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Personal Knowledge Management Is Bullshit

otherlife.co

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Re: Personal Knowledge Management Is Bullshit

#3
post #2

>Sure, you could say that I just didn’t learn to use it correctly (and link me to a paid course, no doubt). Nailed it on the head. Productivity is ripe full of gurus and experts looking to make a buck.

I feel productivity is one of those areas that people get into and spend a lot of time thinking and writing about, to the detriment of their productivity.

Re: Personal Knowledge Management Is Bullshit

#4
post #2

>Sure, you could say that I just didn’t learn to use it correctly (and link me to a paid course, no doubt). Nailed it on the head. Productivity is ripe full of gurus and experts looking to make a buck.

I feel productivity is one of those areas that people get into and spend a lot of time thinking and writing about, to the detriment of their productivity.

Procrastinating so much that their relief became their passion.

Re: Personal Knowledge Management Is Bullshit

#5
I agree with the general idea here but there are some opinions here I can't get behind.

> Individuals blessed with high degrees of industriousness and orderliness will build sophisticated media diets, note-taking systems, and automated archiving pipelines much more effectively than those less blessed with these traits.

I can tell you by nature I am not a smart organized person but implementing certain systems in my life has made this easier. I don't think what I'm saying necessarily contradicts this quote but this quote seems like it is reducing the argument to "the haves and have nots."

Re: Personal Knowledge Management Is Bullshit

#6
Anyone sharing a picture of their graph, or who even pretends to navigate/look at the graph as a graph in any useful way, is definitely a bullshitter. In my experience, the graph is just a consequence that is sometimes pretty to look at, and that's it. But what is it a consequence of? I think there is a ton of value in taking notes (probably more value than in having notes), so what I get out of Obsidian, my PKM tool of choice, is probably no more than vim keybindings on a text editor, but that text editor can autocomplete references to other files without getting in the way of bulleted lists or prose.

Pretty much agreed for the most part, but if these chic new PKM tools get people who need to take notes but kind of suck at it (like myself) to take notes, then that's a good thing. Definitely not as miraculous as some claim. The cult around Roam in particular is well beyond laughable at this point.

Edit: The other thing I find very pragmatically useful, and is also a relatively simple thing (but a thing nonetheless!) is querying your notes. So I can take meeting notes, add some followup items as checkboxes, and then have a note that aggregates all of those to one place while linking back to their original context.

Re: Personal Knowledge Management Is Bullshit

#7

I agree with the general idea here but there are some opinions here I can't get behind. > Individuals blessed with high degrees of industriousness and orderliness will build sophisticated media diets, note-taking systems, and automated archiving pipelines much more effectively than those less blessed with these traits. I can tell you by nature I am not a smart organized person but implementing certain systems in my l…

I think what the quote is saying is that naturally organized people are the ones who build all these management systems. For them, they work because they are naturally organized; pretty much any system will work. Because they lack this insight, they think they found the One True Way, but for people less naturally organized, every system will be a burden, including this One True Way.

Re: Personal Knowledge Management Is Bullshit

#8
I take notes relentlessly with Obsidian and I'll honestly never go back. I would have been more stubborn about this earlier on in my career. Now I realize that I've probably forgotten more over time than I ever would have imagined so I realized having good notes is critical for me. I end up looking up answers on stack overlflow and then realize I wrote them.

To each their own.

Re: Personal Knowledge Management Is Bullshit

#9
I hope this isn't true, hah. I don't really invest in any existing PKMs but i nevertheless spend a fair bit of time writing the foundation of my own.

Regardless of the implementation, i want something to archive and/or retain (in the working memory sense) my conclusions. As without repetition i feel like a majority of what i read, and any conclusions therein, evaporate. Maybe the author would argue that if i want to retain it i should study it! .. but i don't, it's just some article i read.

Are my only choices to invest heavily or become increasing narrow minded? The things i actually invest in i know quite well.. but what does that matter? I'd like to be generally, reasonably informed. I'd like some minor effort spent reading broad topics to not be in vain. Besides, even if i invested heavily - there's only so many hours in the day; only so many things i can invest in to properly retain.

It seems reasonable to me to seek software to aid in this. But it feels like the author is attacking the idea of PKM just as much as the implementations. I can imagine many implementations are akin to snake oil.. but the goal seems reasonable. No?

Re: Personal Knowledge Management Is Bullshit

#10

I take notes relentlessly with Obsidian and I'll honestly never go back. I would have been more stubborn about this earlier on in my career. Now I realize that I've probably forgotten more over time than I ever would have imagined so I realized having good notes is critical for me. I end up looking up answers on stack overlflow and then realize I wrote them. To each their own.

Can you recommend a workflow for obsidian? Or some pointers for resources. I am struggling to "get" how to take notes with it and I am feeling a lot of friction
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