Never forget anything with a PKM

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At some point, most of have been stumped by at least one of these internal questions:

• Where are the notes I made on that expensive purchase I’m planning?
• What were the action points and dates of the last meeting?
• Where is that article about the benefits of that supplement?
• Where are the notes on my next planned trip?
• Why can’t I find the information from only a few weeks ago, am I losing my mind?

In day to day living we have to remember lots of details, while navigating a world saturated with content. Thus, to introduce one of the blog topics of productivity, we are going to look at how a PKM can revolutionise your life and learning. This post acts as an introduction to PKM and does not contain app recommendations, which will be covered in a future post. It is written from a begginers point of view.

What is a PKM?

The term PKM refers to the way we create, organise, view and share information or ‘content’. It is a progression of traditional note taking.

Moreover, a solid PKM can act as a ‘second brain’ or ‘studio for the mind’.

Indeed, data is the ‘gold rush’ of the current age. Thus, a PKM helps inform personal and professional decision making.

How can having a PKM help you?

The benefits of building your own PKM compound over time. These benefits include:

• Increased productivity. You can reduce time spent searching for information, often with the help of Ai.
• No more ‘lost’ information.
• Improved learning and retention.
• Improved innovation. Your PKM can become an inspiration source, providing fresh ideas.
• Decreased ‘information overload’. As you organise your information intelligently, you can view content in relevant, digestible amounts.

PKM’s run on different principles

In the days of early note taking applications, platforms recreated the ‘digital filing cabinet’ structure. Consequently, one note could only exist in one folder. In light of this, most modern applications have replaced the ‘folders’ concept.

Therefore, if you are new to the concept of PKM and mordern note taking, different principles apply. Here are 3 principles that will help your learning curve:

1. Multiple types of content can be shown at once. Content can be text, images, audio, links and video. Instead of folders, items are usually organised via ‘tags’. For example a note on ‘Vitamin D’ and a video on ‘Vitamin D supplements’ could be marked with the tag #health. Both the note and video would appear if you searched for ‘health’. Notes can also be organised by their ‘type’, meaning the format/source of the content.
2. Connection and context. Your content can be linked together, providing history such as creation date and context with relevant tags. Ai can build ‘knowledge graphs’ (see image below) which are representation of how different content links together by date or context. From the previous example both the Vitamin D note and the video could be found with the context of ‘sun’.
3. A single soure of truth. Your content can be viewed on multiple devices and locations within the app. This feature eliminates the need for duplication and uncertainity on the most recent version. This is achieved with either ‘backlinks’ or the ability for the information to be ‘embedded’ across the platform.

Getting started with your PKM criteria

Thinking about how you would want a PKM to work in common scenarios can help build your criteria. Thus, consider which of these examples would be important to you:

• Capture: I want to be able to quickly input thoughts as they occur
• Curate: I want to be able to organise my content in an effective way for easy retrieval later.
• Connect: I want to see the relationships and associations between the information I add.
• Collaberation: I want to be able to share my knowledge, and ask others to contribute.
• Create: I want to be able to use my knowledge to create new insights, actions and ideas.

The above examples are from the ‘5 Cs of knowledge management’. You can read an adapted version on this article by Rob Lambert, who details his own process.

Features for your consideration

I would encourage you to write down a maximum of 5 core priorities, then 2 or 3 bonus features. Furthermore, here is a list of functionality to consider:

• The need for speed: How quickly and effortlessly can you create a typed note, voice memo or save a bookmark on the go?
• Do looks matter?: How much control do you want over how your notes look? Acknowledging the balance between focus (minimulism) vs functionality, most tools have ‘markdown formatting’ which provides headings, lists and bold/italic options. You may also want to include images and embedded video within your notes.
• Where will you put your content?: Assigning content to tags is a bare essential. Additionally, there can be options such as collections, smart collections and nested notes.
• How will find you content?: If you think of how you search and filter on shopping websites, you can get an idea of how you may want to search for information on your PKM. Although most platforms won’t have that level of sophistication, filters such as title, type of content, date, tag, and author will provide a starting point.
• Ai: Ai can enhance all of the above features, especially automatic organisation. Ai is not available on all platforms and usually not included in free plans.
• Customisation: If you are a ‘do it yourself’ type of person (perfectionist?) you will appreciate customisation on how your information is stored.
• Sharing and collaboration: If you wish to share your notes with others and co-create knowledge, a sharing option will be essential.
• Security: This is important if you wish your notes to be fully encrypted.

Which platform should I pick?

Once you are clear on your criteria/essential features, you are well equipped to find your platform. There is no single platform that can do everything, you may choose more than one platform, however you should aim to have one as your solid primary.

As a final point, you may choose another platform in the future, so looking for ‘exit’ functionality, such as ‘export’ options is a good idea.

I hope this post has been a useful starting point for your PKM journey, please leave any feedback in a comment, and feel free to share this post with others.