As I’ve developed my ideas more and more, the teaching that I now do surrounds more of the theory and ideas behind personal knowledge management that apply to any system and any app that you might want to use, rather than Obsidian.
This is the piece where I bring everything together and let you know the ultimate PKM theory starter pack.
This article is going to serve to consolidate things and do the best possible job of giving you somewhere to go if you lose track when trying to manage your knowledge and take notes.
It’s important to take this theory seriously. Get the system right and you’re okay so long as you use the same method, in the same app forever. Learn the theory and you can build any system in any app, with infinite confidence and flexibility.
So in this piece, I’m going to try and give you this knowledge to last a lifetime, rather than some new feature mention or neat trick I’ve discovered recently.
We’ll start with my most prominent theory idea…
Minimal Note-Taking
Minimal note-taking is a name that I’ve been using since publishing the following article in 2023 to outline the core philosophy that I’ve developed for knowledge management…
Minimal Note-Taking: A Complete GuideLearn the best way to take notes for your use case…medium.com
In short, the idea behind the principle is simply to use the tools and features that you need to get work done, nothing more. You don’t need other extra features, plugins or themes.
The most important thing is the output of work from your system. That’s the stuff that will make a real impact on other people in the world.
Nobody cares how many times you change your Obsidian theme or re-calibrate your Notion databases. They care about in what way you can help them out or improve their lives (we’re selfish creatures).
You take notes minimally by starting with the simplest possible system, and adding complexity when it’s required, when there’s going to be an overwhelming positive benefit to it.
The ideas are adapted largely from Cal Newport’s book Digital Minimalism , which I read for the first time, back in 2022. It had quite an impact upon me, becoming the subject of my first ever newsletter issue , and others after…
Over the last almost two years since writing this piece, I’ve developed the Minimal Note-Taking philosophy quite a bit, and it remained at the front of all the PKM content and ideas that I was sharing online.
It’s so important that it became the sole subject of the most recent exclusive course inside the PARAZETTEL Community. if you want more information about the PARAZETTEL system, you can get a free intro course at this link .
There are some other ideas that I think are important for successful knowledge management across all domains, but they all stem from taking notes minimally, so I put this one first.
But moving on, I’m going to talk about a few other thoughts. I could call them different principles entirely, but everything does just stem from Minimal Note-Taking, so be prepared for me to reference back to this idea we’ve just covered as we move on…
Avoiding shiny object syndrome
Shiny object syndrome is one of the most distracting and frustrating things when it comes to managing knowledge and, more widely, managing our lives…
How to Eliminate Shiny Object Syndrome for Note-Taking AppsThe answer lies in simplicity and learning how to really do the work you need to do…medium.com
Marketing is invasive and distracting, trying to sell you every item you don’t need (although they’ll always convince you that said item is essential). This goes for note-taking apps, task management apps and every other form of software…
All the marketing and colours and copy on Notion’s front page. You still have to make a logical judgement about whether this app’s right for you.
It’s hard, but the best course of action is to stick with the things that you know work , at least once you’ve found something.
I might spot a new note-taking app tomorrow that promises AI note tagging, organisation or something similar. But it would be worth more in the lost time to try things out over there and realise that it’s not as good as making the switch justifies.
So you have to focus on getting the work done and progressing on your projects, however mundane, boring or repetitive this might seem. It’s the real way forward, rather than tinkering with a new system.
I say this because I used to be the person who was struggling with trying out something new every day. One day I was on Notion, the next day Tana, and from there I might go and try Microsoft OneNote.
This didn’t work, and the main reason was that I was just getting distracted by the marketing of the different apps. I didn’t have any need for any of them, so I could never properly get working when I sat down to try.
Now that I’m settled in one place, the value of this is so much higher than trying to switch to something new, in every scenario apart from Obsidian (my app of choice) completely shutting down.
But so is the nature of the attention economy that I have to remind myself of this every time I look at something new. Oftentimes it doesn’t appear hopeless to try until you actually do, and that’s when you realise that you were better off without in retrospect. And this is always a painful realisation.
What makes a good note-taking system (or a minimal one)?
The piece below goes into the problems of thinking of things in terms of the ideal ‘app’, rather than building sustainable note-taking systems…
What Makes a Good Note-Taking App?Whether it’s Apple Notes, Obsidian or something else, everyone has their own favourite app for taking notes…medium.com
The answer that I give for this question is one that fades into the background when you’re working. One that you don’t realise is there.
Absurd as it sounds, I don’t ever think about note-taking when I’m doing my work. I’ve built a system that’s minimal enough to not distract me, whilst being effective enough to guide me through all my work.
I focus on my projects and creation, and because I’m so used to using the PARAZETTEL system inside of Obsidian, I get on with things without a second thought.
The value of this is priceless. The hours that I wasted away when I was chopping and changing not only the system I was working in, but the app as well, could have been put to so much better use creating work that I enjoy and that helps other people.
But I’m not complaining, because learning things the hard way around has given me the right experiences to be able to teach the lessons in a way that others (think people who’ve never struggled with organisation) wouldn’t have access to, because they’ve never struggled with it.
So with that being said, here’s the last point that I’m going to talk about…
Evolution of a PKM system, or flattening the learning curve
This is very strongly tied into Minimal Note-Taking and mentions why you should avoid shiny objects and stick to the one system and the one app for the longest time.
Again, I’ll share the origin article with you first (please ignore the horrifying AI-generated thumbnail, they were cool back then)…
The Right Way to Develop Your PKM SystemTaking inspiration from biological evolution…medium.com
Picture biological evolution…
It takes hundreds of years for even the smallest differences between organisms to begin to appear.
And it takes even longer before they form new species, new families and clades.
You wouldn’t be able to picture the differences between the individuals day-by-day, because the changes are so small.
My system wasn’t developed in a day, it looks so different and evolved compared to what it did even just six months ago…
I like to think about evolving a note-taking system and processes around that in the same way.
Your system shouldn’t work on jarring changes piling up day-by-day (think changing app or system as an example).
Rather you should add tiny changes that make your life better every now and again, when the pain becomes greater than the tradeoff of time to set up the small new feature (think Minimal Note-Taking).
The idea that seems prevalent, especially when it comes to Obsidian, is that you should somehow ‘learn to use Obsidian’ before you start using it.
How on earth does this make sense? How are you going to figure out how you’re going to use the app for work without actually using the app for work?
The best way to go is to cut out the learning curve altogether and take notes minimally. Every app’s default has been designed to be simple and learnable in an instant.
Just start with this setup, being as simple as possible, and then follow Minimal Note-Taking, evolving your system to be more complicated and optimal over time, rather than trying to do it all at once.
That brings us to the end of this roundup of all the best note-taking theory ideas that I’ve had in the last three years. Much of it operates around the central Minimal Note-Taking principles that I’ve developed.
If you want to learn more about this philosophy and its place in my main system PARAZETTEL (a combination of the PARA Method and Zettelkasten) then you can use the link below.
Aside from that, thanks for reading!