Tags

, , , ,

As 2025 begins, I am again updating my PKMS (Personal Knowledge Management System) to keep up with the latest developments in knowledge management and my own priorities.

One of the key habits that I have been focusing on is micro learning by taking opportunities where I may have spent time scrolling a device, turning the time to be more productive through spending the time on learning and AI is playing a part in this.

I am publishing these updates so you can use this as a pattern to help create your own PKMS and stay informed and ahead of the curve.

What is a PKMS?

A PKMS, or Personal Knowledge Management System, is a structured framework designed to help someone manage and organise their personal and professional knowledge. In today’s world there is a lot of information produced daily. It also serves as a repository for capturing, storing, retrieving information and making it easier to access relevant data when needed.

The primary objective of a PKMS is to enhance a person’s ability to learn, retain, and apply knowledge efficiently.

A well formed PKMS can help provide several benefits:

  • Continuous Learning: With a growth mindset, a PKMS facilitates a structured approach to acquiring, organising, and reviewing knowledge.
  • Increased Productivity: Access to relevant, organised information as you need it, keeping you ahead of the curve.
  • Knowledge Retention: The ability to store and retrieve information as required in an organised repository.
  • Adaptability: Technology, information, and data evolve daily, and it is important to stay informed.

I still believe strongly in separating my personal social and business social, although there is the occasional need for the two to cross. These are the tools that I use. There are lots of other tools available that you could use to build a PKMS yourself. Maintaining a distinction between personal social and business social is important, though there are instances where they may overlap. Here are some tools used for this purpose. Numerous other tools are also available for building a Personal Knowledge Management System (PKMS).

Professional Life

Research

Research is an integral part of my Personal Knowledge Management System (PKMS). It involves gathering information that supports learning and integration into my work. Continuous learning is my key goal of my PKMS to stay ahead as a Technologist. Below is a high-level list of the types of content that I utilise for research and learning.

  • AI
  • Streaming Services
  • RSS Feeds
  • Podcasts
  • TED Talks
  • Web Searches
  • Blog Posts
  • Learning
  • Micro Learning
  • Reading

Some of these are fairly self explanatory as sources. I may expand on some of the sources I use in future posts.

AI (Artificial Intelligence)

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is growing in use and works well in my PKMS to enhance the way information is gathered, organised, and retrieved.

AI is a good tool to ask as an assistant when researching, asking questions and can provide a reasonable summary of long documents and papers.

RSS

Some sites have an RSS feed which allows me to pull updates from sites directly into Feedly.

Podcasts

Podcasts cover both audio and video casts that I watch/stream online or download to my phone/media player to listen to when I am on journeys in the car or other transportation methods or out walking the dog. Daily walks with the dog provide a good time to listen to these.

Feedly

Feedly provides an aggregation tool that collects stories from various blogs and websites that I find useful for research and information . This generates a list of stories that can be quickly scanned on a single screen without having to visit multiple sites. Clicking on a story displays a snippet from the source site and provides a link to read the full article, if necessary. Using a series of keystrokes, it is possible to read the headlines, then move through the articles efficiently, stopping and opening them as needed.

Sources can be categorized to allow an all-view or just what’s new in a category.

Thinking Time

Thinking Time covers the time that I spend absorbing the PKMS information coming in from the different sources and then processing and applying it in different ways. It is also good to spend time reflecting on what I have learned and think of different and new ways to use the information and learnings.

Note Taking

I use two tools now for note-taking: OneNote and Obsidian. I favour Obsidian as it uses Markdown, which I use a lot for documentation, and its ability to structure data in a logical way and allows you to query data in an interactive graph.

Being Social

I use several social channels to publish my thoughts as a Technologist. The main channel I use is this blog site.

Blog Site

www.maxhemingway.com is my main published site that I use to share my thoughts, leadership and updates through. From this I send out links to various social channels.

Podcast

My podcast “Technology Couch Podcast” has not had an update for a while , but hopefully this will change soon. This can be found on my blog page and also normal podcast streaming sites.

Social Sites

I use social sites to publish my blog and podcast updates.

GitHub

I use GitHub to store any code or projects that I want to publish externally.

Personal Life

Personal Journal

My personal journals have always been Moleskine plain pocket books, be more recently I have made a switch to using Rhodia range of pocket books with dots. My main reason was on price as Moleskine has risen a fair bit for their products. I have used a couple of Rhodia pocket books since my switch and I actually find the paper a lot better and its slightly thicker which can support more inks without a bleed through to the pages below.

I still favour the Pilot ball ink pens as before in 0.5 or 0.7 size.

No batteries or charging needed for this type of personal journal.

Social Media

To keep my work life separate from my personal life, I use social platforms like Instagram and Facebook for friends and family, ensuring that two-factor authentication and appropriate security settings are in place.

Even with these precautions, it’s essential to remember that anything posted online could potentially become public in the future.

Further Reading

If you are looking for inspiration in creating your own PKMS, Reddit has a great list of PKMS tools that is worth a look and a discussion board on setting up a PKMS.

Previous related blog post:

Stay Ahead of the Curve: Essential Strategies for Technologists to Stay Informed