Personal Knowledge Management

Personal Knowledge Management (PKM) is the skill of managing one's life knowledge, secrets, and experiences so that they can be reused, relived, and built upon to create other work. A complete system of tools and techniques for managing knowledge might also be called a "PKM system".

We live in an age of Knowledge work rather than physical labour. If you are reading this, you are likely paid to type things on a keyboard, make gestures with a mouse, and speak into a webcam. In this age, managing large amounts of specialised information to deliver tailored information is the key to success. In such a system, I believe the keys to long term success are:

• Quick capture. Thoughts, words, ideas, come by and disappear so quickly. The ability to capture the important ones is crucial. This means easy to use tools that are reliable and readily available.
• Resurfacing. "I wrote that down somewhere but I can't find it" is the hallmark of a PKM that has failed. Notes must be organised in a way that facilitates rediscovery, without being a burden to maintain. You may be interested in how My note organisation system achieves this.
• Robustness. Good notes should survive the rigour of real life. A power outage, a destroyed computer, a company bankrupting. This means making backups that work.

Similar things

Digital gardening is an extension of PKM. The knowledge in a digital garden is the personal knowledge of that digital gardener. The difference between a PKM and a digital garden is that a garden is intended for others to enjoy, while some things are always kept separate: passwords, private life, intensely personal moments, secrets. These are well managed by a PKM, but do not belong in a digital garden.

Team Knowledge management in the form of wikis and company intranets have some resemblance to PKM, but have many additional challenges. They tend to be slow and lack any character, joy, or humour.