Another Try On Personal Knowledge Management Systems

Note-taking is important. I know that, but it seems I can’t manage to implement a system for managing my notes and my life in the long term. Recently, I decided to give it another try. This blog article is about why I think PKM systems are important. So let’s dive in.

Why I Think Note-Taking Is Important

We all take notes in school and university. At first, we write stuff down because we are told to do so. As we grow up and start to write tests, we know we need to take notes to prepare for exams. But after graduating, most people drop this habit. I think that’s a mistake.

Let’s see why I think note-taking is important. Imagine you want to buy a bunch of stuff at the supermarket. You recall what you need several times, and before heading to the pay counter, you’re pretty sure you have everything. Then, once you get home, you realize you forgot one thing.

So, maybe next time you write a shopping list to avoid forgetting anything. The experience at the supermarket is less stressful, and your mind isn’t constantly checking. You just go through the store and grab what’s on the list. Not only is the experience less stressful, but you also don’t forget anything because it’s all on the list.

Writing down what you want to buy at the supermarket when it pops into your mind has two main benefits: First, you don’t forget anything. Second, your mind is less stressed during the day. You don’t need to keep recalling what you need to buy from the moment it pops into your mind until you put it in the cart. The process is simple: it pops into your mind, you write it down, and you can forget it. This frees up mental space for other things, like planning a vacation, thinking about the weekend, or solving work problems

This is note-taking in a nutshell. You don’t need to limit it to writing a shopping list. You can write down everything that comes to mind. Need to call the doctor and make an appointment? Write it down. Have an idea on how to solve a problem at work during dinner? Write it down.

David Allen once said, “The brain is for having ideas, not for storing them.” But we all use our brains mainly for storing. For me personally, storing stuff in my brain is much more stressful than having ideas. Constantly trying not to forget something is a daunting task for me.

I realize that if I write things down, I feel more creative and productive in everything I do. Because I don’t need to use mental energy to store my thoughts and don’t need to live with the anxiety of forgetting something. That’s why I think taking notes is incredibly important.

What Is A Personal Knowledge Management System?

Now that I’ve described why note-taking is so important to me, I want to explain the term “Personal Knowledge Management.” Let’s go back to the shopping list. Where do you put the shopping list during your day? If it’s a physical list, you might put it in a place where you’re sure you’ll find it again. Maybe your pocket or your wallet. If it’s a digital list, you might have an app on your phone where you write down the items. The key here is that you put the shopping list in a dedicated place.

And that is the principle of Personal Knowledge Management. You write down notes and sort them into different places or folders. Notes that are similar to each other are kept near each other. PKM is a structured way of organizing your notes. Your notes are your knowledge, and you manage them by sorting, linking, or putting them together in one way or another. There are many different ways to build a PKM system for yourself. Some may work, and others may not.

My Experience So Far

My experience with PKMs has been on and off. I started the habit of making notes about two years ago. I tried a lot of apps: Notion, Obsidian, RemNote, Apple Notes—you name it. At first, I tried to find the perfect system that had everything. So I started overengineering, got overwhelmed, and stopped before I even started. I watched endless hours of “How to build the perfect system in…” and was all excited about building the systems until it came to actually writing notes.

So I dropped the whole management aspect after a few tries and focused on the basics: writing notes. For that, I used the app Bear, mainly because of its design and simplicity. I still love the design and it’s a really good app for note-taking. But it has some flaws. Besides the lack of features for building a PKM system, it lacks a math mode for formulas, which I miss the most.

For a good period of time, I stuck with Bear, around one year or so. But then, I stopped taking notes because I found it troublesome to locate a note. Without a good structure, it’s hard to find a note about topic XY among many notes.

This was about three months ago, and I regret my lack of motivation for taking notes now. I’m more stressed because I can’t remember or recall things I did weeks or months ago. I know if I had written it down, I could at least search for it. So I decided to give PKM systems another try.

My New System

For my new attempt at Personal Knowledge Management, I will try the PARA method from Tiago Forte. PARA stands for Projects, Areas, Resources, and Archive. The method is simple. Projects are everything with a defined end or goal, like planning a vacation or building a website. Every note related to that project goes into a specific folder for that project.

Areas are projects without an end date, like Health or Family. These are areas of your life that are ongoing. Everything related to a specific area goes into a specific folder.

Resources are notes that may be useful in the future but are not related to a specific area or project.

Lastly, the archive is for everything that is no longer useful. Instead of deleting notes, it’s better to archive them. That way, in a few months or years, if a topic comes up again, you can quickly get back into it by searching the old notes in the archive.

Now to the tools I use. I switched to using Neovim for writing code a few months ago and it’s my favorite text editor. So I write all my notes in Neovim, meaning I store all my notes locally on my laptop. But I also want to have them across multiple devices, especially my phone. And here Obsidian comes into play. Obsidian gives me two things: I can sync my notes between my phone and my laptop, and it has cool graphical note bindings that show which areas I’m taking the most notes for. Additionally, I store my notes in a private GitHub repository to access them on other devices too.

For now, this system seems to work. I hope it will work in the long term and that I can implement more structure into my life. Let’s see how it goes in a few months.

Conclusion

So, this was my experience with Personal Knowledge Management systems. The main benefit such a system offers me is that I can structure my thoughts and become a bit more organized. Sometimes it can get messy in my head, and I hope this system helps in such situations.

If you are interested in starting a habit of note-taking or want to know more about my system, please write to me on Instagram or LinkedIn, and I will prepare more blog articles on this topic.

Thank you for reading.