Personal Knowledge Management

Daily life in a modern society requires a lot of knowledge and data retrieval. Remembering a relative's birthday. Recalling rarely changing configuration details for an application running on a remote server. Knowing the details of a security incident from a month ago. Setting the agenda for a team meeting. Not forgetting all the things you wanted to buy in the shop. Quickly remembering a fictional character your gaming group met in a game a few months ago. What is the name of your partner's friend's child? The thing is, our brains are made for solving problems, not memorising information.

Computers are very different. Even the most advanced AIs of 2024 can not solve a fraction of the original problem solving a human does everyday. What computers are good at, however, is reliably retrieving large amounts of information. If you can write it down, then computers can memorise it and recall it years later without losing any details. Wouldn't it be great if we could combine the human ability to solve problems with the computer's ability to recall information? All transhumanist dreams aside, we have developed systems that make this possible. These systems are known as Personal Knowledge Management (PKM) systems.

What is PKM?

Personal knowledge management was first defined as its own concept in a 1999 paper titled "Personal Knowledge Management : Who, What, Why, When, Where, How?" by Jason Frand and Carol Hixon.

... conceptual framework to organize and integrate information that we, as individuals, feel is important so that it becomes part of our personal knowledge base. It provides a strategy for transforming what might be random pieces of information into something that can be systematically applied and that expands our personal knowledge.

Even though it was only defined at the end of the 20th century, PKM is nothing new or revolutionary. The concept has its roots in notebooks, reference tables and other reference materials that have been used by knowledge workers for a long time. But while the core of the practise is not new, personal computers allow for a much more organised, personalised and efficient use of this personal treasure trove of information that deserves a new name.

In this sense, PKM is best defined as personal information management (storage and retrieval) combined with knowledge management and personalization (customisation). The discipline draws heavily on various fields such as management, cognitive science and metacognition.

Software Requirements

The simplest PKM system would probably just be a text file. It fulfils the basic purpose of storing and retrieving information. However, as our knowledge base grows, it's easy to imagine things getting out of hand and information retrieval slowing to a crawl. The linearity of a simple text file also doesn't fit well with the way we think about concepts and connections between them. I suggest that a better PKM system should have the following characteristics:

  • A way to store information quickly. Any friction in input makes us hesitate to input information, and a PKM system is only as good as the amount of information stored in it.
  • A way to retrieve information quickly. PKM is only useful if it is easier to retrieve the information than to find it any other way (e.g. by searching the internet again)
  • A way to link information and concepts. This makes our problem solving workflows easier and more efficient as we have all the relevant information close to our starting point. Recognising connections between information points can also give us new ideas for solving problems.
  • A way to organise information visually. Headings, bullet points, coloured text, boxes, etc. give our brain visual cues to find information on the computer screen.
  • A way to add metadata to help with organisation.

Choices

There are a variety of ready-made tools that can be used for PKM. I personally use Obsidian.md. Other tools include Evernote, Notion and Roam Research. If you do a quick search on the internet, you will probably find a few more. So what should you choose? The answer lies in the word "personal" when it comes to PKM. We all work in different ways, and so the decision is entirely subjective. Whatever the decision, having something is better than nothing, and every great knowledge base started with just a few entries.