Enhancing ADHD Lives: The Transformative Power of AI as a Second Brain
I, an ADHD sufferer, have written several posts about ADHD on this blog, and the biggest problem I have is, of course, focus and memory. My memory is so short for many things and it’s hard to retain this knowledge except in written form. This led to an idea: what if I created a second brain?
The second brain is a place to store human knowledge in many forms; it could be in the form of a book or a small note. When you study in a lecture, you certainly take notes of what your teacher says by writing and storing them in a notebook, right? This is what is called a second brain. For people who don’t have a lot of memory and poor memory skills, a second brain is something that must be created to make their lives easier.
At this point, you may already understand the importance of a second brain for everyone, especially for people who have problems with memory or focus. So what is the most effective way to create one?
Let’s imagine someone taking notes on what the lecturer says by recording it in a notebook. He records every word of his lecturer in one course for a whole semester. Can you imagine how many sheets he wrote? Let’s say he has written 50 sheets of notes in a semester for 1 course. How many total sheets of notes will he have for all his courses in 1 semester? It could be 200–300 sheets!
The problem is, what if he wants to find something quickly? First, he has to remember when his lecturer said that, then he has to search on the date he remembers, and after that, he has to search one page at a time! It’s long, isn’t it? Technology helps with it all by using note-taking applications. You can take notes in the note application and search for them with the search feature, right? But the problem comes again when it turns out that this search feature must use the exact same word! As an example, when you have to search for “building thermodynamics,” you have to type exactly the same, while in your notes it may not be listed.
As someone who understands technology, you suggest your friend switch to something more advanced; you suggest using an application that uses semantic search! How is the principle of its use? The principle is to search for not exactly the same word but similar words. Let’s say you want to search for the word "pedagogy." Even if you typo by using the word "peldagogy,” this search engine will also display “pedagogy” in its search results. One problem was solved regarding the search.
What if we continue to not only search for something but also ask directly about our knowledge in the second brain? In the past, this was something that was very difficult to implement! But when the Large Language Model emerged commercially with the advent of OpenAI, Gemini, Google, or Claude, all this became possible. You can ask AI questions by providing the appropriate knowledge context and getting the right answer. This is what we will later call retrieval-augmented generation (RAG).
Benefits of creating a knowledge base for ADHD
The main problem with ADHD is the lack of focus and short memory span, which can be very frustrating for an ADHD sufferer if they don’t have a strong knowledge base. Not only a strong knowledge base but also the need for assistance where users can ask or search for related knowledge so that, with the short focus of ADHD sufferers, they can still make decisions using information from their second brain.
The second brain will make people with ADHD more confident and get information faster, so that even with very low concentration, they can do something with the information obtained from AI. With this speed of information, ADHD people will get less distraction than having to look for information manually in books or other things. In addition, adding knowledge to the second brain must be done easily and with any medium. This is due to poor focus distance.
Component
The 2 most important components of the second brain are the LLM and the database containing the knowledge base. The LLM will be the component that performs reasoning on our knowledge base, while the knowledge base will be the place where all our knowledge is stored. Another component that will be important is something we call the orchestrator, which will manage the running of the application and from which we can retrieve knowledge.
2 important things about knowledge base
There are a few things you need to consider if you are creating a second brain, especially when creating one by connecting AI to your knowledge base:
1. The knowledge base created is a knowledge base that does not contain confidential data in the form of passwords or access. Of course, this knowledge base will be safe as long as you pay attention to database security, but ethically confidential things are not allowed to be input into AI.
2. You can store the knowledge base in the form of unstructured documents, but you must always include a description in each document. This will be related to “indexing,” where this mechanism will be used to find out which knowledge should be used.
Everything must be easily accessible
This easy access means that the second brain must be accessible on all platforms used by users. On a desktop or laptop, the second brain should be accessible as easily as accessing the assistant copilot on Windows. On a smartphone, it should be able to be opened easily and add knowledge simply too.
Everything you want to access must be accessible in a simple but secure way. Biometrics can be used to secure this. This is possible because almost all smartphones already have advanced biometric security.
Conclusion
The development and use of a sophisticated second brain will greatly facilitate and reduce the “burden” of ADHD people. It will be a focus enhancer as well as an extension of short memory, so it will certainly increase the probability of increased productivity and discipline.
