Hello all organic and artificial life forms,

After a long time here we are. Don’t worry! I didn’t forget the blog this time. Just I couldn’t find any topic to write. Then suddenly I realized I could write about not finding a topic and how to overcome this issue. I don’t have any magical solutions to this problem as you already see. If I had, I would publish a blog post every day. But I started to try new methods to solve this problem. So today we’re talk about this methods: Personal Knowledge Management aka PKM or External Digital Second Brain or Zettelkasten Method. All of this methods are variants of each others.

So let’s first start describe what PKM is according to Wikipedia:

Personal knowledge management is a collection of processes that a person uses to gather, classify, store, search, retrieve and share knowledge in their daily activities and the way in which these processes support work activities. It is a response to the idea that knowledge workers need to be responsible for their own growth and learning. It is a bottom-up approach to knowledge management.

I see myself as a knowledge worker because all of us – conscious creatures – working on knowledge to create ideas. And above all that learning new things are very exciting for me. Also when I think about how my brain and my neurons changes amazingly in this learning process, my excitement doubles. What a wonderful experience! But I realized I start to forget all of those things because in this new internet age we are facing lots of information and my brain couldn’t keep up with this much info. So my need of store and classify knowledge arises and PKM enters the stage. Firstly I want to write about how I managed my personal knowledge and then write benefits of it.

I am using a note-taking app called Notion to store and classify my personal knowledge. By the way when I use the term personal knowledge what I mean is all information about myself and my thoughts. In example:

• Class notes
• Reading lists
• Movie lists
• Thoughts about the books I read
• Thoughts about the new information that I learned, etc.

You can think this like your external digital second brain. Store your information and when needed open and reach that information.

Mainly I use Notion for exciting thoughts about new information that I learned. I store them with the dates and tags so I could find what I searched easily and see my learning adventure clearly.

This is how my September learning adventure looks like.

I find Notion from a youtube video. In video Ali Abdaal talks about how he using the app for personal knowledge management. You can check out the video for detailed info.

If we move on to the benefits of PKM:

• If you read my first blog post, I wrote there that I want to keep track of my learning adventure with using this blog. I’m not quite successful at this – as you already see – because I realized writing blog post is very time consuming activity for a hesitant person like me. So using Notion (or any note-taking app) instead of writing blog is a very easy and accessible method for tracking learning adventure.
• By classifying the information with dates and tags, it is easier to reach and recall that information.
• Best part is if you want to write or think on something but you can’t find any topic like me. I’m sure you can find lots of topic in this digital second brain with little look.

I couldn’t explain exactly what is PKM because of my limited English. So I put some amazing links about PKM here.

• How to create Idea Babies: A Knowledge Processing System for Marketers, Creators, and Knowledge Workers
• Building a Second Brain: An Overview
• Notion Tour with Ali Abdaal

Ali Fuad Başgil de Gençlerle Baş Başa kitabında Çalışma Hayatının Umumi Kanunlarında bu teknikten bahsediyor. Kitabı okumanızı şiddetle tavsiye ediyorum. Onun sözlerini de eklemek istedim. 🙂

Okuduğun bir kitapta rastladığın güzel bir parçayı veya orijinal bir fikri, yerini ve sahifesini işaret ederek not et. Bu suretle biriktirdiğin notları bir dosyaya ve bir fiş kutusuna sırasıyla yerleştir. Bir yazı yazmak veya bir eser yapmak istediğin zaman, bu notlar senin için zengin bir malzeme hazinesi olur.

Ali Fuad Başgil

Thanks for reading! As always live long and prosper!