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The Experiment

Last updated Mar 7, 2023

Practising Personal knowledge management, I follow the Evergreen notes1 + MoC2. However, the methodology is not suitable for collaborative KB development. The root of the problem is that personal and corporate KBs have different goals. Therefore they should be maintained differently.

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)3. The goals of corporate KB (CKB) are to preserve and transfer already formed, existing knowledge (archivist mode)4.

Although automation/RPA is a must-have for companies with 200+ employees, with four companies under my belt, I realized that owners should set up processes asap5. And automate at least trivial and everyday tasks.

Therefore, I decided to create a in_progress/Raw/Business Framework based on the Knowledge Forging Methodology that:

  1. would be sound for developing corporate KBs
  2. by design is suitable for creating instructions and recipes for automation
  3. the value for SMEs must be higher than the cost of implementation

During The Experiment, I decided to keep a length note limit equal to the tweet size6:

280 characters without links

The character limit allows being laser-focused on one thought and keeps Content Boxes straightforward and minimal. But enough to find all the information and links7 you need to dig further8.

A best practice is to train and instil the habit of PKM in as many employees as possible. This allows the philosophy of knowledge to permeate the entire structure of the company, to become part of its DNA. And will simplify the practice of maintaining a corporate KB.

Adhering to PKM practices solves the problem that KBs remain unclaimed in many companies. In addition, you have to include the use of KB in daily work. And for this, KB must be hardcoded into in_progress/Process.

  1. Check Andy Matuschak’s notes for details ↩︎

  2. Map of Content (aka LYT). Learn more on Linking Your Thinking ↩︎

  3. 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 ↩︎

  4. 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) ↩︎

  5. A good analogy is to compare a company to a tree. If you initially set up processes incorrectly, your company will grow chaotically. Such a company cannot grow big. Even with favorable external factors, the company will sooner or later break under its weight of internal inefficiency ↩︎

  6. If there is a reference, notes, clarifying or other information, then I take it out into footnotes. They do not fall within the limit and can often be larger than the note itself ↩︎

  7. Get yourself familiarized with Progressive Summarization: A Practical Technique for Designing Discoverable Notes - Forte Labs to learn how to compress information effectively ↩︎

  8. In other words, a Zettel must contain the minimum necessary but sufficient information. Context and footnotes help to interpret it correctly ↩︎

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