My Philosophy for Implementing PKM using Networked Thought Tools

 

For most of us, discovering the world of Personal Knowledge Management (PKM) using networked thought tools is very exciting. Connecting notes and ideas from different spheres of our lives can feel so natural and we often wonder why we hadn't found it earlier. 

However as I've already mentioned, it is very easy to fall down the rabbit hole of obsession with tools and and be overwhelmed by the many great options out there. In order to overcome this and go back to the basics of why we became interested in Personal Knowledge Management in the first place, it's important to have a personal philosophy a guiding framework of sorts for organizing knowledge and using networked thought tools. 

Below is my PKM philosophy. I expect these ideas to evolve over time. My hope is that it provides you with the inspiration to set yours up as well. 

1. Don't just copy-paste your notes. Add your personal context to it. I find that writing notes like memos to my future self allows me to come back to them knowing exactly why those notes exist. I do this by adding sections for "Why it's important to me" and "How best to put it to use" in addition to the already existing "What is". But what if you haven't fully thought about that note enough to add the needed extra context? Well that's where the next point comes in.
2. Have various "states" for your notes. My notes in general have three states: Idle, Actionable and Review-able. Idle notes typically stay untouched waiting to be linked and expanded with new knowledge and information in the future. Actionable notes go into a Task Management system (could be as simple as pen and paper) and get distilled down to a specific task. A Review-able note which is usually an idea that I need to keep thinking about in the short-term goes into a Spaced Repetition system which brings it back to my attention repeatedly until I'm finally able to digest it.
3. Strictly decouple Task Management from Knowledge Management. Over the last decade many great tools have been developed to replace the pen and paper to-do list and they do a great job especially with automation, scheduling and notifications. They handle task management better than a PKM system would. In my case for example, this means that books and articles I want to read go into my task management tool instead of my notes. Things I want to try, technical projects I am working on etc may be described in my PKM but the actual tasks and sub-tasks will be outlined in my task management system. The learnings and notes from those activities will then be put back into my PKM.
4. Manage the emergence of interest patterns. As notes evolve, particular interest patterns begin to show. Some notes are better off grouped along these interest contexts for easy retrieval, for further connections to made between ideas and to produce specific creative outputs. However we must be careful to keep the knowledge from becoming dogmatically fixed into disciplinary silos which undermines the beauty of networked thought. 

With these four "tenets", I have been able to build a PKM process which keeps the focus on the most important thing. Developing knowledge. 

In my next post, I'll delve into the simple stack of tools I use to implement this philosophy. But once again, remember the specific tools don't necessarily matter. Thanks for reading.