I Quit My 9–5.

2023 has been crazy for me.

I went from having a full time job, a part time masters and about 20 medium followers, to having a 4 day a week job, a part time masters and a small online business, to just the job and the growing small business, to now… just the business.

Long story short, my day job working in an university was not suited to someone like me and learning that lesson has been brutal. Over time the confidence I once had was well and truly eroded. Both my physical and mental health have acutely suffered and I think I’m burnt out from the pace of this year in general. The second I walked out of the office last Friday, I felt like I could walk taller. I still feel like I’m on annual leave, rather than being newly self-employed, so it’ll be interesting to see how this plays out over the next couple of weeks.

Thankfully my hard work with PKM Beth has paid off, and I can take at least the rest of 2023 to reset and get Beth back, by being self-employed, working from home and taking control of my health. I am incredibly privileged and lucky to be able to do this and I’m absolutely going to make the most of this opportunity.

What’s next for PKM Beth?

I am in the process of launching my rebrand which I’ve been working on behind the scenes for months. This includes a new look and a new focus: PKM in the Wild. This allows me to work on content ideas I’ve had for years.

I will start off by walking through my system, then going for specific use cases (both obvious and more niche) and then create some “day/week in the life of my PKM system content”. It will take some time to create all of this, but I think this could be fun to watch but it aims to ground these PKM practices in real life. I was missing this content when I first discovered PKM so hopefully this helps some other people on their journeys.

At the base of it, I want to help people make their lives easier with digital tools, because it was the ecosystem of digital tools that allowed me to work, study and grow a business. This ecosystem is now so engrained in my day to day that even without a million things going on in life, I still largely use all of those tools to feel in control of my days and life and I really like it.

What’s important is this ecosystem grew organically. I basically stopped asking critical questions of my PKM system (in the sense of “is this is best app for me right now? Could i streamline this workflow at all?”). Did it help in any way? Yes. Great let’s keep it. No? Uninstall and move on.

This has crystallised my vision of what I’m trying to teach. Our systems have to help our real lives, to help us reach our goals and fulfil our requirements. But we also need to have fun and have hobbies. For me taking notes on my interests what the gateway into PKM so my system needs to support that too. Follow your curiosity, meet your goals and obligations all with one ecosystem of apps. It’s ok if that’s messy or if the lines aren’t perfectly drawn between apps. Real life is not that clear cut.

I am not about to become a content creator who creates content about creating content, that is not what interests me, so I’m going full steam ahead with PKM in the Wild. I cannot wait.

Thank you all for supporting me over 2023, means the world :)