What has your PKM actually help you achieve?

Knowledge management
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Hey @minhthanh3145 - yes I agree that “relevance-realisation” is a process description, the output of which is insight. And when we talk about finding “mental clarity” faced with a difficult problem or decision, what we mean is also that we lack insight…

Since we’re nerding-out a bit here, an interesting nuance around “relevance-realisation” that comes from Vervaeke’s paper is that he distinguishes between wisdom and analytical problem-solving. It’s a while since I read the paper (and ironically my notes are not to hand, ahem!) but I recall he made reference to Eastern traditions of thought in contrast with Western traditions… and his process term of relevance-realisation is modelled on the idea of wisdom. His line of argumentation was even quite humorous, noting that even really clever people can be pretty stupid sometimes, so logic and rationality are no magic pill.

In fact, Vervaeke (borrowing from Dreyfus) refers to a good “problem finder” rather than a good “problem solver” - the definition of a problem-finder being the ability to create a problem nexus, ie a problem that is connected to other problems and that if solved would solve those problems too. In other words, related problems are ‘relevant’ problems.

On your point about constraints, I also agree. I was just listening over the weekend to Lex Fridman’s podcast interview with Elon Musk (the latest one, they’re friends so he’s had Musk on the show a few times). Musk described (with examples) his now well-known approach of “thinking from first principles” which in a nutshell is about boiling down a problem to its axiomatic base: the most fundamental principles to which the problem is anchored, and which you know are true at a foundational level. He then ‘reasons up’ from there… and then checks his conclusion’s plausibility/possibility by referring right back to the axiomatic base. I think this idea provides a good mental framework for defining the boundary of relevance… if he can make the best rocket engine ever (better than NASA) and start so many disruptive businesses using this approach, then I figure he’s onto something!

A final thing Musk said is that “all the answers are out there” and are relatively easy to find, if only you can find the right questions: that’s the hard part. Questions (about relevance) are at the heart of effective learning. As another neuroscientist, Beau Lotto, says, “every new perception starts with a question.”

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22

@anon12638239 provided the home page, but the specific article I was thinking of is this one: How to write good prompts: using spaced repetition to create understanding

It’s an article about how to write good Anki card prompts, or questions. If you’re new to the idea of Anki cards, you can find some breadcrumbs to follow in this article for more background.

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@CAD_O - yeah, I know what you mean about that “friction”… and the rabit hole! I think there’s also a ‘habit hole’ BTW…

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Are you writing somewhere about these connections? I’m a Latinist (in a Classics PhD program, but take the long view of Latin, mainly work on Early Modern Science) and I’d LOVE to think along with people who have a sense of both the modern PKM landscape and exactly the sorts of authors and tools you mention.

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I just watched this video that shows some creative and fun ways to use Obsidian

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How cool! My PhD is in medieval philosophy so I also focus on postclassical Latin. I find the question of premodern PKM fascinating and would like to explore it more someday but I’m definitely living off of the expertise of other scholars.

I think the study of premodern PKM has got to be linked closely to memory, since so much of knowledge management in those eras would have been done in their minds: it’s known that in ancient and medieval times intellectuals made a discipline of organizing their memories in ways that we rarely do today, since we can offload much of that work to paper or computers. To my knowledge the canonical studies here are those books by Mary Carruthers, which I’ve only read a little of but everyone speaks of highly. I often hear the medieval memory compared to a filing cabinet or a computer file system; there could be an article for someone to write comparing it to a wiki or Obsidian (etc.) vault.

Within my own field, I’ve noticed how the use of authoritative passages from the intellectual tradition become touchstones for certain debates and questions, and understanding this can help you interpret a text. Two passages in opposite parts of a massive book might be linked by the quotation or paraphrase of a Bible verse. Or a quotation from a Church Father or Aristotle might be quoted whenever a certain debate comes up, which means that seeing that quote in a passage might give you a clue to what you’re about to read about.

The tradition of commentary does similar work, too: if everyone is commenting on the same texts and asking the same questions of those texts, you have a uniform way of organizing ideas across authors. This still works today: I can’t tell you how many times, when I was wondering what an A said about X, my dissertation director would reply, “Well, X is covered in in section N of Lombard, so look up A’s commentary on N.”

None of that is exactly PKM the way we think about it, but it’s pretty similar: nonlinear knowledge networks that extend and enhance memory.

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I am going to contribute a relatively boring data point (unlike other comments with full of enthusiastic pursuits/professional achievements).

  1. My memory is really bad, to a point that I would forget where I wrote the notes. I’ve just been through a couple of major purchases, it’s so difficult to keep track of things like: contracting quotes, couch shopping, take down a ref number from a customer service phone call, etc… I really like the fact that, the moment that I type [[ and one keyword, I can pretty much find what I need, and all the interactions I had in the past.

  2. It kinda forced me/helped me to grow a habit of organizing things before I forget or leave it. It’s just so easy to write things down, and so easy to retrieve. One example - I had the idea of a small home project last year but did not have the bandwidth. I did some basic research and saved links and my thoughts in obsidian, with pretty much no format or structure. Last month I was able to fully recall my idea and did everything in a weekend. I am so glad those ideas didn’t just go to nowhere and I’d need to start fresh.

Side note: this habit is really beneficial in the work setting. Every end of day if I can write down a brief summary of what I did and what I should be doing the next day, it boosts productivity, reduce the booting time in the morning, and also helps writing your self review (sadly my company does not allow Obsidian so I am using Foam at work).

  1. I don’t like using apps. To be specific, I dislike those fancy apps that only do a very specific thing (like a todo) or a full website that keeps track of some niche things you use, along with a bunch of features you don’t need. I keep pretty much all my tasks management, short-term/long-term todos, journals, book notes, anything (as long as it’s not a data table) in Obsidian. In return, things become a lot simpler when you look at the relationships between them: a task is attached to a topic, that was mentioned on day x, day y, and day z.

  2. It makes journaling a lot easier. I’ve been switching journal apps over the last decades. Some are difficult to use, some are no longer supported/died, some requires internet, some are simply ugly, or slow to load, and I had quite a few physical notebooks, but my handwriting makes it not pleasant to read… Obsidian is just too easy to open and type something. In terms of why it’s an achievement - journaling helps mental health!

  3. It’s just way easier to program something to manipulate text. Couple line of python, done.

Overall I don’t think I am using Obsidian for the “hard core” PKM stuffs. They are not really knowledge knowledge (if you think knowledge is something you get from a MOOC or a book)? But I still have things that I need to remember, that I can’t, by my little poor head.

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28

Oh, another link that I forgot about: the structure of the Bible, especially the Old Testament. There’s a school of interpretation of the Bible that argues that the Old Testament writers used key words, phrases, and motifs that go over the head of modern readers, but to original readers connect different passages together in intricate ways.

For instance, there is a recurring tree motif throughout the Bible, beginning with the Tree of Life and Tree of Knowledge in Genesis 3, stretching to Abraham entertaining the divine guests at the Oak of Mamre, to Moses at the burning bush, to Psalm 1 saying the righteous is like a tree, to Jesus cursing the fig tree, to the trees with healing leaves in Revelation. Whenever you see trees, you’re supposed to think back to the original two trees.

Similarly, there’s a motif of “seeing,” beginning with Eve seeing that the Tree of Knowledge was good to eat, to Aaron “seeing” the Golden Calf, David seeing Bathsheba, and so forth.

It’s not that these are tracking a “theme” in the modern sense. It’s not just that trees symbolize something in the Bible. Rather, when you see a certain word, you’re supposed to think, not just of an abstract idea, but of all the other stories you’ve read that use that word.

In essence, these words and motifs are wikilinks for your memory: each story contains links to other stories that help you interpret it. In fact, scholars sometimes actually call these “hyperlinks.” You’re supposed to read them in a nonlinear way, as a web of connected stories rather than a series of page turns.

There’s a great little group of scholars that are doing serious academic work in this area and also creating podcasts, videos, etc. for a popular audience at The Bible Project.

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Never knew that… fascinating! It reminds me of the book “Godel, Escher, Bach: an Eternal Golden Braid” by cognitive scientist Douglas Hofstadter… he does something similar in that book, and you effectively learn about his idea of ‘we think by analogy’ in a similar manner to how you describe the Old Testament…

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I’m a really big fan of journaling too. Personally, I still use a combination of paper and app-based journaling in Apple Notes. I love the tactile feel of a fountain pen on good paper in a nice leather journal… old school!

More recently I’ve been using GoodNotes, which has the best hand-writing to text OCR that I’ve found aside from Evernotes, which I no longer use but had really good handwriting recognition.

If Obsidian had handwriting recognition… that would be truly amazing!

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Wow, my question has sparked quite some discussion with some excellent entries and thoughts! Thank you for contributing, everyone.

My conclusion after thinking about it (and following along with the discussion) is that my problem is that I never had a clear purpose for my PKM, and it fell by the wayside every time because I didn’t feel like it was serving me.

I realized I need to worry less about “one source of truth” that has everything I need, and worry more about “what am I trying to accomplish and what is the right tool for that?”

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32

I’m still a newbie to Obsidian but I come from maybe a different background so hopefully my usage will be helpful to somebody.

I’m a network engineer, and I don’t currently have a ton of time for creative output, so my usage is further outside of the atomic notes/zk realm than most. I have a few goals:

1. To Journal - journaling is something I’ve never done, and I’ve finally gotten myself into a two week streak thanks to the Daily Notes plugin. With tags and links, it’s just so easy to jot down a funny story, or a serious insight, and tag them for the future should I ever want to recall them.
2. To combat ADHD - My life has gotten exponentially better in recent years when I started to really write things down and organize. Sometimes, even stupid things, like “Play with the dog” - Keeping a to do list for home and work, as well as expanding those things out into linked pages when they are sufficiently complex, has really helped me stay focused, motivated, and productive.
3. To begin progress on my many life goals (Probably a symptom of #2… lol) - I’m someone who wants to achieve something different nearly every week - learning Japanese, learning about dinosaurs, trading stocks, beating video games, or writing music, just to name a few. By using my notes, I am able to create goals, track those goals, and keep an eye on these hobbies.
4. Oh, and organizing for work. - Maybe the least exciting, but as a network guy, I needed a wiki-type space for my documentation, how to guides, etc. This is mostly dry information that doesn’t involve a lot of idea generation, and I was able to handle this part fine in OneNote. Still, Obsidian is fantastic for IT documentation, and I definitely like Obsidian more for this now than nearly any other app. If I was collaborating with a bunch of others my opinion on this might be different, as I don’t know how well Obsidian plays with multiple people editing files, if it can really be done at all.

For me, having an “all in one solution” really increases my enthusiasm, and that alone means I use the tool a lot more, which creates this sort of positive feedback loop that helps me immensely. I really liked OneNote, but having my files available offline with no proprietary format and having a single app with stuff like Kanban Boards, Daily Notes, the Calendar, Tasks, and much more means I’ll probably never stop using Obsidian.

OH! And I even started my first novel this year, which I credit largely to Obsidian for making it so easy to stay organized and on task.

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33

I was in the process of writing down the 15 year history of my previous company into a google doc. It quickly became a challenge to add random information into a “linear” document.
Luckily I came across Obsidian and knew right away it’s the perfect solution. Now I can easily create separate notes for people, events, etc and link and tag them in various ways. When things pop into my head I can just put them on a daily note and move them into the right place later.
Adding photos is helpful and I use the admonition plugin to add nicely formatted quotes. I also use the “icon shortcuts” plugin for adding emojis.
I use the search a lot (using F1 shortkey) and opening notes with CTRL+o is fast as well.

The entire experience reminds me of the time when I was switching from outlook to gmail. It took me a while to switch from the idea of organizing emails by folder to just using search.

I’m now using Obsidian for more of my work and personal life. I stopped writing things on post-it notes or sending myself reminder emails.

Having everything available on my iPhone and iPad is a plus as well (I’m still dealing with the buggy iCloud sync)

I’m also in the process of trying to decide if I want to manage my todos in Obsidian instead of Trello.

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I am a researcher and only 18 days into using Obsidian for PKM. But I am already developing research ideas and seeing new connections between concepts. I have been more productive in the past two weeks than in the past year in terms of developing new ideas.

I am using Obsidian only for random “fleeting notes” throughout the day and building PKM/developing ideas. For project management and task planning, I use Notion, although I do write down to-dos throughout the day in Obsidian’s daily page.

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For me, it’s the whole linking and getting new ideas while doing it. It is also less stressful to think about where to put the information instead of just putting it into the Zettelkasten folder and linking to relevant information or finding it when needed. That needed a more restricted way of only using my thought instead of copying and pasting interesting articles. But the whole process and also how it influences my life in a profound way, you can read on Personal Knowledge Management Workflow for a Deeper Life — as a Computer Scientist |.

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Ohhh! I love your opinion! It is something that pass through the time!

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What if there is an AI could help you build a more powerful PKM as a system, would you want to try it?