Knowledge Management can apply to your personal life : here’s how.
Do you know what you know ? Strange question ? Not really. Being aware of the knowledge you have or don’t is important in every aspects of life. Would you go camping by yourself in the middle of nowhere with no instructions or help of any sorts if you don’t know how to survive in these hard conditions ? No. You would make sure to go prepared. And to do so, you’ll need to list what you can and can not do to save your life.
This logic can be applied to your work life, your social life, your healing journey, your love life and your path to success. If I know what I know and what I don’t know, I can be more efficient in allowing time to the things that matter. Learning a skill I need rather than spending time reassessing a skill I already mastered. Spending time with people who will teach me things and provide wisdom in areas where I’m lacking instead of sticking groups that won’t help me grow intellectually, emotionally or socially. Opening myself to new professional opportunities by developing skills that will lead to the next step in my career as an alternative to being stuck with tasks I’m already an expert at.
An efficient Knowledge Management system will enable you to get the right information, in the right format at the right time to help your decision process.
We all want to grow, learn and get to the next step of our lives feeling like we are further ahead than we were yesterday. Just like a baby learns to walk and a Junior works hard for a mid-level position.
But keeping track of 100% of our knowledges and skills is not as easy as we think. Just the way companies struggle with KM and making sure they don’t suffer knowledge loss when an employee leaves, you will be faced with changes in your life that will involve not using certain knowledges and skills anymore. Lack of practice can lead to losing your expertise on subjects you might need again one day.
How to achieve this ? set up a KM system for yourself !
Journals, notebooks, agenda, time-trackers, calendars, post-its and notes are just a few options to keep track of bits of knowledge you have harvested all through the years. Only issue with these options is that you might lose time & energy looking for relevant information if it’s spread out in different places & different formats. An efficient Knowledge Management system will enable you to get the right information, in the right format at the right time to help your decision process. Therefore it is necessary to choose a system that is both easy to use for you and will gather everything you need to enhance your use of your own knowledges.
Are you more inclined toward pen & paper ? Some people find writing to help them process their thoughts & ideas. Well why not try the Bullet Journal method ? This productivity system can be achieved with a journal, a pen & a few rules you can mould to your own ways. Or maybe you are more digitally inclined ? Then a all-in-one app would be a better option and these past few years, many have taken on the market. Notion.so being one.
Personally I am a regular Notion user and the app has truly changed my relationship to note-taking & knowledge management. Links, datas, lists of terms, flashcards… everything in one app, in a ready to use environment. Other options exist online, such as Figma or Obsidian, and you should definitely try several to find the option that fits your needs best.
These all-in-one solutions enable you to create workflows and backlinks between pages & notes. So you can use one page as a brain-dump (we will come back on that term soon !) then take some time in your week to sort out your notes & file them in different categories or tables in accordance with previously treated information. Maybe you took notes in a meeting and it relates to some link you bookmarked a few days ago. Or you met with a friend & they shared an interesting piece of knowledge you already intended to search more about. With all-in-one PKM solutions you can gather all your information/knowledge in a easy to access & to use system and make the most of what you know (and what you don’t !)
Best PKM tools :
