A weekly newsletter where I help people apply values-based productivity principles and systems for personal growth, primarily using Obsidian. Subscribe if you want to make more of your notes and ideas.
🔑 Your PKM Philosophy: The Key to Living a Life of Intention
Most people live a reactive life.
They indiscriminately consume information, which dictates the quantity (and quality) of the ideas they have, which ultimately determines how they feel & act.
I call this The Default Life. And it can be miserable.
But it all changes when you add the top layer to the PKM Stack, which is Philosophy.
This is where you define your vision and your values, and it flips the entire default model on its head. Instead of indiscriminately consuming information (which impacts the quantity and quality of the ideas you have and ultimately the tasks and projects you engage with), you start at the top with the end in mind and it acts as a filter for everything else. So instead of working from the bottom up, your PKM Stack now goes from the top down.
Your vision and your values determine everything - the types of projects you decide to engage with, the ideas you curate and cultivate, and even the type of information you collect and consume. It's all in service of helping you live an intentional life in alignment with your vision and your values.
Everything is driven by your Philosophy, or how you look at the world.
It all starts with asking the right questions
The reason most people live the default life isn't because they choose to - it's because they are too busy or too tired to stop and ask the right questions. They’re going with the flow of life, and are just trying to make it to the weekend.
But if you want your situation to change, you have to own it.
Algorithms are optimized for engagement, not your personal growth. So you need to be clear about what you want and where you’re going.
How do you get that kind of clarity? By asking the right questions.
One of my favorite things to do is help people identify what I call a LifeTheme (basically a personal mission statement) and their own set of individual core values.
(Side note: My wife & I just finished up a LifeTheme cohort where we led a group of people through this process, and it's an incredibly powerful experience.)
Your LifeTheme and your personal core values should be connected to the detailed vision you have of the kind of life you want to live. When they are, they create motivation to do the things that hit the mark and clarity to cut the things that don’t.
One of my favorite examples of how core values and actions work together is from my own family experience.
My wife and I have five kids, and the oldest is 16. For the past several years I’ve prioritized spending one-on-one time each week with one of my children.
We just rotate through. A different kid every week. And I never know what discussions will emerge during those times together.
But lots of people want to spend more time with their kids. What really made it stick was the connection to our family vision.
You see, this one-on-one habit came from a goal we set for our kids back in 2017: We wanted our kids to be comfortable talking to us about difficult problems by the time they were in high school.
My wife and I got away for an overnight trip, and we talked about what we wanted our family to look like. And we used a couple of clarifying questions to help us create our vision for the future.
The questions we asked:
- What’s the relationship we want to have with our kids by the time they’re teenagers?
- What do we have to start doing to make that a reality?
- What routines or habits if done consistently will make the outcome obvious?
The things we identified:
- The mistakes that we wanted to avoid.
- The things we wanted to do intentionally instead.
At the end, we identified family core values that would help us to follow through on the things we identified. I even had a graphic designer friend create a manifesto-type graphic that I framed and is hanging on our living room wall:
Now when we are faced with a decision, we filter everything through those core values. If the opportunity isn’t in alignment with our values, it’s an automatic no.
The PKM advantage nobody talks about
Let’s come full circle, back into our PKM.
Unanswered questions can sometimes become overwhelming — especially as you start redefining your entire life, one habit at a time.
Chances are, if you’re dissatisfied with your PKM stack — if you’re not receiving value from the work you’re doing — it’s time to change your information diet.
Start consuming books and articles and podcasts and interviews of content you believe can help you answer difficult questions — and then figure out what to do next.
Something Cool: A New Capture Tool for Obsidian
I recently came across a handy little iOS utility called Funnel by an indie developer named Dharam Kapila.
I've been using Drafts for capturing text to Obsidian happily for years now, but one of the limitations of Drafts is that it only captures text. With Funnel, you can capture images, audio, even scan text using your iPhone camera and use OCR to send that text into Obsidian.
If you want to see it in action, TfT Hacker has a short demo video on YouTube that will give you a taste of what it can do.
Book Notes: How Will You Measure Your Life? by Clayton Christensen
Clayton Christensen is a well-known innovation expert who gave a commencement address to the Class of 2010 Harvard Business School graduates. And while he’s best known as a business guy, he wrote a different type of book a while back called How to Measure Your Life that is filled with practical tips for finding happiness and meaning (which can give you direction in crafting your Philosophy for your PKM Stack).
And if you want to download my notes for yourself, click this link.
Coming Soon: Obsidian University Cohort 3!
Over the last couple of newsletters, I've been sharing a few details about my upcoming PKM cohort. Just a few days ago, I offered early access and shared an exclusive special offer for people who had raised their hand to be the first to know when it opened up.
I'm not quite ready to share all the details yet, but I can tell you that it's going to kick off on January 22nd, 2024 at 2 pm CT.
I'll be sending out one additional email for early access before opening the doors officially, so if you want to be first in line this is your last chance to let me know by clicking this link.
—Mike
P.S. Happy New Year! 🎉 Here's hoping that 2024 is your best year yet.
Practical PKM
by Mike Schmitz
A weekly newsletter where I help people apply values-based productivity principles and systems for personal growth, primarily using Obsidian. Subscribe if you want to make more of your notes and ideas.
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