Zettelkasten / Second Brain / PKM

Of course, it was impossible to connect the dots looking forward when I was in college. But it was very, very clear looking backward 10 years later.
Again, you can't connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backward.
So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future.

Steve Jobs, 2005 Stanford Speech

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Explaining atomic notes

My PKM system wasn't about organizing knowledge. It was about managing anxiety.

Anxiety that I'd lose something important. Anxiety that I wasn't doing enough. Anxiety that without the right system, I'd fail at... something. Everything.

Building the system felt like progress. Reorganizing folders gave me completion. Trying new apps gave me hope.

The... See more

When Your Second Brain Eats Your First One

We all want the security of following a proven system, the confidence that comes from doing things "the right way." I understand that impulse. There's comfort in both structure and in knowing that thousands of people have followed this path before and found success. But systems become crutches when we let them override our own judgment about what... See more

Be a Magpie. You'll Get More Done.

“Some people are physically skinny but digitally fat. They byte too many pixels and their soul becomes heavy with memory.”

Yours truly

Justin Murphy • Personal Knowledge Management is Bullshit

“I have no ‘reserve knowledge’ ( aucun savoir de réserve )... Everything that I learn, I learn for a particular task, and once it’s done, I immediately forget it, so that if ten years later, I have to—and this gives me great joy—if I have to get involved with something close to or directly within the same subject, I would have to start again from... See more