How many times do you think you encounter new information or knowledge every day?
Please, try to answer this question. The answer may depend on each individual’s personality and his or her current job or education. I assume the average number of the answer might’ve been a little bit smaller if the same question was asked earlier like 10 years ago.
We have been encountering new knowledge or information from the traditional media such as books, TV, newspapers, magazines. In addition to the traditional media, we’ve become to have new kind of media such as Web pages, wikis, blogs, SNS. Other than media, we now have new communication infrastructures such as wireless, more powerful devices such as smart phones. We have more sources of information than we used to have, and another kind of media will highly likely show up in the future.
Generally speacking, the average number figure for the answer to this question will increase as the number of information sources increase.
OK. Then, let’s consider another question.
How do you handle new knowledge or information that you think is useful to you?
The answer to this question will depend on each individual, too.
As stated earlier, we have more sources of information, and more means of communication than in the past. That means you may encounter more and more possibly useful information these days and also other people may do. That means, nowadays, merely more chances of encountering many new information is not an advantage over other people. An individual properly and efficiently handling and managing the new knowledge and information may have some advantages over those who don’t. That is mainly because human brains have limited power and capacity.
Most of People who don’t take this question so seriously might take the most simple option to handle their new information. That is, just leaving it to their brains.
This option certainly won’t work well ( unless you are some super-human ) because of the following two reasons at least.
- First, (once again) human brains have limited power and capacity.
- Second, majority of how human brains work is still unclear and whether your brain will keep the new information in the long term memory is kind of unpredictable.
So if you care, you need to consider any option other than leaving everything to your brain.
Some people like taking notes on their diary or notepad. That’s good, I think.
Others use note application software to manage information. If your data happen to be mostly digitalized, that is an even better solution.
I think which tool to use is the secondary question. The most important question is:
“Are you practicing something (no matter what it is) to handle your information properly and efficiently?”
Personal Knowledge Management.
Here comes the concept of Personal Knowledge Management.
The following page is Wikipedia’s explanation of Personal Knowledge Management.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personal_knowledge_management
The explanation is, like other pages of Wikipedia, generic and academic and … a little boring. ( sorry, Wikipedia people… :-) )
My personal view on PKM is more narrower.
Have you underlined some phrase with a pen when you read a book? In my opinion, it is a primitive form of PKM.
Whether we recognize it or not, we do some activities of PKM. Do you create and organize some mail box tree and sort your incoming mails into them by categories when you use your mail client? ( I do that. ) But also I see some people just storing whatever mails they get into only one big mail box. Even these people who dislike organizing things may be involved with a few activities of managing information that they think useful. Address book of their phones might be an example.
As the Wikipedia’s page states, PKM is relatively new and underresearched area. That means still many people don’t take the concept of PKM so seriously. People have started to talk about PKM recently even though humans have been doing kind of activities that look like PKM from the age of the first civilization. That’s because we suddenly happen to have so many sources of information, and so good infra such as wide area network and wireless, and so useful devices and means in addition to the traditional information sources of books or social interactions.
In the past, there might’ve been almost little difference between people who were good at PKM practices and people who weren’t. However, that might be changing…
Me and Civilizer
I have had interest in the topic of PKM in the past 2 years. Actually I am not so familiar with the theories involved with PKM because I’m not a person from academia. I just thought I needed some better efficient method to manage my knowledge and expertise.
I searched the Web to find whether there was a good tool to fulfill my needs. I happened to run into Piggydb. I think Piggydb is a good tool and I was quite happy with it for a while. But I felt the tool was quite limited to fulfill my unique needs as my data grow, and I started to think of switching to another tool or building my own.
Eventually I decided to build my own tool of PKM. It was Civlizer and it has been released recently.
I’m heavily using Civilizer every day and it is already a part of my life. I wish I’d come up with several more good concepts of PKM and implement them into Civilizer. I wish eventually Civilizer would become a useful tool for some people who seriously care for their knowledge and work.
Conclusion
Civilizer and Piggydb are web based applications. But some people prefer desktop applications such as Evernote or WikidPad for their PKM practice. Desktop and web-based have their own pros and cons. I don’t have any intention to discuss the details here.
As I stated earlier, which tool to use is the secondary question. Even using physical things such as notes or diary is still good option in my opinion even though personally I don’t like it.
Once again, the most primary question I hope you would answer is:
“Are you practicing something to efficiently and properly manage your knowledge and information?”