Personal Knowledge Management is Bullshit

Knowledge already exists all around us in abundance. We are changing how people take in, handle, contextualize, and deploy that knowledge at the most practical level. We are building the cognitive infrastructure of knowledge work – not the devices or apps they run on, but the “mental software” running on people’s minds that allows them to use those... See more

Software tools and courses can aid intellectual advancement and productivity at certain margins, for some people, but we should be more explicit about what exactly they can help, how they can help, and whom they can help.

The whole workflow becomes complicated: There is the technique of underlining important sentences (sometimes in different colours or shapes), commenting in the margins of a text, writing excerpts, employing reading methods with acronyms like SQ3R[8] or SQ4R,[9] writing a journal, brainstorming a topic or following multi-step question sheets – and t

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Unfortunately, popular ≠ the best. The strict hierarchy made sense in the real world: a book can only be on a single shelf in a particular room. However, the restrictions of physical objects should not apply to abstract knowledge.