4 ms·

I understand your feeling, but it doesn't match the reality at all. As an enthusiast (not an expert), I love going meta and nerd about systems and productivity.

I understand your feeling, but it doesn't match the reality at all. As an enthusiast (not an expert), I love going meta and nerd about systems and productivity. But I don't live in theory-land at all. I use my system to capture and organize pretty much everything I learn, whether it is about software development, music, product development, sales, marketing, finance, etc. The articles I write however are geared towards people who I think would benefit from using the same kind (not necessarily the same!) techniques. So I try to document what it's all about, what benefits I notice based on my own personal experience, and approaches that I found actually useful. I often think about my son when I write my articles. I hope that someday these articles or what I tell him will drive him to experiment and find techniques that help him achieve his goals in life. Those may or may not be relevant for him, but might be, I don't know ;-)

kieckerjan 4y ago
Thanks for clarifying that. I just read your blog about your 25+ years of PKM (go c64!) and noticed your older blogs that are mainly about software engineering, so I seem to have jumped to conclusions. Apologies. My misgivings about grand PKM systems have been formed, at least partly, by my own starts and stops, which mostly amounted to little more than fruitless tinkering with the system. It seems to me that I am not the only one.
davisoneee 4y ago
I think the problem is that a lot of PKM articles are about _the PKM_, rather than the knowledge captured. Endless articles about 'hammers and chisels' in abstract, and not about 'woodworking', or how to use a chisel to accomplish a certain task during woodworking. However, it's rare that I actually see articles talking about WHAT they capture. They never put the PKM into context. So again a lot of these articles feel like 'just take notes, DUH!'...and yes that's mainly what it comes down to. But with blog post after blog post, there seems to be so much added 'ceremony' to note taking. If there wasn't so much ceremony, one blog post would likely do. Adding all this ceremony just feels like you (the amorphous 'you') are trying to complicate the process so that you can monetise the solution. If some of these articles explained their thought process about capture and organisation in a real world context, rather than just the abstract notion of 'tags are good', 'organisation is good', 'notes let you follow up on stuff later!', they wouldn't seem so vacuous. I generally am also quite interested in PKM, and have maintained a git repo of markdown for the best part of a decade, augmented with pinboard and goodnotes for bookmarks and handwriting respectively. I've tried various tools such as evernote, obsidian, physical notebooks, zettelkasten, personally hosted wikis, tiddlywiki, trello, onenote, zenodo, mendeley etc over the years, and even wrote my own bookmarking solutions and CLI tools.
- CrypticShift 4y ago
  > are about _the PKM_, rather than the knowledge captured This is because engaging with information ("to note"...) is such a basic human activity. So, you have to abstract to a higher level if you wish to attract the "average" internet audience. This is one of the reasons I suggested (bellow) it would be better to anchor note-taking discourses within established communities (students, business, academia...) > much added 'ceremony' to note taking Like every Human sub-culture/scene/community, note-taking/PKM/tft automatically creates its own customs and ceremonies. There is no escaping it. The fun thing is : because it is a basic activity (as I said earlier), those outside these circles will find it bizarre (the ceremony part) and banal (the basic part), both at the same time. Bizarre + banal = WTF!

kieckerjan 4y ago

Thanks for clarifying that. I just read your blog about your 25+ years of PKM (go c64!) and noticed your older blogs that are mainly about software engineering, so I seem to have jumped to conclusions. Apologies. My misgivings about grand PKM systems have been formed, at least partly, by my own starts and stops, which mostly amounted to little more than fruitless tinkering with the system. It seems to me that I am not the only one.

davisoneee 4y ago

I think the problem is that a lot of PKM articles are about _the PKM_, rather than the knowledge captured. Endless articles about 'hammers and chisels' in abstract, and not about 'woodworking', or how to use a chisel to accomplish a certain task during woodworking. However, it's rare that I actually see articles talking about WHAT they capture. They never put the PKM into context. So again a lot of these articles feel like 'just take notes, DUH!'...and yes that's mainly what it comes down to. But with blog post after blog post, there seems to be so much added 'ceremony' to note taking. If there wasn't so much ceremony, one blog post would likely do. Adding all this ceremony just feels like you (the amorphous 'you') are trying to complicate the process so that you can monetise the solution. If some of these articles explained their thought process about capture and organisation in a real world context, rather than just the abstract notion of 'tags are good', 'organisation is good', 'notes let you follow up on stuff later!', they wouldn't seem so vacuous. I generally am also quite interested in PKM, and have maintained a git repo of markdown for the best part of a decade, augmented with pinboard and goodnotes for bookmarks and handwriting respectively. I've tried various tools such as evernote, obsidian, physical notebooks, zettelkasten, personally hosted wikis, tiddlywiki, trello, onenote, zenodo, mendeley etc over the years, and even wrote my own bookmarking solutions and CLI tools.

CrypticShift 4y ago
> are about _the PKM_, rather than the knowledge captured This is because engaging with information ("to note"...) is such a basic human activity. So, you have to abstract to a higher level if you wish to attract the "average" internet audience. This is one of the reasons I suggested (bellow) it would be better to anchor note-taking discourses within established communities (students, business, academia...) > much added 'ceremony' to note taking Like every Human sub-culture/scene/community, note-taking/PKM/tft automatically creates its own customs and ceremonies. There is no escaping it. The fun thing is : because it is a basic activity (as I said earlier), those outside these circles will find it bizarre (the ceremony part) and banal (the basic part), both at the same time. Bizarre + banal = WTF!