In this post I will share my Personal Knowledge Management System (PKMS). At the heart of my content is learning. You’ll see that learning, communication and creativity run through pretty much every post and video.

Watch the YouTube video here: Or listen to the Cultivated Podcast, or read on below.

Learning is how we grow and develop. We could have an interest in science, nature, animals, communication, writing - anything - so in order to learn, and study, we're going to need a system to support us.

The best way to continually improve is to learn and that means developing your own personal knowledge management system.

A good Personal Knowledge Management System can store information, connect the dots between subjects and help us get organised.

In this post I will share my Personal Knowledge Management System and the four C's for learning; Capture, Curate, Crunch and Contribute

What is a Personal Knowledge Management System (PKMS)?

Let’s start with a wikipedia definition:

“Personal knowledge management (PKM) is a collection of processes that a person uses to gather, classify, store, search, retrieve and share knowledgein their daily activities (Grundspenkis 2007) and the way in which these processes support work activities (Wright 2005). It is a response to the idea that knowledge workers need to be responsible for their own growth and learning (Smedley 2009). It is a bottom-up approach to knowledge management (KM) (Pollard 2008).” Wikipedia

In a nutshell it is a system that a person uses to learn.

Learning doesn’t happen by gathering resources together – it happens by discovering new ideas, blending information together, implementing these new ideas (where possible) and observing and moving forward with what you have learned.

In my career, one of my greatest advantages was a focus on building a powerful personal knowledge management system.

I’ll share it here, but it’s important to point out that this systems works for me, it might not work for you – hence the term “personal” knowledge management.

It took me nearly 5 years to settle on this system and each month I tweak it. I explore new tools and I experiment to see how I can improve it. I’d be really interested in hearing about your personal knowledge management system – let me know what you do.

Since writing this article, I have tweaked my system further. An analogue version, and a newer version with different tooling.

I’m not sure I see much difference between Personal Knowledge Management System and Personal Information Management (PIM) so for the purposes of this article feel free to view them as the same thing – at least that is my perspective.

The 4 Cs

I have four distinct activities to my own system:

  1. Capture – discover something, find something, read something
  2. Curate – do I still want to process this? Is it still helpful? Where should I store it?
  3. Crunch – turn information into action to create knowledge.
  4. Contribute – contribute something that may help others.
My 4 C system of learning in my Personal Knowledge Management System
My 4 C system of learning in my Personal Knowledge Management System

Capture

At the start of any personal knowledge management journey is the first step; gather and capture information. You must feed your brain to gain knowledge.

Knowledge can only be gained by studying. And there are many ways to study.

Check out this other post on the two main ways to gain personal knowledge.

Everything I capture ends up in Nimbus Notes - actually, its now Zotero. It is my second brain. All notes go to my standard “Inbox” for curating before being moved to relevant spaces and/or folders.

This tool is the heart of my PKMS system.

So what information comes in:

  • Hand-written conference notes.
    • I learn more by writing notes long hand (I’ve done videos and articles on good note taking and how I use the Cornell Note Taking method)
    • Hand writing notes is less frustrating for those around me (less noisy keyboard tapping) and it also enhances my learning.
    • I then take a photo of the notes and share to my PKMS
  • Interesting articles from the web – captured using the browser web clipper
  • Kindle clippings
  • I “share” articles from my iPad straight to my PKMS
  • My notes from doodling in the margins of books are photographed or transcribed – and end up in the Inbox too
  • If I find myself out and about and I have an idea for a blog, book or other project, I’ll add the details via the app, or scribble it down in my notebook (and yes, these end up in the PKMS too).

Every piece of content I would ever want to consume and learn about, ends up in the Inbox in the PKMS.

Consider though that there is a boat-load of misinformation and nonsense on the Internet. Where you choose your information will lead to the quality of your knowledge.

I stick to about 5-10 decent blogs and the rest of my information come from academic papers, books and serendipity of following interesting articles.

Note that I use the word information there on purpose. It is not knowledge until I have put that information into action.

Curate

Every week or so I go through my notes and curate them.

Everything ends up in the standard Inbox in the PKMS. I then simply process everything.

As I curate I’m looking to find a home for each of the notes. My goal is to move the note to the next logical step for learning, or to delete it, or simply store it for future reference in my commonplace book.

This step in the process is about asking whether I want to “digest” the captured information or not. Sometimes I grab things from the web that sound interesting, but on later review aren’t of interest to me.

Some notes are purely for future reference.

For example, when researching this article I added a lot of sources of information to my PKMS, adding them to a temporary folder called PKMS. After including the links below I then moved them to a folder called “Basics – personal knowledge management”. We’ll come on to this construct in a minute.

Curating content is all about working out the value of each piece of information.
  • Do I still value this piece of information or shall I delete it?
  • Will I need to refer back to it again?
  • Should I crunch this information with my existing knowledge to help me get smarter, or delete it?
  • What tags should I apply?
  • Which folder does it need moving to?
  • What do I want to do with this information?

Of course some notes are just tasks and ideas. If I want to do something with them I’ll move them my task manager (Todoist).

The curation step is all about filtering the information for the next step(s).

Crunch

The majority of my notes end up being crunched. This is my term for studying the information and mashing it together with my existing knowledge – and then, later, putting it into action.

There are a few core subjects I am trying to learn and improve upon.

  1. Communication Skills – I am a lifelong learner of communication and aim to continue to grow my knowledge until I no longer can!
  2. Light Therapy – I am trying to learn as much as possible about light therapy and how light affects humans at work
  3. Management – my bread and butter skill and a topic with a never ending array of principles, ideas and opinions to digest
  4. Writing, marketing and product sales – I am learning about how to market myself, my product and how to sell!
  5. Publishing – I’ve always needed to publish work (books, magazines, zines, photography, podcasting etc) so I’m reading about how others are doing this and learning

Any note that I want to crunch is likely inline with any one of these subjects.

During crunching I take the information source and read it many times looking for nuggets of information, patterns or ideas that compliment or jar with my current knowledge.

I used to use mind-maps to store this information, but they soon became unwieldy – so I now just use a my PKMS to store everything about that subject with relevant and clear tagging.

Tagging means it’s easy to find and search a particular topic, and its all in one place – ideally all in one note, and accessible from anywhere I have an internet connection.

Most of my notes are plain text or images, but sometimes I’ll spend time writing my notes out on paper and add them as an image. I’ve been dabbling around with A3 paper for my personal knowledge management also – an analogue personal knowledge management system.

When I add information I am asking a few questions:

  1. Does this information counter something else I already believe – how and why and what can I learn from that?
  2. Does it compliment existing knowledge?
  3. Is it a new piece of information?
  4. Is it duplicate – in which case should I delete it?

I am crunching the information to see how it sits with my current model of this subject and information.

I am going through and testing the information. Critically evaluating it and holding it up against what I already currently know. Can it help me? Does it resonate? Should I revisit what I already know in light of this new information?

You get the idea – I am digging deep into the piece of information to understand whether I want to assimilate it into my very behaviours.

I use tags A LOT. So, I can search for “communication” as a tag and it will bring back every single note I have tagged with “communication”. This allows me to see all of the varying topics, ideas, themes and connections across my entire personal knowledge management system. Looking at a tag shows how related many topics really are.

Crunching is really the learning phase. This is the assimilation of information from the source, into my own personal knowledge management system construct. I haven’t “learned” it yet as this comes from putting into action the information I have discovered – which is the next part of crunch.

But I do add it to my personal knowledge management system, or throw it away at this stage. It’s kind of like a 2nd filter stage for information. Stage 1 is an initial curation stage – a chance to remove the fluff I may have collected. Stage 2 is to test this information against my current models for that topic.

After putting the information into action and contributing, I rarely come back to the PKMS to be honest. I have weaved the information into the fabric of who I am by putting the information into action (we'll come to that), and I tend to contribute through my own work, or on this blog.

It's kept in my PKMS for reference or citation.

I don’t want my personal knowledge management system simply to become a repository of information that I pretend I know. I want to actually know it, to change because of it and to demonstrate this knowledge in my very behaviours – so I must put the information into action. This is also what crunching is.

Otherwise I run the risk of merely becoming a walking talking font of knowledge, who sounds more knowledgable than others, but is unable to actually do the things I talk about.

So, for example, let’s say I discover a new way of organising a meeting that is supposed to lead to deeper insights and richer dialogue. It’s an interesting article and I capture it from a reliable website.

I then crunch it by going through it and breaking it apart critically. I will then find an opportunity to try the approach or method, and see what happens for myself. This is experimentation – which for me is learning. This is crunching.

  1. I’ve discovered something – capture
  2. I’ve tested it to make sure I want to process it – curate
  3. I’ve mashed it with what I already know and am going to try it by bringing this information to life through action – and thus turning it into knowledge – crunch

Let’s say I try the new meeting structure with limited success. Let’s say the article (or book) has a ten step model for success. During curating I may disagree with some steps based on what I already know, but I may steal the other seven to try in my next meeting.

I try the new approach and 3 of the steps are not needed, and 1 is an absolute disaster. Thankfully, I’ve developed great communication skills, so I can charm my way out of the situation, but I make a note to NEVER do that step again. This is learning. It is crunching.

Yet, i see people everyday who have read a book or guide and they spout it as fact, not realising it may not work. Or you're working with someone who is merely quoting other people's work.

You need to put information into action to learn for yourself – this is crunching.

Once I’ve turned information into action, it’s always worthwhile sharing it with other who may be interested.

Contribute

With enough experiments under my belt about something new, and having taken what is good from the source, and made it part of the very fabric of me (in other words I have turned information into knowledge), I finally feel comfortable explaining the idea to others.

For me, with this site and YouTube channel, it’s pretty straight forward to contribute. I create some content and share it. Or submit a new talk. Or I share a podcast.

But it doesn’t have to be public. Contribution happens in the workplace too. There are times to improve a meeting or process, or give someone feedback, or offer some coaching, or do work differently based on what you've learned.

Maybe you could present to your team or maybe set up a small group of people to try this new thing you believe works.

As much as we are gaining knowledge by capturing, curating, crunching and contributing, we should still open our cup as Bruce Lee would say. We are never complete. There is always a better way of doing something. We can always grow. We can always cultivate ourselves.

Other factors to consider

Refactor

There is no harm in refactoring, changing or abandoning an idea or theory – in fact, as you grow your knowledge, this will happen.

The goal is not to collect information for merely repeating it to others – the goal is to grow knowledge and understanding – and teach others. It’s about education, not memorisation.

Full of Dross

If you're not careful with your PKMS is could become full of dross. The curation stage is very important. It's easy to capture the entire web and make it hard to find anything in your PKMS.

Curation is the key to avoiding your PKMS becoming bloated and full of stuff you don't need.

A routine of curation can help you avoid this. I tend to do my curation over the weekend.

The personal knowledge management system for me is a holding system. It holds the information until I turn it into knowledge. And when it is knowledge in my body, mind and behaviours, the personal knowledge management system acts as a backup and way to see connections and patterns.

Knowledge is information in action. Don’t be fooled into thinking that collecting information is the same as knowledge – it is not. There can be a big difference between knowing something and doing something.

Be sure to keep pruning and remove the dross.

It is incomplete

There is always more to study than can ever be documented and captured. The more I’ve learned, the more I’ve appreciated I know very little indeed. Sometimes this is soul destroying, but it’s the nature of personal development.

The more I’ve grown my knowledge the more I’ve realised that everything we do is closely intertwined. For example, our approach to work is constrained by our language. The way we act has profound effects on others. The way we speak says a lot about ourselves – and hence how others treat us. The systems we build will determine behaviours. The light in our office is making people sick and weak. It’s all connected.

My knowledge is always incomplete. Just because I have not found evidence of something yet, doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist. Learning opens my mind – it’s helped me become more tolerant, less opinionated (slightly 🙂 ) and it’s helped me to wonder “why” rather than make assumptions.

But that’s why I need to keep learning – I guess the point is – we’re never done with a subject.

Tools I Use

Here are some of the tools I use for capture, curation, crunching and contributing in my personal knowledge management system.

You don’t need loads of tools to make it work for you. I fell in to a trap once of using too many tools and it didn’t work. Simplicity is the key to getting more done and making the process work.

Iterate

The key to a successful Personal Knowledge Management System is to keep iterating until it feels right. I doubt you’ll ever get it spot on, but you can get close. Close is good.

But as soon as it doesn’t feel right again, try something different. Just be careful not to procrastinate by fiddling with the system rather than getting things done.

Having control of your own learning is the best way to grow personally. Becoming a life long learner opens doors, helps you solve problems and really can boost your career.

And the best way to ensure success as a learner, is to have a personal knowledge management system that works for you.

The link has been copied!