Creating a personal knowledge management (PKM) has been a project of mine for several months now, as you may have noticed if you’ve seen any of my previous posts on it. I spend a good chunk of time thinking about it on just about a daily basis, since I buy into the idea that our knowledge is one of our biggest assets at work and in life in general.
Over these several months I’ve read a lot about PKM, watched a lot of videos on it, and found myself going down a number of rabbit holes related to it. The biggest theme of my rabbit holing has been “How do I get better, more efficient at this?” Some of the methods that grabbed me and that I’ve taken little or large bits from in my PKM efforts include:
The PARA method of organizing knowledge (Projects, Areas, Resources, Archive) and CODE (Capture, Organize, Distill, Express) framework touted as “the four essential steps of the creative process” from Tiago Forte.
Linking Your Thinking (LYT) and the NoMa (Note Making) method when capturing a note from Nick Milo - it’s hard to pick just one link for him, just search for his name, LYT, or his name + Obsidian.
NoMa Method in 5 Prompts
- That's interesting - notice when we think that
- That reminds me ... and this is a link
- It's similar because ...
- It's different because ...
- It's important because ..
Several articles by Elizabeth Butler on building a personal knowledge management system.
Obsidian Rocks - which has rocked my Obsidian world with quite a few great tips and tricks when using my favorite note taking app.
The From Sergio YouTube channel - for more great Obsidian content and videos on many other cool PKM tools and smart ways to use them, that Sergio is great at discovering and then providing short, sweet guides on.
Keep Productive YouTube channel - As the channel name suggests, content focused on productivity apps - many of which are notes apps and apps built to be PKM tools.
Vicky Zhao’s YouTube channel - which offers “Frameworks & Tools for Clear Thinking and Clear Communications” - where I’ve found great videos on Obsidian and the Zettelkasten note taking method.
Matthias Frank’s excellent Zettelkasten for Notion template.
For a good while now, I’ve been focusing on trying to use the Zettelkasten method in Obsidian. For now, this feels like a method that fits well for me. Although I might be using only some small percentage of it, the core of it feels easy and efficient to me. My quick overview of the core of it goes like this:
There are three types of notes - Fleeting, Literature, and Permanent. Each of them has a specific purpose and place within Zettelkasten. Both fleeting notes and literature notes should eventually feed into or become permanent notes.
Fleeting Notes: These are quick capture notes; scribbling down that great moment of clarity type thought you had in the shower as soon as you’re out of the shower and whenever else you have a thought or idea worth capturing.
Literature Notes: These are the notes we take while reading a book, an article, a report; or when watching a video or listening to a podcast, for example.
Permanent Notes: These are often referred to as atomic or evergreen notes in the PKM sphere. The key things about permanent notes, the requirements really are that they:
Contain only our own words, our own thoughts. Literature notes are for the words and thoughts of others; the power of permanent notes is that they are our own “take” - which also speaks to how well we understand the topic of the note.
Be as concise as possible.
Be connected to other permanent notes.
On permanent notes in particular, I like Vicky Zhao’s overview/approach better than mine and I’ll aim to replicate it:
1 Atomic idea per note
Express the idea clearly, assume the reader has no context - even when the reader is my future self
Connect them with other permanent notes
The idea that the connections are building blocks is key
All of the above is the lead-in to “The PKM Idea That Was Brilliant for 10 Minutes”. The PKMITWBF10M came about because I was wrestling with the idea that I wanted to be all-in on Zettelkasten, but I also wanted folders in Obsidian. Not just folders named Fleeting Notes, Literature Notes, and Permanent Notes; I want folders for cybersecurity, AI, learning, health, personal and other topics, and sub-folders for those folders.
So the PKMITWBF10M is how I am looking at having my cake and eating it too, so to speak. Version 2 is shown in the complex and beautiful graphic shown at the top of this post. All credit to me on that masterwork.
Version 1 had the final step as permanent notes into folders. Brilliant, I’ve figured it all out - I thought for 10 minutes. Then, roughly 9 minutes and 58 seconds after it should have dawned on me, I thought “but then there are no permanent notes”. Oops. Cake obliterated.
My Version 2 thinking, which I’ve started on creating in Obsidian, will include sub-folders in the permanent notes folder. I will limit those sub-folders to only what I will work towards defining as “core topics”, and then create a single not-Zettelkasten folder for everything else. Right now, that feels like it might get me back into having the cake plus eating the cake territory.
Please feel free to share your thoughts on how you are creating a PKM system, savage critiques of my work-in-progress method, or admiration for the complex diagram of Version 2.
PKM is very underrated. Knowledge professionals should build and run their own PKM. I’ve tried a few things - Evernote, Apple Notes, Notion, Obsidian, et al, before I realised that it’s the method and not the tool. PARA worked for a while, but when you don’t review - it just collapses. So, I am going through a bit of flux in the PKM side. 😊