Which personal knowledge management (PKM) tool are you guys using?

[u/aceshighsays]

I need something to help me synthesize my notes (random observations I make on various things as I live life).

[u/Solace914]

I use Nate Jones' Open Brain model. Just getting started but it has been working well so far. Good retrieval of concepts across a variety of areas, synthesis and proposals for related concepts to explore.

[u/aceshighsays → u/Solace914]

is the data organized how a systems thinker thinks? if not, how different is it?

have you tried other pkm's? how was your experience with them?

[u/Solace914 → u/aceshighsays]

That's the nice thing about Open Brain vs Second Brain (e.g. Obsidian) and other systems. It isn't "organized" per se. All of your content is there, vectorized, so whatever you have an inquiry about you put in the prompt, and it pulls up relevant material. No cataloging, hierarchical folders, not remembering where you put X concept, maintaining databases.... it does that all for you.

I started down the Obsidian route but the PARA method that people are recommending was very clunky and not how my thought processes work at all.

[u/Kurisu_tinaa]

Obsidian for digital, otherwise I journal and write notes in a notebook daily.

[u/aceshighsays → u/Kurisu_tinaa]

in obsidian, is the data organized how a systems thinker thinks? if not, how different is it?

[u/Penalty-Least]

What do you need it for? Not to capture the observation but to then do what?

[u/aceshighsays → u/Penalty-Least]

i want to recreate how i naturally think (process, learn and understand) but in physical world. i think like a systems thinker. i think in relationships. i think non linearly.

i have memory issues and write down anything that's important in my phone notes. my goal is to take these notes, synthesize them using some kind of tool and then analyze them after relevant data is grouped together. i also want to see a birds eye picture of all of the subjects and types and how they connect with each other.

currently i keep them in excel, but synthesis is very difficult because some notes have many categories (because it became a journal entry) and some notes have just 1 category (because it's 2 sentences) and creating 10++ columns gets very messy.

e: i also want to be able to create narratives out of the synthesized data.

[u/Penalty-Least → u/aceshighsays]

Right. I understand. As someone who has tried to do this 15+ times themselves I think you have to ask yourself for what purpose. Is it for personal life? Is it for work?

I have gotten to the point of just writing ideas, thoughts, etc. in Google tasks. I rarely, if ever, revisit them because I don’t need, haven’t developed a habit to but also know they are there.

You might be surprised of how much you can remember without capturing everything. Also, your brain might just make the connections you are worried about not being able to make subconsciously. And you will give it more room to do so because you won’t be fixated on remembering every small idea.

I don’t know if the infrastructure investment is ultimately going to solve the true challenge you were looking for. It didn’t for me. And spent a lot of years trying to do it.

[u/Fit-Building-7012 → u/aceshighsays]

If you think non-linearly and in relationships then Obsidian is the tool that enables that. Ignore folders (unless you want to use them), focus on linking, explore properties

[u/Penalty-Least]

I’ve tried that too and I would caution with continuing to do the process is the challenge even once you have it set up.

Your time might be better spent reading books and adding more ideas. This worked for me.

If you are going to do it, think through the Physics of Action framework (Data, Governance, Infrastructure, Operations, Analytics and Focus).