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Personal Knowledge Management System

☕️ 3 min read

What is a PKM System?

Smart Note Taking

For your mind to relax, you need to let go of things in your head. Best to release them in an external system. I usually let off my thoughts by dumping them all into a blank file in my text editor of choice. Doing this is more the journaling approach to the note-taking journey. The other is general note-taking.

Writing is Thinking

Writing is not the outcome of thinking; it is the medium in which thought occurs. How to Take Smart Notes Taking by Sönke Ahrens

When you write about an idea or a blog post, the goal is not to start from a blank paper or a file, which leads to more procrastination. So what’s the alternative? With Smart Note Taking, you write smaller notes and start connecting them in your Second Brain. Instead of brainstorming, you connect thoughts and naturally generate new ideas.

In life, no projects arrive in sequence. It’s easier to work on multiple projects and ideas simultaneously because you write the current state of thought. Next time you can continue at the exact spot you left. No dread to forget the latest. You have personal responsibilities you need to take care of, work, family related. All of which have their project and thoughts.

Another important aspect is that your brain will not rest until a task is finished. As we can’t complete all tasks on the spot, it helps that it does not distinguish between finished or written down. Therefore writing things down lets your mind and yourself rest, which is what Getting Things Done focuses on. And we connect the notes with Zettelkasten System

Second brain

After mastering the process of smart note-taking, the next step is to put it into a sustainable system. The best format I found was the Second Brain.

Zettelkasten

The Zettelkasten System method is a personal strategy process for thinking and writing. Similar to the second brain, It helps the daily consumed overload of data.

Getting Things Done (GTD)

Getting Things Done helps to organize your tasks

  • What is the end goal, product, desired state?
    • Goals
      • technical notes - DevLog
      • framework for thought
      • learning
      • knowledge
      • notes
  • Quick capture of ideas
    • Todo
      • Note template with auto tag seedlings
      • recall later with kanban
  • Status tracking
    • Tag Taxonomy
      • Types of inputs
        • status of their processing through tags
    • notes
      • status of their processing through tags
  • Textual searches
  • Association Traversal
  • Structure types (more rigid ⇒ less rigid)
    • Johnny Decimal
    • Folders
    • Map of Content (MOC) networks
    • Free form
  • Temporal Components → Daily notes
    • adds timeline through links
    • show progression through material
    • a low friction way to begin work in the system
    • a great entry point
  • Types of inputs and their tools
    • Discovery
    • Acquisition
    • Storage
    • Processing / Markup
    • Archival
    • Reverence
  • Thought facilitators
  • Curation
    • Pick a topic and follow its Rhizomes
      • random local graph traversal
    • Open random notes
  • Aesthetics
    • A tool should first and foremost WORK, It should also inspire work not endless configuration
    • But a toll should be nice to use, and inviting
    • How to make it your own? color theme, CSS?
  • Automation
    • What can be automated?
    • What SHOULD/NT be automated?
  • Smart Len’s
    • ways of viewing your work in meaningful ways with tools
    • Network graphs with filters

Workflows

Reference

Graph View

Backlinks

Recent Notes