if they remain private. Create content. See, God is a creator, you’re also creator - in fact, co-creator with God. Use your notes to create:
Articles (like this newsletter)
Courses that teach your approach
Books that capture your philosophy
Frameworks others can apply
Da Vinci's notebooks weren't meant to be private, they became the foundation for scientific and artistic advances that outlived him by centuries.
What will your extended mind say about you?
Most of us want to be remembered.
It is said that "A person dies twice: once when they take their last breath and again when their name is spoken for the last time."
Imagine a future where someone stumbles on your digital notes, your ideas, your documented wisdom.
What story will it tell?
What legacy will it project?
By externalizing your mind through thoughtful knowledge management, you create a framework where your thoughts can live beyond your organic life.
The Legacy Ladder: where do you stand?
Most people collect ideas. Few turn them into legacies. Where do you stand on the Legacy Ladder?
Let me give you a visual way to assess your current knowledge system's legacy potential:
Level 1: Collection You're gathering interesting ideas, but they remain largely unprocessed. Most people begin their knowledge management journey here, accumulating interesting articles, quotes, and ideas without much structure. This is necessary but insufficient for legacy building.
Level 2: Connection You're linking ideas together and starting to see patterns. This intermediate stage involves linking ideas together, spotting patterns, and beginning to form your own perspectives based on what you've collected.
Level 3: Creation You're developing original insights based on your connections. Here's where legacy truly begins. You synthesize collected materials into original insights, frameworks, stories, or tools that add new value to the world.
Level 4: Contribution You're regularly sharing your insights in ways that benefit others. The ultimate goal of a legacy projector is contribution, putting your created works into contexts where they can benefit others and spark new ideas.
Level 5: Legacy Your knowledge system is designed to continue benefiting others after you're gone.
Most people never make it past Level 3. The real magic, and your true legacy, begins at Level 4.
Where are you on this ladder?
And more importantly, what's one small step you could take today to climb higher?
A Personal Challenge
As we wrap up this exploration of knowledge management and legacy, I want to leave you with a challenge:
Choose one idea from your notes—just one—that you believe could help others if developed further.
Spend 30 minutes this week transforming it from a collected thought into an original creation. It could be a short article, a voice memo, a simple diagram, or even a thoughtful social media post.
Then share it somewhere. Anywhere.
This simple practice, repeated consistently, is how you begin transforming your knowledge system from personal storage to lasting legacy.
The world runs on ideas.
When you share yours effectively, they work for you as intellectual assets, even while you sleep, or long after you're gone.
Think about it.
Live courageously,
Dayo Samuel 💯