PKM

The people I admire most have a way of escaping the bubble of culture. Sometimes via religion; sometimes via old books; sometimes via time in nature. Without such an escape, propaganda wins. You stop thinking for yourself. Modern delusions grow into an all-consuming mind virus.

At first, most of humankind's ideas and stories were fleeting, bound to voices and memories as impermanent as the wind. With writing they solidified. And with paper, they became immutable objects capable of travelling through time. The medium, especially in its modern form, revolutionized knowledge, art, and the sciences. It liberated thoughts by a... See more

“ When we compare something old and something new—like a book and an iPad or a nun sitting next to a texting teenager on a train—we believe that the new thing has more of a future, when in fact the reverse is true. The longer an object or custom has been with us, the greater its staying power. On average, the newest things die out first... There w

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The constructive relationship between consumer and culture goes in both directions. When we find something meaningful enough to save, to collect it, the action both etches it a little deeper into our hearts and it also creates a context around the artifact itself, whether song, image, or video — and context not just for ourselves but for other peop... See more

A common question in relation to the interleaving of books (and other sources) is how to keep the sources once you have worked on them. People are often surprised when I say that I don’t keep any sources.

Processing texts is not an end, but only a means to generate the most productive sessions possible. I therefore measure my productivity not by how many texts I can process or how thoroughly, but by the quality and quantity of thoughts unfolded, the quality and quantity of ideas understood.

The larger our repertoire and – perhaps even more importantly – how well we are practiced with this repertoire, the more value-adding we can work with sources.