I have 5 spaces: Topics, Home, Capacities Made Simple, Test and PKM Beth.

Let’s look into these further.

Topics

This is my main space. When I picture myself taking part in PKM, I’m imagining what I do in here. It’s my favourite part of my whole digital system because it’s based around making my curiosity thrive.

In a nutshell, I’m obsessed with history, the essence of the everyday, and media representations of my interests. I consume content I find interesting, be it a book or a film, I extract what is specifically interesting and then knit lots of pieces back together to summarise what I’ve learned at various levels. I arrange my objects into three groups: blue icons = inputs, yellow = things I’m extracting and developing (with several inputs feeding the content), and green outputs.

The structure has naturally evolved over time. I started just with a media database because I use one in Notion, a person object and an event object. Now it’s a bit more built out… but let’s leave the conceptual and talk practically.

My input objects are Capacities’ basic content types plus a media object I create. The media object holds things that other people have told me - the notes I take on their work is what I refer to as literature notes.

I take literature notes outside of Capacities and summarise content as part of that process.

I copy the summary into the media object, or paste the tweet to the tweet object, or the source image to the image object etc.

The thing everything I put in this system has in common? There is something interesting in there that I consider to be knowledge I want to extract, because that is key for the next phase.

The things I’m interested in tend to belong to the same categories. Those categories correspond to objects.

Famous people → People

Historic events → Events

Interesting locations → Locations

New words → Definitions

Interesting topics → Topics

💡 TIP

Then I have some objects that don’t get added to regularly but I still like having them.

Quotes- self explanatory

Good points- I often read things and think “that is a really good point. I want to write that specific thing down and remember it”. Also known as an atomic note.

Then I have questions. I always have questions. Sometimes I want to write out a proper answer to them and I just put them in that object. Some answers are short and concise, others longer and spark more research. Either way, it’s nice seeing what I was specifically curious about at a given time.

Then we move onto where I store my general curiosity and the answers to my “what was going on in XYZ” questions.

I want to know what was happening in a given year (Year object) in various places (Country object) or in an specific era (Map of Content (MOC) Object).

This is what I’m working towards so that I have a personalised web of knowledge that takes a snapshot of the available information about those things individually, and filters them for my interests. I don’t need to know what sports teams won leagues in 1987, but I do want to know who was in power, what people were watching, what they were scared of, what consumer trends are, what events happened in 1987 that are somehow related to something today. Those answers come over time, through reading and watching and consuming content and being constantly curious, and that information is developed in Capacities.

I can also use the MOC object for other top-level topics, of course, but this is a recent addition to my system, so I’m still working out the scope and structural guidelines to follow. But right now I think a map of content collects content from other objects and organises them in a layout of my choosing, with filters and views of my choosing. There are a few holes in this thinking, so I’m actively working on building maps of content to get some exposure.

I love PKM and systems and working these things out, but at the base of it, I want to take notes because I’m interested. That comes first, and often the eureka moments about organisation come after real use. I’ll let you know when I work it out!

2. Home

I love houses, interior design, floorplans, gardens, everything. I’ve been collecting inspiration pics, marketing materials from houses on the market, tips, tricks etc since I was a child (I was an interesting child).

The inspo pics I collect are not realistic for the life I lead, and honestly probably won’t be unless I win the lottery, but it’s good fun. This space therefore is mainly for daydreaming, but I use some fun Capacities features in order to make my collection of content useful for when I do have a house to decorate.

This space runs on tags. Images and PDFs come in (via the command bar) and are then tagged. The new object dashboard views help here too.

Once tagged, the images show up in the places I would search for them.

Sometimes I’ll add notes about why I like a picture too, or what inspiration it gives me for a more realistic house. I’m also adding links to things to buy from that page, or resources that will help me.

Imagine opening an inspiration picture, seeing it in all the boards (imagine a tag is like a Pinterest board) you want to, and having an organically evolving database of where to buy things from it?

It’s using information intelligently whilst also having fun. Win-win!

3. PKM Beth

It feels a bit strange to be into PKM and then publish content on websites/social media platforms that force you to treat content as a singular unit.

I spend every day connecting ideas together but then I have to publish them in several formats on separate platforms. I want to basically publish a knowledge workspace of my ideas and content so people can discover and explore my content and advice more meaningfully, if that’s of interest. One day!

I started doing that in the PKM Beth space, and it was a good exercise.

4. Capacities Made Simple

I have a course with Keep Productive and to illustrate the lessons I was teaching, I created a separate space. Hopefully once day I will be able to share this with those who have purchased the course!

5. Test

I test random ideas in here or create content to help out the community with specific questions!

An advice roundup

1. Your system has to meet your needs. Your needs will evolve, it’s ok that your system does too.

2. Capacities Tags are magic, they’re the antidote to folders in a file directory that I don’t like!

3. Keep spaces to a minimum OR have explicit reasons you have more than one, otherwise you risk duplicated work/time/effort/upkeep.

4. Don’t get too hung up on structure. There are some useful basic principles that I follow, but you’ve probably downloaded Capacities to take notes on what you’re interested in, do that! It’s been so fun for me.

So there we go! A look at my spaces as of July 2023. Excited to see how it changes.

Would anyone be interested in seeing what properties I have assigned to any objects?

I’ve also started a system change log, would anyone be interested in seeing the lessons I’ve learned as my system grows and evolves?

Let me know! Thanks for reading if you got this far ;)