It seems like you can’t go an entire week without hearing about a new PKM tool…Notion, Roam, Craft, Logseq, Obsidian…and now there is Tana on the horizon.
But what exactly is PKM? Personal Knowledge Management is an offshoot of Knowledge Management, a business initiative launched in the 1990s to curate essential information and deliver it as it was needed.
PKM incorporates the collection, categorization, storage, and retrieval of important information. In this respect it is identical to the discipline of PIM, or Personal Information Management.
In fact, I’d argue that what most people are talking about when they are marveling at how easy it is to get their citations out of Zotero and into Tana isn’t PKM at all, it’s PIM.
The main thing that differentiates PKM from PIM is how the output is used. The main point of PIM is to keep information intact, such as citations that you use for a graduate research paper. The point of PKM is remixing information to make it useful in new and novel ways.
Thought leaders in the field have different ways of expressing this aspect of PKM that differentiates it from information gathering. Harold Jarche has rebranded PKM as “Personal Knowledge Mastery” using the “Seek – Sense – Share model. Tiago Forte puts about as much emphasis on getting stuff out of your “second brain”
Skills include:
- Knowledge harvesting and storage
- Personal networking
- Use of social networks
- Productivity skills such as ubiquitous capture and review, learning and memorization
Tools include:
- Email, calendars, task managers, knowledge bases
- Wikis, including personal wikis and semantic wikis
- Reference tools such as DevonThink, Zotero, etc.
- Zettelkastion and other note-taking software
- Social bookmarking
- Virtual assistants and AI
Also on Wild Rye:
Roundup of 66 Tools for Thought to Build Your Second Brain
Tools for Thought Need a Purpose
Let Your Notes Dictate the Purpose of Your PKM System
Without a social connection, the notes in your PKM are just notes. They don’t become knowledge until you consider The People in Your PKM
For a general note on the topic, SEE Personal Knowledge Management
