I recently wrote (“Astonishment“) about the metaphor of an amusement park for my PKM. This morning I was listening to a podcast on my morning walk in which the host was encouraging us to use AI to help extend our thinking in various ways.
When I got back from my morning walk, I asked Anthropic’s Claude to help me brainstorm some more on this amusement park idea. I really like some of these suggestions – which definitely to extend my thinking about the various nooks and crannies of my PKM system!
A funhouse with distorting mirrors that show exaggerated or distorted versions of my ideas and beliefs. Allows me to see things from new angles.
A merry-go-round where I can revisit my favorite ideas and insights over and over. A place of comfort and familiarity.
A haunted mansion filled with doubts, fears, and limiting beliefs that I need to face and overcome. Facing the ghosts helps me grow.
Food stalls and snack bars representing nourishing ideas and mental models. Brain food to feed my thinking.
An arcade or midway where I can play games with ideas, combining them in new ways to see what emerges. Allows combinatorial creativity.
A lazy river where I can relax and let my mind wander, making new connections. Effortless flow of insights.
A hall of mirrors where ideas build on each other, combining and recombining. Represents the compounding nature of knowledge.
A carousel with different animals representing different perspectives – a way to look at ideas from different viewpoints. Expanding my frames.
A safari ride to discover new lands of knowledge I haven’t explored yet. Pushing beyond my comfort zones.
A hedge maze representing the challenge of finding my way through complex ideas and systems. Navigating nuance and ambiguity.
A theater showing films of my memories and vivid imaginings. My dreams, fantasies, and reflections come alive.
A Ferris wheel giving a bird’s-eye view when I need perspective on things. Rising above for clarity.
Bumper cars allowing ideas to collide and bump into each other randomly. Sparking new insights through serendipity.
A petting zoo with metaphors and analogies I can interact with. Making the abstract more concrete.
A sky tram/gondola lift connecting different domains of knowledge. Seeing interconnectedness.
A fun slide for taking quick leaps between ideas. Intuition and rapid insights.
A carousel of cognitive biases I need to watch out for. Remaining aware of my blindspots.
A picnic area for intellectual nourishment and pausing to reflect. Healthy thinking habits.
A mirrored labyrinth of ever-deepening knowledge. Infinite recursion of ideas building on themselves.
I’m in the midst of one of the Linking Your Thinking workshops taught by Nick Milo. Recently, during one of Nick’s talks, I had one of those flashes of insight that surprised me. Aha!Â
What came to mind is that my PKM system is kind of like an amusement park of my mind.
This morning while taking my daily walk I was listening to George Saunders on the Talk Easy podcast talking about his writing process. He used the metaphor of how when he’s writing he thinks of himself designing a roller coaster. That he spends a lot of time designing and redrafting over and over again that first climb up the big hill and the swoosh down – the one that takes your breath away – followed by all of the other hills and dips and curves and twists until the end of the ride. We all know that sense of astonishment when we come over that first hill – after the clackety clack of the hill climb – and it looks like we’re heading straight down!
So for sure the amusement park of my mind has a roller coaster like that in it! Maybe it starts with the big hill of my home note?
But my amusement park has other lands as well – I think of my own Fantasyland, Adventureland, Tomorrowland, and more. Maybe there’s a Main Street that is my daily note – a place for grounding me each morning?
I’m sure there’s a pirate cove in there somewhere along with a submarine and a rocket ride. Some kiddie cars and even a junior roller coaster when I’m just wanting a small thrill.
I have pundits in my park too – some long dead – who speak to me on the town square and suggest I respond to them.
And there’s a big train that circles the whole park and provides me with a gentle ride when I’m just wanting to relax and reflect.
Good fun! No metaphor is perfect – but this amusement park of my mind idea is feeling like it is a pretty good one!
Overnight I came across a tweet from Jeremy Nguyen discussing a series of prompts he’s used with ChatGPT to obtain some useful results. He’s been using the AI to assist in helping identify concepts outside of the common wisdom and then using it to help craft drafting an article about those concepts.
I decided to try to use Claude for this purpose and used the following prompt:
You are an expert on the field of personal knowledge management. Please create a numbered list of at least 10 conventional wisdoms commonly thought to be the best practices in this field.
Then ask which numbers I think are unhelpful for my audience’s goals. Interview me, one question at a time, pausing for my answers, to find and distill my unique perspectives. The final output will be a bullet point list of my contrarian perspectives, the results I achieved from holding them, and how they differ from conventional industry wisdom.
Start by showing me 10 conventional wisdoms.
Claude responded to my request:
Here is a list of 10 common practices thought to be best for personal knowledge management:
Capture everything – take extensive notes on meetings, conversations, articles, etc. to record all potentially useful information.
Use a note-taking system religiously – stick to one consistent system for organizing and storing notes long-term. Popular choices are Evernote, OneNote, etc.
Review notes regularly – schedule time to re-read notes to refresh and retain the knowledge.
Make notes searchable – use tags, headers, etc. to make it easy to search and find notes later.
Link related notes – use wiki-linking, backlinks, etc. to connect related notes across documents.
Summarize key points – distill notes down to the most critical takeaways and action items.
Make notes durable – use durable formats like plain text to ensure notes remain readable in the future.
Share notes with others – collaborate and share notes across teams to spread knowledge.
Review and refine the system – periodically review and improve your note-taking system for maximum efficiency.
Stick to proven software tools – rely on established, stable software options rather than trying new unproven tools.
Which of these do you disagree with or find unhelpful for your goals? I’m happy to interview you one-by-one on your perspectives.
I responded: 1, 8
Claude responded:
Thank you for identifying #1 and #8 as practices you disagree with or find unhelpful. Let’s discuss them one at a time:
You mentioned #1 – Capture everything – take extensive notes on meetings, conversations, articles, etc. to record all potentially useful information. What is your perspective on this commonly recommended practice? How does your approach differ? What results have you achieved with your approach?
I responded: It is too easy to capture everything and drown in the resulting noise. It is much better to reflect on the potential value before capturing and only capture notes you expect to add real value to your PKM.
Claude responded:
Thank you for sharing your perspective. To summarize:
You believe capturing everything creates too much noise and low-value information.
Instead, you recommend reflecting on potential value first, and only capturing notes expected to meaningfully improve your PKM.
Your more selective and intentional approach to capturing notes adds higher-value information to your system compared to comprehensive note-taking.
Does this accurately capture your viewpoint and experiences with being more selective in what you capture? Please let me know if you would like me to clarify or expand on any part of the summary.
When you’re ready, we can move on to discussing #8 from the initial list.
I responded: Yes, that’s accurate.
Claude responded:
Great, I’m glad I summarized your perspective correctly.
Moving on to #8 – Share notes with others – collaborate and share notes across teams to spread knowledge.
You indicated you disagree with or find this practice unhelpful. Could you explain your thinking on sharing notes with others? How is your approach different and what results have you seen from it? I’m looking forward to learning your viewpoint.
I responded: By definition, PKM is personal, not collaborative. Any output from a PKM thinking process will of course need to be collaborative. But seeking collaboration too early can be very distracting.
Claude responded:
Thank you for elaborating – I understand your perspective better now:
You believe the “P” in PKM stands for “personal”, meaning knowledge management should focus on optimizing for individual thought processes initially.
Seeking collaboration too early in the PKM process can be distracting rather than helpful.
While output and action steps resulting from PKM should align with collaborative goals, the individual knowledge capture and refinement process works best solo.
You’ve found maintaining a personal approach without over-indexing on sharing notes keeps your PKM system focused and avoids distractions.
Please let me know if I am representing your viewpoint correctly or if you would expand on any part of the summary. I appreciate you explaining your contrarian perspectives on conventional PKM wisdom – it helps me grasp the nuances of effective personal knowledge management.
I responded: Yes, that’s correct.
Claude responded:
Thank you for confirming I accurately summarized your perspective on keeping PKM personal rather than over-collaborating.
To recap the key contrarian viewpoints we discussed:
On capturing everything: You are more selective and intentional, only capturing notes that seem likely to meaningfully improve your PKM rather than comprehensively documenting. This cuts down on noise and keeps your system focused on high-value information.
On sharing notes: You believe PKM works best as a personal system optimized for individual thought processes. Too much early collaboration can distract. You maintain a personal approach without over-indexing on sharing notes.
Let me know if you would like me to clarify or expand on any part of this summary. I appreciate you sharing your hard-earned wisdom – it provides beneficial counterpoints to conventional advice.
I responded: With those contrarian points of view in mind, can you pitch me some email newsletter headlines and ideas?
Claude responded:
Absolutely, let me propose some newsletter headline ideas that could highlight the contrarian perspectives we discussed:
“Forget Note-Taking Overload: How to Build a Lean, Focused PKM”
This headline promises to provide an alternative to exhaustive note-taking, focusing on your idea of intentional, high-value capture.
“The Power of Personal: Keeping PKM Independent Before Collaboration”
This headline emphasizes the benefits of maintaining a personal system before collaborating, per your advice.
“PKM Success Without Endless Reviewing and Sharing”
This headline speaks to your points about avoiding collaboration distractions and extensive review sessions.
“X Habits Holding Back Your PKM System – And What to Do Instead”
This headline can lead with the conventional practices you disagree with, contrasting them with your effective counter-approaches.
“Building a PKM System That Works for You, Not ‘Best Practices'”
This general headline contrasts standardized advice with your personalized, optimized approaches.
Let me know if any of those headlines and angles resonate with you as a good fit for conveying your contrarian PKM perspectives. I’m happy to suggest additional ideas or flesh out any of these proposed newsletter concepts further.
I responded: Great, please write a draft of a blog post for the first idea.
Claude responded:
Here is a draft blog post for the “Forget Note-Taking Overload: How to Build a Lean, Focused PKM” headline:
Forget Note-Taking Overload: How to Build a Lean, Focused PKM
Conventional wisdom says your personal knowledge management system should aim to capture everything – exhaustive notes on every meeting, conversation, and piece of content you encounter. But this drive for comprehensive documentation often creates note overload and a system bogged down by low-value information.
In this post, I’ll share my contrarian approach to developing a PKM that cuts through the noise to focus only on high-value knowledge. Here are the key principles:
Be intentional about capture. Don’t default to taking notes on everything. Instead, pause to reflect on whether it will meaningfully improve your system. Evaluate potential ROI before documenting.
Limit noise. Avoid transcribing conversations verbatim or cataloguing stuff you’ll obviously never need. Keep only truly vital points.
Let some things go. You don’t have to write down every insight. If it won’t provide lasting value, move on without capturing it.
Depth over breadth. Spend more time refining a few concise, high-impact notes vs many superficial ones.
Review sparingly. Don’t get stuck in an endless review loop. Re-read only notes critical for current projects.
Quality over quantity. Assess the value of your notes periodically. Prune liberally to keep only the best 10%.
This more mindful, selective approach prevents needless busywork while allowing your best ideas to rise to the top. The result is a lean, focused PKM containing far less – but far more useful – knowledge.
For me, this system delivers:
Sharper thinking by cutting through noise. I can see key insights clearly.
Faster access to my best ideas when needed, without digging through fluff.
Reduced burnout, since I’m not under pressure to document everything.
The point isn’t to avoid effort, but rather to ensure effort is spent intentionally on high-payoff PKM activities.
So try being selective in what you capture. Prune ruthlessly. Spend more time refining fewer notes. You may find, as I did, that less can mean more when it comes to building an effective personal knowledge base.
How does this draft look? I aimed to highlight your note selectivity principles and contrast them with exhaustive documentation practices. Please let me know if you would like me to modify or expand this draft blog post in any way. I’m happy to keep refining it.
I responded: That draft is good. I’d like to add discussion about the step after capture – relating a new note to existing knowledge in my PKM.
Claude responded:
Thank you, I’m glad the draft is headed in a good direction. Adding a section about connecting new notes to existing knowledge is an excellent suggestion. Here is an updated draft with an additional paragraph about that:
Forget Note-Taking Overload: How to Build a Lean, Focused PKM
Conventional wisdom says your personal knowledge management system should aim to capture everything – exhaustive notes on every meeting, conversation, and piece of content you encounter. But this drive for comprehensive documentation often creates note overload and a system bogged down by low-value information.
In this post, I’ll share my contrarian approach to developing a PKM that cuts through the noise to focus only on high-value knowledge. Here are the key principles:
Be intentional about capture. Don’t default to taking notes on everything. Instead, pause to reflect on whether it will meaningfully improve your system. Evaluate potential ROI before documenting.
Limit noise. Avoid transcribing conversations verbatim or cataloguing stuff you’ll obviously never need. Keep only truly vital points.
Let some things go. You don’t have to write down every insight. If it won’t provide lasting value, move on without capturing it.
Depth over breadth. Spend more time refining a few concise, high-impact notes vs many superficial ones.
Review sparingly. Don’t get stuck in an endless review loop. Re-read only notes critical for current projects.
Quality over quantity. Assess the value of your notes periodically. Prune liberally to keep only the best 10%.
Connect new insights to what you already know. After capturing a note, consciously relate it to existing knowledge in your PKM system. Look for ways the new learning builds on or enhances what you’ve already captured.
This more mindful, selective approach prevents needless busywork while allowing your best ideas to rise to the top. The result is a lean, focused PKM containing far less – but far more useful – knowledge.
For me, this system delivers:
Sharper thinking by cutting through noise. I can see key insights clearly.
Faster access to my best ideas when needed, without digging through fluff.
Reduced burnout, since I’m not under pressure to document everything.
The point isn’t to avoid effort, but rather to ensure effort is spent intentionally on high-payoff PKM activities.
So try being selective in what you capture. Prune ruthlessly. Spend more time refining fewer notes. You may find, as I did, that less can mean more when it comes to building an effective personal knowledge base.
Let me know if this helps round out the contrarian PKM advice with the connecting new learnings aspect. I’m happy to continue refining the draft with your guidance. Please feel free to provide any other feedback as well.
Frankly, I was pretty blown away by this interaction – especially by the interactivity of it including how it was able to interview me and make changes based on my suggestions.
This is definitely a prompt sequence that I’ll want to further explore!
I’m enrolled in cohort 2 of Mike Schmitz’s Obsidian University. Mike is an excellent educator and he’s developed considerable expertise in Obsidian. His first two sessions are deep dives into setting up a personal knowledge management (PKM) system. The first session was about philosophy, the second about specific tools he uses/recommends.
I’ve been using Obsidian pretty heavily since I first started playing with it in May 2022. I’ve got lots of notes collected and have a workflow that’s been working for me in terms of capturing information I want to think about later. Here’s my basic workflow:
I’m doing all of my browsing in Safari on Mac, iPhone or iPad. I have used Instapaper as my read-later service for years and articles I find while browsing that I might want to save I’ll capture in Instapaper. I like Instapaper’s “clean up” approach – taking all of the extra stuff out of web pages and distilling them down to the essence of the text on the page.
A second source of capture is Feedly which I’m using as my RSS reader and in which I also capture articles to Instapaper.
Sometime later I’ll open Instapaper and read through what I’ve captured. If I find an article I want to add to my Obsidian vault, I will email it to Drafts using its recently added mail drop feature. Once it’s in Drafts, I used an action to save the article to my Obsidian Inbox folder which is stored in iCloud.
Later, I’ll open Obsidian and review my Inbox folder and open each item in turn, add metadata properties to the top (using an Obsidian template that I’ve created), and – once I’m finished editing it – I’ll move the note to my Zettlekasten folder in Obsidian which is where I store all of my notes.
That’s it.
I also use Drafts from time to time to just capture text that I either write or dictate – and process that later in the same fashion.
What I’m still trying to figure out how to do better is taking advantage of the notes I’ve captured – revisiting them, summarizing them, using them as the basis for a new note or a blog post, etc. In other words, creating some useful output from all of the input I’ve been adding. This is very much a work in progress!
By the way, sometime that’s important to learn before or while you’re learning Obsidian is the Markdown text format. It’s a simple, easy to learn way to “markup” text and it’s important to become fluent in using it with Obsidian.
Note: in addition to Mike Schmitz’s Obsidian University, I’ve also purchased David Sparks’ Obsidian Field Guide which is also a useful educational resource for learning the ropes of Obsidian.
I recently finished the five week Linking Your Thinking Workshop run by Nick Milo and his excellent team of associates. The workshop (I was in cohort 11 – LYT 11) provides a process for helping foster and sustain an advanced personal knowledge management (PKM in the current vernacular). I first learned about Nick from discovering his excellent YouTube videos.
LYT 11 was a very valuable and enjoyable experience for me. Nick has done an excellent job of organizing the workshop, crafting the curriculum and being open and interactive with participants every step of the way. The interactive exercises captivated participants and facilitated a profound introspective process. Collaborating with Nick’s mentors further nurtured our growth by providing insightful feedback, reinforcing the ethos of capturing less, reflecting more, and amplifying our cognitive faculties.
While Nick terms it “linking your thinking,” I prefer to envision it as “looping your thinking,” for the process manifests as a rhythmic cycle of reflection, revisitation, and revision, employing notes as our cerebral canvases.
Through a dynamic blend of interactive lectures, hands-on tutorials and engaging sharing sessions, we immersed ourselves in Nick’s methodology to cultivating and curating your own personal system. Although Nick champions the use of Obsidian as the PKM tool of choice, he’s also quick to point out that other tools – as long as they support linking between notes – can be used as well. Obsidian is definitely an acquired taste – but it’s free for personal use making it easy to play with initially. Obsidian is built in such a way that it’s very extensible with a large set of add-on plug-ins from the user community that extend its basic functionality.
Nick’s framework, aptly named ARC (Add / Relate / Communicate) illustrates the workflow underlying the art of crafting and curating a robust PKM. From the outset, he masterfully distinguishes between mere note-taking and the transformative process of note-making, wherein the true value of learning from our discoveries becomes evident.
Similar to fellow participants, my inclination has long been to avidly capture intriguing internet findings during my daily browsing endeavors. Engaging in extensive skimming, I often save numerous items in a read-it-later service, intending to delve into them at a later date (though regrettably, such intentions are often left unrealized).
This captures the essence of the “add” phase within Nick’s ARC framework. He emphatically highlights our tendency to overindulge in this phase, succumbing to the allure of over-collecting. Alas, such behavior diminishes the time available for genuine learning, impeding our ability to effectively relate to and internalize the knowledge we encounter. Consequently, we may unintentionally neglect the final step of communicating our learnings. Instead of fostering an environment conducive to learning, we inadvertently immerse ourselves in a cycle of ceaseless capture and accumulation, devoid of meaningful contemplation.
Once we learn to recalibrate our time allocation, diminishing our emphasis on relentless accumulation, we unlock the gateway to one of the most invaluable aspects of a robust PKM system: the emergence of ideas.
Nick recommends we think of this initially as going from “spark” to “remark” – having the spark of an idea as we read something but then taking the small incremental step to actually remark on that spark. What thoughts does it ignite? Ask the questions and capture what we’re thinking – without worrying about perfection. Wherever possible, we establish interconnections with related ideas, thereby embarking on the creation of an expansive “ideaverse.”
This intricate dance becomes the process of sensemaking – a foundational pillar of Nick’s LYT approach. As we encounter a spark of inspiration, a cascade of questions ensues: What does it remind me of? How does it relate? What distinguishes it? Why does it resonate with me? To what can I connect it?
Out of that process can come concise “statement notes” which are short, to the point notes about a particular subject. These statement notes diverge from “thing notes,” which adopt a descriptive tone, avoiding undue bias. Statement notes become the realm of personal opinions. Furthermore, the concept of “evergreen notes” may evolve – originally described by Andy Matuschak as “written and organized to evolve, contribute, and accumulate over time, across projects.”
An invaluable lesson from LYT 11 lies in the relative insignificance of folders. When I first started using Obsidian I anxiously sought out a folder structure that would make sense for me. But as you use this tool you come to realize that folders are relatively unimportant. Instead, links between notes transcend any folder structure. If you put a note in a folder and later move it all of any links associated with that note will be updated automatically to point to it in the new location. This liberating realization alleviates the burden of pursuing an elusive perfect folder structure.
In lieu of folders, a far superior concept emerges: the notion of content maps. A content map, represented by an MOC (Map of Content), serves as a note that expertly organizes interlinking pathways to other notes. Resembling an index or table of contents, the MOC boasts dynamism, continuously evolving and adapting as concepts progress.
Nick uses the notion of mental squeeze points to signal the opportune moment for creating a new MOC, enabling thoughts to crystallize. A mental squeeze point is that feeling your have when you realize you’re not quite understanding whatever it is you’re working on – you’ve done research, read a lot, collected some highlights but now it’s a bit of a jumble – that’s a mental squeeze point. And that’s the trigger for pulling back a bit and organizing – employing an MOC may be the best way to work on that process fostering clarity and organization around whatever you’ve been working on.
The pinnacle of our PKM note hierarchy can be your home note – a note that provides an outline of ways into your knowledge base. Like all notes, your home note can be dynamic – it’s not a static document but can evolve and change as often as you like as your needs and interests evolve. Your home note might also be a place to anchor yourself with a daily motivational quote, a favorite image, etc. that acts as a beacon guiding our initial forays into knowledge exploration.
Complementing the home note, daily notes can be used to capture the essence of each day. Often used as a place for “interstitial journaling” – capturing and logging our thoughts as they occur throughout the day. Moreover, daily notes can be used to enable the monitoring of habits to reinforce, list tasks to complete, and describe plans for the present and future.
I’ve now been using Obsidian for over a year and have enough experience with it to appreciate its power and the advantages it brings to this kind of a system – unmatched in my view by other tools I’ve tried. Along the way, I benefited a lot from LYT Kit – a sample Obsidian vault that Nick makes freely available separately and which I really recommend for coming up the learning curve and seeing some “best practices” applied. But I’ve also learned that it can be a place where I become too “fiddly” – wasting time playing around with the application itself, installing new plugins to try, etc. I’ve come to appreciate the importance of keeping it simple, using just enough of the full range of capabilities it offers to get the job that is most important for me to do. That said, I’m glad I was familiar with Obsidian before taking the course as it really adding on to my existing skills without starting from scratch.
In this specific cohort of the LYT Workshop, Nick introduced an exciting “AI Week” where we delved into the application of AI chatbot techniques to enhance our personal knowledge management (PKM) practices. These sessions focused on advanced techniques that truly expanded my understanding of the potential applications of AI chatbots, especially as invaluable assistants for brainstorming. Inspired by Ethen Mollick’s concept of considering AI chatbots as “interns,” we applied this perspective throughout our exercises in LYT 11, which added an intriguing dynamic to our interactions with AI technology.
We had three outside experts during LYT 11 – all were LYT alums from earlier cohorts. They provided additional insights based on their experiences applying PKM techniques and added a lot of value.
Moreover, the showcase sessions held the last week of LYT 11 were incredibly insightful. During these sessions, participants had the opportunity to share their experiences and insights, dedicating 10 minutes each to discuss how they have been applying the knowledge gained in the workshop. The discussions sparked numerous thoughts and ideas, motivating further exploration.
All in all, LYT 11 provided me a comprehensive view on constructing and, more importantly, using a personal knowledge management system every day. Nick and his team have done an exceptional job in delivering the course content and providing support to all participants. If you’re seeking a valuable approach to constructing a genuinely beneficial personal knowledge management system, just as I was, I highly recommend Nick’s course.
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