PKM Philosophy
Goals
I believe that true knowledge becomes a part of you. All mediums of communication are just vessels or catalysts for this knowledge which is actually generated and stored inside a person.
My writing here is not necessarily for the development of my thought; that has already happened by other means. Instead, this notes website is just for storing artifacts of my thinking; it just stores the history and development of my thinking after the fact. I don’t envision that I will be using them to write or do anything of that sort.
As a result, I don’t adhere strictly to any PKM philosophy or zettelkasten or any other system. I use the form of these methods, to be sure, but the influence remains simply at the level of form. I don’t believe the hype around finding systems that force you to think or develop. The catalyst is always the person themselves (See: I am the pivot).
I find that these systems require a lot of maintenance work, which is antithetical to my nature. Writing is simply to write, and I would like to do that with ideally minimal managerial overhead. I, however, accept that even the simplest of systems will require some maintenance because friction is part of anything that is worth doing.
Tl;dr
A previous version of the document had this paragraph, which encapsulates the above in a compact form:
Furthermore, I’m not really collecting information here. Although I will have source notes, my obsidian vault is really meant to replace the physical notebooks in which I wrote down my musings or realizations. In the end, they are taking the shape of something zettelkasten-like. This is fine, but it’s my way of doing them (i.e., with minimal managerial overhead). I’m publishing my works here just to have an online storehouse for them.
You will find that most of my writing circles around the same topic, and eventually, coalesces to the same idea.
Philosophy
Experiential Research
Practice is a big part of my life. I enter any realizations or revelations first in my Daily notes, which are stored in the Calendar folder. This replaces the pocket notebook that I used to carry.
Content Consumption
I also store notes from Books/Videos/Podcasts I interact with. However, I tend to not write down facts. I write down my reactions/reflections/realizations that I get as a result of consuming media. These notes are first entered in a Source note, which are stored in Atlas/Sources.
System
Folder Structure
I use a modified version of the ACE philosophy from Milo.
- Atlas: Clippings, source notes, and idea notes.
- Calendar: Daily notes
- Efforts: Project-based notes
Note Types
- Source notes: Notes taken from outside sources (books/videos/podcasts, etc.). Often, I’ll store my individual notes in a spreadsheet/table within the note (think of them like index cards, but in a visually effective format), and then write musings directly on the note
- Idea notes: Salient ideas that make their way into my thinking from Daily notes or source notes.