The End of Productivity

Ultimately, moving away from productivity and toward creativity isn't just an economic necessity, something we need to stand out in the marketplace; it's about reclaiming our humanity and building more fulfilling lives. The goal can’t just be making more stuff. It has to be making something wonderful.

In his book Keep Going, author and artist Austin Kleon juxtaposes this messy, networked approach with organization and neatness. “Creativity is about connections, and connections are not made by siloing everything off into its own space. New ideas are formed by interesting juxtapositions, and interesting juxtapositions happen when things are out of... See more

The benefits are multiplied with AI. With Sublime, when you add a card, the AI will surface related ideas—sort of like that insightful friend who always says, “This reminds me of...” The AI's role isn't to automate organization; it's to suggest connections we haven’t considered and amplify our ability to see patterns and possibilities. I like to th... See more

Once you’ve discovered the right mental buckets, or containers, for your creative work, it’s time to maximize the potential for unexpected connections.

In his 2012 essay, “More people should write,” writer and programmer James Somers described this process as creating a mental bucket for an idea, thereby unleashing a magnetic force between that idea and the world:

When I have a piece of writing in mind, what I have, in fact, is a mental bucket: an attractor for and generator of thought. It’s like a

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I like to think of collections as a way of creating meaningful containers for creative work—spaces that allow us to develop our ideas, while maximizing our chances of making unexpected connections.

For decades, the neurotic hamster in us approached knowledge management by compulsively tagging. We’d find something interesting and slap as many tags on it as we could to increase our chances of finding it again: #machine #robots #tech #ai #productivity #mindfulness.

This made sense in a pre-AI world, where tagging was the only way to ensure retrie... See more

There are two modes of information discovery: foraging and hunting. Foraging is passive. You don’t have a clear goal; you just wander and scroll until something catches your interest. Hunting is active and purposeful. You know what you’re looking for and are consciously searching for it. A good information diet needs both: Foraging helps us decide ... See more

The creative process involves taking existing ideas, making novel connections between them, and combining them into something new. Whether we do this consciously or unconsciously, and whether or not we use PKM tools, the creative process typically involves three steps:

1. Collecting: Gathering interesting ideas


2. Connecting: Drawing connections and org

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