“Knowledge has to be improved, challenged and increased constantly, or it vanishes.” - Peter Drucker 1
We currently live in a knowledge economy where information is ubiquitous, and managing it is no longer a “nice-to-have” skill but a necessity.
Personal Knowledge Management (PKM) is the art of managing your own knowledge by keeping track of what you know, what you don’t know, and what you need to know. It involves creating a system that enables you to find information quickly and easily when needed, serving as a framework for managing information and enhancing creativity and innovation in knowledge work.
You may wonder, “Why manage my own knowledge when I can just Google everything?” While Google is a great search engine, it can be hard to filter out the noise from the actual signal. With PKM, you can create your own personal haystack, curate and organize relevant information, and easily find the needle when you need it.
There are various tools and techniques for PKM, including note-taking software, mind-mapping tools, and social bookmarking sites. The goal of PKM is to make it easier for you to find and use relevant information, whether it’s for your job, hobbies, or personal growth.
Personally, I use Obsidian as my PKM tool of choice, which I have found to be versatile and user-friendly. You can read more about PKM and how I use Obsidian in upcoming posts.
By creating a system for managing your knowledge, you can stay on top of information overload and make the most of the knowledge economy we live in today. Remember, PKM is personal to you, so find a system that works for you and start reaping the benefits of taking control of your own knowledge.
This post is part of a series of posts under Personal Knowledge Management 101.
That was a misquotation. What Peter Drucker actually said was: “Knowledge is different from all other resources. It makes itself constantly obsolete, so that today’s advanced knowledge is tomorrow’s ignorance. And the knowledge that matters is subject to rapid and abrupt shifts.” ↩︎