Personal Knowledge Management (PKM)

Hey everyone, let's talk about personal knowledge management. There is so much content out there. When you read a book, listen to a podcast, go to a conference, have meetings, listen to an audiobook, where do you put all of this stuff? I would say that this has become surprising, but now in some of my private coaching, I've actually brought this up more towards the beginning, which is basically where are you going to put the notes in the material, the content, the PDF, the Excel spreadsheet, the Word document, your personal notes, whatever that may look like. Where are you going to put all of this stuff? And every time somebody has said, you know what, that's actually, that's actually a good question. I'm not really sure. Now, I personally have had this trouble myself. I too had struggled with, you know, having notes all over the place, assets all over the place, tools all over the place. And it became, can become very overwhelming. So I'm going to suggest what I feel like the research has backed. People like Michael Hyatt has done extensive amount of research. I mean, they should, they're literally helping, Full Focus Planner, which is the biggest part of their company now, that's what they do. But even Michael himself has admitted that keeping certain things in different places can become overwhelming, especially from a digital perspective. Here's my recommendation. I think that you should have 3 main systems for personal knowledge management. Number 1 is the one that I think all of us are somewhat accustomed to, and that's going to be email or email folders, email labels. If you're in Google, if you're working in Outlook, it's going to be a little bit different, but basically a foldering system for your emails. That way, instead of all the emails just coming into one place, that you're actually dragging them contextually into some sort of a system. I think Dan Martell in his book, Buy Back Your Time, he offers an email structure, which would be like exclamation mark, your name, that puts it at the very top and a few other labels or folders. Here's my thing. Whether you adopt Dan Martell's, I think he calls it Email GPS or something like that. I think the bigger point is, do you have a foldering structure for your emails? And if you are large enough and you have an executive assistant, I think that this is where these two things can come hand in hand. So I think number one, the system of having, how do you organize your emails? And not, I'm not talking about just your inbox. In fact, predominantly I'm not talking about your inbox. I'm talking about the folder system on the left-hand side. So that, as an example, you're working with a client and there's a lot of emails going back and forth and well, you could reference that email chain in that email folder. Or maybe it's with your marketing company. And so you work with, let's just say DirectClicks. You work with DirectClicks and your account manager with DirectClicks. You want to have one place that all of the emails that they send over to you you don't have to search by name. It's actually in that folder system. So I think that that is one of the easiest lower lists. It's just structuring the emails, uh, better. Number 2, I think that you need to have some place, a digital repository where you are going to be able to go and look for assets. Look for assets. Now, what I'm We have talked a ton about the importance of having a business operating system, and that is structured a certain way. I think that there are principles and then there are playbooks. I'm not talking about that. I am talking about when you, uh, have a PDF that comes in that you opted in from something on Instagram, or you read a book. Or you grab a YouTube video or a podcast or something. Where do you put all of that? My recommendation is you have one digital place that you love to put it. Personally, I love Notion. I recognize Notion can have a steep learning curve for people. There is Tiago Forte. Has written a book called Building a Second Brain. He has what he calls the PARA system, P-A-R-A. I didn't love it. I didn't try it. I read it. I love the concepts and the principles from his book, uh, Building a Second Brain, more than I actually did his system. It didn't seem as just intuitive to me. But what I did love is the idea of having a second brain. I just like my second brain to be inside of Notion. There's so many different ones. Ulysses, Evernote, heck, you could even just use a Google Drive if you wanted to do that. Bigger thing is, or Dropbox, do you want to have one place that is organized in a way that you could keep the majority, or if not all, of your digital files? Because if you, you want to be able to optimize for speed of retrieval not speed of organization of where you put it initially. I want to be able to say, oh yeah, that's right, I've got that PDF, where do I put it? Well, you know what, here's, here's somebody who's a really big, uh, big on social media, Alex Hormozi. And so you get, you, you opt into his, you know, Scaling Roadmap as an example. Well, where are you going to put that? Where are you going to put those things? Where are you going to put a link to a website or to a YouTube video or a podcast that he's done that you really like. That's what I really love Notion for. Okay. If I read a book, if I'm listening to somebody, if I'm like, ooh, I want to take a screenshot of that. Where do I put that screenshot? That's where really where I love using Notion. Now, there was a period of time inside my own program Blueprint that we admittedly kind of over-indexed for Notion a little bit. And we loved it so much that we were kind of pushing people inadvertently to using it. And before you know it, we kind of became a Notion training company. And so we've pulled way back off of that. And so now I just recommend it in kind of the way that I'm recommending it to you. So digital place and an email location. And then number 3, and this is analog. This is the physical place where you're actually writing notes. As a matter of fact, I am here and I'm writing in one of our notebooks. And so this is a Moleskine notebook. These are some of my favorite notebooks. I love the, uh, the, the soft cover of it. Um, I love the, the, the way that the pages write on them. Um, it's been great. I've tried a lot of different notebooks. No surprise that they are navy. Um, that probably from those of you know, that's my favorite color. And obviously Blueprint, Bleeding Blue. So that's what I love. But what I also will tell you is if you have multiple companies, I won't intermingle notes inside that notebook. I will only have notes for that company, for that business inside of that notebook. And that's helpful because then I'm not mixing in different businesses or I'm not mixing in personal as an example. And so that, I think that that really helps and is key so that you're centering everything around. As an example, for one company I have a 3-ring binder. Actually for two, I have a 3-ring binder. I like to put notes or print things off, um, uh, from there. And then I also have a notebook that I keep with that business. So those are the three systems I think you should have. I think number one, you have, should have a way to organize your emails. Number 2, a digital repository where you love to be able to put things. And then number 3, an analog version. And this is really and truly simply a way to create personal knowledge management, or sometimes we refer to it as PKM. At the end of the day, wherever you decide to put things, please put them in a place that you can optimize for retrieval not just for where it is. Because if you've ever had the experience of, you know, looking for an asset, trying to find an asset and you can't find it, then it's likely because you just don't have a system for where you actually want to begin to put things. So I hope that helps. Whether you're reading a book, listening to an audiobook, watching a YouTube video, going to a conference, my hope is, is through those 3 things you're able to get on top of your own personal and professional development. And speaking of, in February we're hosting a Personal Leadership Track Lead Yourself First workshop. It is free, Tuesday, February the 24th, 10 to 12. You have a plan for your business, but you don't have a plan for your own personal development. Let's change that on that day. I'd love to see you there. Go to blueprintos.com/assets. Blueprintos.com/assets. All right, everyone, till next time, lead well and go be great.