Some thoughts on the risk of a passive knowledge management system. There are a lot of popular phrases for personal knowledge management systemsout there. One of the ones that gained the most popularity in recent years is the term "Second Brain," coined by Tiago Forte. It's a term that I've used, but never one I felt perfectly encapsualted my PKM systems.
I recently saw a really interesting Mastodon post where the user said, "ideally Obsidian should feel like strapping into your exosuit, a direct extension of yourself." And I actually really agreed to that. I think Niklas Luhmann had this idea of the Zettelkasten as a conversation partner.
"Ideally Obsidian should feel like strapping into your exosuit, a direct extension of yourself." — Stephan Ango (Kepano)
So for him, it was sitting down with somebody and having this kind of deep dialogue that was actually occurring. So that’s actually a very active process, not a passive process at all. Even the part of putting material into it isn’t a passive process; that’s also an active process. I've explored this idea of deep, interconnected systems previously in How to Start Your Personal Knowledge Management Adventure.
I think I’ve come to prefer the term like "digital garden" more. I like the idea of a gardening as my metaphor.
Metaphors change the way that we act. So a metaphor that is active and contains this sense of ecological interconnection is a really good one for a PKM.
“A metaphor that is active and contains this sense of ecological interconnection is a really good one.”
If we think about the processes of knowledge interaction and accumulation in the past, we can look to such intriguing items as the commonplace book or the zibaldone. Which are sort of a melange of aspects that take all of your ordinary life experiences and put them together, combine them into a state of larger interaction and sort of interbeing where you are taking the little pieces of your daily life. Just daydreams, thoughts, whatever, which you combine with quotations and that sort of thing.
These are tools of inspiration, but they’re also tools of relaxation and tools of comfort. In much the same way that a modern social media service might be. The idea behind something like this is that you are taking in a lot of information, so you should have a tool that allows you to play with that information.
“'Play' is probably the most fundamental part of a good personal knowledge management system.”
And here, I think "play" is probably the most fundamental part of a good personal knowledge management system. It should feel like play, and it should allow you to take in what you are experiencing and interact with it in such a way that you can personally come to a grounded and internalized understanding of that information.
In our current landscape, we have to be careful about where we place our focus, as I discussed in Indigenous Mnemonics and Personal Knowledge Management.
If your personal knowledge management system is just getting fed into an AI synthesis engine, that’s the faux appearance of intellect. That’s not a real process of personal growth, and you are not actually managing anything yourself; you are just having an AI do it.
Once again, I am interested in how AI might be used for certain specific aspects of a PKM system. I think it could help reduce certain types of friction, but what I am seeing from a lot of people is putting all of the work of summarization and all of the work of connecting onto an AI.
“If you do that, you are reducing the right kind of friction—the kind of friction that you actually need in order to improve and grow as a human being.”
If you do that, you are reducing the right kind of friction—the kind of friction that you actually need in order to improve and grow as a human being. So, there you have it. Those are some thoughts on what a good PKM system is and what it should look like.
How about you? What does your personal knowledge management system look like?
What things do you think of when you are building it, or have you rebuilt it to come at your process from a different angle?
Do you subscribe to one of the kind of big name methods, or have you come up with something interesting on your own?
Do you have a mix of analog and digital systems?
Go ahead and let me know in the comments. I’d love to hear.
I’m Odin Halvorson, a librarian, life coach, and fiction author. If you like my work and want to support what we do here at Unenlightened Generalists, please consider becoming a paid subscriber to our newsletter for as little as $2.50 a month!
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