PKM in the Wild Newsletter #9

Happy Tuesday all!

Sorry this is late, I’ve got a lot going on at the moment 😅 

Table of Contents

• Content Roundup

• Content I’ve been enjoying

• PKM Puzzle

• Real life PKM

• Exciting news!

Content Roundup

The best content I’ve found for PKM- this was so fun to put together, I love the PKM community!

Amie and other joyful apps- I’ve really enjoyed seeing my data in Amie, so it got me thinking about other apps I’m excited to use every day.

12 in 12 Project Update (free Medium link because I forgot to post here!)- January is known for feeling never-ending but that worked out excellently for 12 in 12. I learned some really valuable note-taking lessons in Jan so I rounded everything up in that post.

Content I’ve been enjoying

Remember how obsessed I was (and honestly still am) with Julian Lehr’s article about multi-layered calendars?

Well I went through more of his blog and 🤯 

The first article that got me thinking was this one:

This is interesting because only last month did I start drafting a post called ‘I want to annotate everything’, because I honestly do.

I haven’t fully started exploring this yet because I know when I do, I won’t think about anything else for weeks (which is exactly what happened after I read his multi-layered calendar article) but I’m excited to have the brain space for this hopefully soon.

Then I read Lehr’s quantified self setup. I found many similarities between with what he does and what I have been doing for years, but I never knew/realised it could be classed as quantified self work… so that’s a new angle to explore.

Then I saw this on my Medium feed.

Worth a read if you’re interested in PKM as part of self-development. One quote really stood out though:

It’s essentially this that I’m capturing with “essence”. I find essence very hard to define because its just so integral to me, so I’m always on the look out for quotes that would help me explain it!

PKM Puzzle

More of a system or routine puzzle today…

I’m a Monday morning Weekly Reviewer. I journal in the morning about the day before, so it makes sense to me to review the previous week, then plan and get started with the current week on a Monday morning.

But, I have quite a few things on my weekly review list (to feel I’m doing it properly), and of course this is not all in one app. Notion and Day One are the pillars, but I also look at other apps/digital places too. I haven’t currently got an order in which I do them religiously, and that means sometimes I forget to do certain parts of it, which makes me sad. So I need to fix it.

I think I have 3 routes forward:

1) devise a rigid workflow and enforce order (don’t think this has ever worked for me)

3) spend 30 mins thinking about the practices I do as a whole and see if I can create some element of flow

Now I think 2 makes the most sense in many ways. But I find myself wanting to do 3 because…

a) I think checking in with your workflows is generally a good thing to do every once in a while (I’ve been on my current (messy) routine since September)

b) I am reluctant to view the Weekly Review and Planning as a task to be checked off, which is how anything in a task manager feels (quite rightly?).

The Review and Plan is how I check in with myself, with my goals and with my life. It feels like an act of self care to be carefully and intentionally navigated, so that I align my life and my actions with where I want to go. In that way, it feels like a sensible investment to treat it like a more sacred routine.

So is there a lesson here? Not sure yet. But I’ll give option 3 a go and report back if I learn anything interesting.

Real life PKM

I wanted to share this instagram post I put up last week because I think it’s quite a good summary of where I stand in this digital realm.

There’s a few use-cases in there that aim to show that work, fun, fulfilment and everything else can exist side-by-side in the tools you use. 

Click on the post below to see some examples but I’ll add a different one below too:

Since the last newsletter, I baked my yearly cake to celebrate the anniversary of hearing I no longer had to worry about a horrid, scary illness I had in my teens and early 20s. The day I found out in 2021, I baked a giant 2-tier cake to celebrate this truly momentous day in my life, and every year since I’ve baked (a smaller) one to mark that date (and eat cake).

But I can’t have dairy, and over years of baking dairy free, I’ve realised that butter must have some magical, mystical properties to make cake actually taste of something. Dairy free butter does not compete and that definitely irritates me more than it should..

So I’ve been on a mission for a long time to make dairy free cake taste of something, so I need a place to write down what tests I’ve done, which recipes I’ve tried and to show how my skills have improved.

So I use Notion because of its lovely databases.

But I also use Notion to write every Medium post I publish, to track my bills, my migraines, where the furniture we currently own is going in the new house.. all sorts. All of this is existing very peacefully alongside each other.

If you don’t see your imagined use case of a tool on the landing page of a given app, it doesn’t mean it’s not a valid use of your time. You can do whatever you want with digital tools. They give us ways to work with, deal with, even play with the information we hold about our lives and ourselves. They’re great!

I will keep repeating this message forever!

Exciting news!

I will be transitioning to a full-time role at Capacities in April which I am SO excited about. It’s a product I’m clearly very passionate about and being able to work in that environment is literally just incredible.

I’ll still be creating content alongside it 😇 

Thanks for reading if you got this far! Have a great week.

Beth :)