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Knowledge Base

Last updated Dec 4, 2022

A Personal Knowledge Base (PKB) is a collection of your and others’ thoughts for further reflection and getting insights and ideas. I.e., bias toward creativity (creator mode)1. The goals of corporate KB (CKB) are to preserve and transfer already formed, existing knowledge (archivist mode)2.

The Knowledge base (KB) is based on the Zettelkasten methodology. KB is not an encyclopedia or wiki. Its purpose is to provide the minimum necessary information to set the right direction for further research. The character limit rule forces you to write only the most important.

Following the 5Ws principles provides a solid Knowledge Base structure and thus structures information → knowledge. Also, it will be easy to write and find the information knowing how the KB is arranged. Last but not least, this helps to build and support a link base in TheBrain.

The Knowledge Base has three levels:

  1. Zettels
  2. Content Boxes: Zettels containers
  3. Map of Content Box: Content Boxes outliners Each of them has its own set of tags.

This concept is easy to understand through a book analogy: MoCBs: table of contents Content Boxes: chapters Zettels: paragraphs

I am writing the CKB based on the contents of the PKB. While maintaining a PKB, I recommend adhering to a flat structure3, i.e. no folders. This allows knowledge to move freely between topics and facilitates the emergence of new ideas rather than being limited to one subject.

Creating a KB takes a lot of effort. However, it also gives a significant output when a critical mass of notes4 is collected. For PKB, this is the birth of insights5. For CPB, it is the preservation of knowledge accumulated within the company.

  1. This does not negate the use of the PKB for memorizing everything you have read, viewed and heard. A good starting point here is How to Take Smart Notes by Sönke Ahrens: Book Summary ↩︎

  2. I recommend getting acquainted with The PARA Method: A Universal System for Organizing Digital Information - Forte Labs to those of my readers who are looking for an approach to organizing their lives and projects (archivist mode). However, PARA is not well suited for creators (creator mode) ↩︎

  3. Don’t waste time and effort thinking about structure (stick to 5Ws) and concentrate on making connections: what knowledge does this note add? How is it related to it? ↩︎

  4. In my case, I started seeing increasing output after taking notes almost daily for four months. The volume of PKB was about 500 notes with over 1 million characters ↩︎

  5. Be sure to save the context in which the links between notes you made. It is from the links, and not the information itself, that insights emerge ↩︎

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