Oct 31, 2021 1 min read Productivity

PKM - A Superpower for the Real World

Hey Friends!

Personal knowledge management (PKM) is something I have become very interested in, and also very passionate about. You may not know what it is, so I thought I might tell you a bit about it!

PKM is about linking memories, ideas, goals and plans together and storing them in a way that resembles the human brain. Think of it as building a "Second Brain" for collating information, which could be about anything really. I'll give you an example. You read an interesting book and you know you won't remember everything. So you create a summary note, which you link to any other notes you have already written on that, or a similar, topic. The same goes for storing lecture notes, formulating business ideas and so on. Over time, you cultivate your "Second Brain" of interconnected ideas, which you can then use to create videos, write books, publish articles and so on.

"Your brain is for having ideas, not storing them." - David Allen, Getting Things Done.

You may have heard of the German sociologist Niklas Luhmann, who published more than 70 books and nearly 400 papers in his lifetime. He devised a system of cards for this purpose, which used numbers to link his ideas. It is known as the Zettelkasten technique and you can read How to Take Smart Notes by Sönke Ahrens for more information.

Nowadays, we use apps as our Zettelkastens. Having tried a few, in my opinion the most useful app for building a Second Brain is Obsidian!🎉. I have been using it now for multiple months and I love it. For more information, you can check out the Obsidian website.

Will you start using PKM to supercharge your life? I'd love to know!

Thanks for reading!