Personal Knowledge Management

Knowledge workers need to be responsible for their own growth and learning. In Organizations, this is the bottom-up approach to knowledge management.

Components

  • Knowledge Gathering
  • Knowledge Classification
  • Knowledge Storage
  • Knowledge Searching
  • Knowledge Retrieval
  • Knowledge Sharing

Skills Needed

  • Research - Searching and Finding Information
  • Learning Management - Finding optimal ways to learn for oneself.
  • Filtering - Understanding which information is important for task at hand
  • Categorization - Organizing knowledge
  • Reflection - Improving how one works when they get new knowledge
  • Networking - Knowing who might have knowledge you seek. Knowing what your network knows.
  • Communication - Asking correct questions to learn. Also for teaching others.
  • Creativity - Build on existing knowledge, add inferences.
  • Collaboration - Working with others to build knowledge

Note Taking

At the core of all PKM are note taking systems...

Capturing Information

  • Note taking
  • Bookmarking Pages
  • Highlighting sections
  • Etc.

Managing Information

  • Classification/Tagging of captured information
  • Summarizing bigger chucks of information(even better, systems like progressive summarization)
  • Synthesizing

Using Information

  • Going thru the information later to remember
  • Creating new content
  • Sharing notes

PKM Systems

  1. Commonplace Books: Writing facts, ideas, quotes, etc in notebooks.
  2. Index Card System: Every note in separate index card, organized thematically.
  3. Zettelkasten: Separated notes, but link-able to each other. Organization happens organically thru clustering due to linking.
  4. Note Taking Apps: Evernote, OneNote, Notion, etc.
  5. Personal Wikis: Interlink-able notes. Eg. TidilyWiki.
  6. Specialized Software: Specific software to support existing workflow like Zettelkasten. Eg. Roam Research, Obsidian.
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