Personal Knowledge Management allows you to organise and integrate thoughts and files

Various systems exist for managing the knowledge that you hold (e.g. PARA, Getting Things Done, etc.) What connects these [north:: PKM] methodologies is the intent: systematic integration and organisation of knowledge @butlerBuildYourPersonal2022].

Let's break this down.

Organise

_Definition _

Start by keeping a (5A1A) Record To Make Findable. If you have the means to find something, you can then do something with it. (Aside: Making is the first step to making it observable)

Integrate

Definition 1 from Oxford Languages: combine (one thing) with another so that they become a whole

After organising your thoughts, notes and files, the second step is to make sense of your acquired knowledge. You combine, refactor, remix, rethink what you have. Ideally you will create something new or something better. Maybe new configurations allow you to solve an old problem or break ground in a project.

Because your thoughts, notes and files are organised in a way that makes sense to you, then you are able to put the parts together like basic blocks of lego turning into masterful pieces of art.

Some combinations will be expected like a lego house or a common argument, but the point of these is not that they are new, ground-breaking or incredible. The point is that you did the combining. This yellow rectangle piece looks like it fits with this red square, and this eventually turns into a house structure. Someone else may see 'just a house', but it's no doubt easier to build a Lego Death Star after playing with basic blocks than to blindly buy the flashy box with no Lego assembly experience. (At least, I think. I don't actually play with Lego. This was a weird metaphor, on my part.)

Anyway, you will eventually move past the basic configurations. Maybe the way you've organised information leads you to notice that the mating patterns of pigeons has practical applications for international business (does it? I don't know, but maybe your research suggests that). That might be like putting together a pirate ship and cobbling on a unicorn deployer on the mast because the pieces fit together, and it objectively makes your pirate ship more fantastical. (I don't know anything about Lego, and I really need to stop bringing it up.)

Systematically

Definition

You can organise your thoughts ad hoc, and you can do the same with integrating your thoughts. But if you package both processes into a system, it becomes easier to wrangle your creativity and thinking because ...?

#parse