How to Organize Personal Knowledge?
Davenport and Prusak, in their book Working Knowledge: How organizations manage what they know define knowledge as “a fluid mix of framed experience, values, contextual information and expert insight that provides a framework for evaluating and incorporating new experiences and information.”
The issue for me is how to organize my personal knowledge. That is, my experiences, ideas, contextual information, and expert insight so that I can later use it in meaningful ways and without wasting my time trying to connect all the pieces together? I am very frustrated with this process as I waste considerable amounts of time. Patti Anklam on the blog the {app} gap refers in this very informative October 2009 post to a LexisNexis productivity survey finding that 62% of professionals report they spend a lot of time sifting through irrelevant information to find what they need. It appears I have considerable company.
This leads me to ask the question—how are people organizing their information (professional and personal) in this day and age? If your world is like mine, then you already know what it’s like to amass mountains of data…and then have to manage it and make intelligent use of it. I have accumulated a massive array of files ranging from what is now useless digital detritus to irreplaceable notes regarding ideas for this blog, training materials, consulting activities, white papers, potential writing projects, and other work with my colleagues.
I still subscribe to traditional tools such as to-do lists and paper piles (unfortunately the piles seem as big today as they were 15 years ago!) My hierarchical filing of emails and files allows browsing and full-text searching, but does not effectively support collaborative authoring, concept mapping, knowledge reuse, reminding or automagically retrieving specific web links. My principal personal information management tool is MS Outlook. It does a great job in managing email, calendaring, and task lists and supports me in finding and reminding me of such details, but it does not support authoring or knowledge reuse, nor serious collaboration with my colleagues.
I know there are a vast array of tools out there. I have been using:
- Stars and tags in Google Reader
- Google Notebook
- Firefox “Scrapbook” extension
- TiddlyWiki
- Evernote
All of these tools are useful, but all have limitations. For me, the issue is to find just one system that is flexible enough to cope with multiple data types (PDFs, DOCs, emails, short text notes, hyperlinks, etc.), efficient during collection (when browsing the Web, when reading documents…) and won’t get in my way when I try to use it.
I am interested in learning of others’ experiences in their management of personal knowledge and what you find to be useful tools for PKM.
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Unfortunately, there is no “perfect solution” for Personal Knowledge Management.
I’m very passionate about PKM, but I’m not exactly “objective” as my company is selling a tool (PpcSoft iKnow) designed for PKM.
In your case, MS OneNote is probably the best tool if you need multiple datatypes.
My short blog post comparing iKnow, Evernote and OneNote:
– http://www.ppcsoft.com/blog/iknow-onenote-evernote.asp
An external review of iKnow comparing them as well:
– http://blogs.techrepublic.com.com/products/?p=1066
Sorry for the shameless plug, but maybe it can be of some use ?