What have note-taking PKMs accomplished, really? 14 ▲ brennan.day 23 days ago · 12 min read2459 words · Tech · hide · 5 comments I'm somebody who writes a lot—half a million words and 200 blog posts in the past 8 months. I'm also someone with an unrelenting curiosity to better understand our world. Beyond that, I also graduated with a degree in English literature with honours, with a 3.8 GPA. So, it should be no surprise I've done extensive research on how best to do research, which resulted in me diving into the world of personal knowledge management systems. These are the systems and methods of keeping track and sorting the notes we take, along with any other writing we do. PKMs have existed for many decades (this paper is from 1999), and digital notetaking apps such as Evernote have as well. But if you know what I'm talking about, you probably associate the idea with the application Obsidian. Obsidian has been out for six years now—has there been an increase in public-facing understanding and knowledge? I think it's safe to say that, while there have always been courses and lessons on productivity people… Log in to reply on the Fediverse. Comments will appear here. Ike @ike@pkm.social 22 days ago [-] ℹ️ deleted status ℹ️ Michael Pedersen @pedersen@c.im 22 days ago [-] I would point out a use case for pkms that your post doesn't cover, if I may. I've been using Obsidian for a while to record my notes, but they are not for publication. I'm unlikely to ever publish anything beyond the occasional blog post. *However*, I still reference the vault. I use it to keep track of things that I need to remember. For me, it's not about improving the world. It's about keeping myself from being overwhelmed with how much I have to remember. Your point is valid. I just think that the tool has more purposes than it is given credit for. Ed W8EMV @w8emv@hachyderm.io 22 days ago [-] @bubbles I write things down in Obsidian to remember, them, which helps because it also lets me forget them.And like @ike I mostly organize by dates and by Proper Nouns and much less by abstractions. Mayobrot 🇵🇸 @Mayobrot@zirk.us 22 days ago [-] Maybe these systems are less valuable for people who do research/write as a full-time job? For me there is value in having everything in the same space because I don't usually have the capacity to commit to a project up-front. Being able to write fragments of something and then link it to something related makes writing small things not feel useless. At some point the fragments might coalesce into some bigger project, but in the meantime it's good writing practice. Mayobrot 🇵🇸 @Mayobrot@zirk.us 22 days ago [-] That said, I don't really follow any one specific thing, and the way I write notes/fragments have changed over time. I've found that both for task management systems and pkms you should keep it as simple as possible when you start out. Otherwise the process becomes the end goal, and chances are you don't actually need the complexity.
