Since finding out what the heck the PKM acronym stands for, I’ve been spending a lot of time learning more about it and trying to step up my PKM game. It’s quite the hot topic, so it’s been easy to find lots of good learning resources, from books to websites to YouTube videos. I’ve spent many evening and weekend hours diving into all those options - and of course taking copious notes as I do this because notes are right at the core of PKM and capturing our thoughts in the moment.
Over the last couple weeks I’ve had a little voice nagging at me intermittently, hinting that maybe I was getting too wrapped up in the continual refinement or improvement of my PKM skills. Maybe putting too much focus and energy into trying to create a perfect PKM system - which reminded me of this idea - put forward in “Grace, Not Perfection: Embracing Simplicity, Celebrating Joy”
Don't sacrifice the good to chase the perfect”, by Emily Ley.
Some of this effort feels like it was useful, For example, a lot of “housekeeping” on my notes and notebooks contained across a couple of note taking apps - deleting some, archiving some, and bookmarking/pinning/favoriting some.
Some of the activities that I’ve felt more skeptical about are
Organizing and then re-organizing folder structures
Knee-jerk reactions to an article I just read or a video I just watched that have me ready to revamp big parts of how I manage notes
Trying to force a signature feature of one of my two notes apps to work the same way in the other, when it’s clearly a bit of a square peg into a round hole situation
Last, but absolutely not least, is when I realize that I am spending so much time on the M for management piece of PKM that I am losing track of the K for the knowledge that I want to be capturing and putting to good use
While these sort of thoughts were already bugging me occasionally, last night I noticed a post in my RSS feed that hit the nail on the head for me. The post, by Elizabeth Butler, is titled “Here’s the problem with personal knowledge management (or, why I’m starting to feel surprisingly uncomfortable being associated with PKM)”. Here are a few lines from it that really resonated for me:
My worry is that the concept of personal knowledge management is becoming over-complicated. Needlessly over-complicated. I see too many people focusing on the finer points of plugins, complex automations … And I’m not against any of these things in principle. I use some automations within my own system … But I feel like there’s a tendency in PKM circles to believe that more (more features, more complexity, more automations) is inherently better. And that’s simply not the case. More can mean more time, more errors, more room for things to go wrong. And definitely more time spent on system maintenance instead of on using the system to create or contribute something.
That’s it. That’s what been nagging at me. I got so immersed in reviewing my system, seeking out the greatest new things to incorporate in it, refining and enhancing it, that I lost focus on the actual output that I want to get from it.
And identifying this is great. Now that I know I am at least some way towards being an M-aholic, I can stop, reset as a Big K guy, and get back to getting the most out of PKM - or at least that’s the new new plan for today :)
Good note, Patrick. I can see how the K could be overwhelmed by the M; however, don't forget the Q element - "QUALITY" and don't measure the value of your system by the "QUANTITY." If you can't find or locate that tidbit of knowledge you saved, the system is of reduced value.