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Following up on my series on Personal Knowledge Management, I wanted to explore the “Capturing What?” question. Instead of going blindly in enumerating file types, I pivoted to describe a specific use case.

A process diagram in a digital image

I’ve found this diagram image: 

on this blog post, Modeling the Homeostasis of Glucose Processing in Human Body

The first impulse I had was related to desiring to do something like that. I like its clarity and elegance in how white space is managed, the disposition of boxes in logical sequences, the use of arrows to indicate flows, and the clever use of colors to communicate with a style. I also like the typography, readable without being blunt, with different gray shades to differentiate headings and descriptions.

I described in detail why I like this diagram only by stopping, observing, and reflecting. Picking it is not enough to capture it, or I will end up in the trap of the Collector’s Fallacy. Elaborating on why I like it and stating that I find it inspiring for what I could design is a statement for my future self.

Talking to my Future Self

If that was a message, how could I package it?

“Dear Future Self, when you need to create a flow-chart diagram to communicate different executions of the same process, take THIS image as a reference and inspiration.”

The Present Self

The object of my capturing is strongly motivated by the reason why I am saving it. I need to take further steps to allow my Future Self to understand the reasoning behind this annotated image so they will be able to take full advantage out of it.

The components of this note-to-future-self are all there:

1. The record: the digital image downloaded from the website. Annotated with the source (the URL) and the author to be mentioned if it is reused (when and if the author would allow permission to do that)
2. The observation: “I like its clarity and its elegance in how space is managed, disposition o boxes in logical sequences, use of arrows to indicate flows, intelligent use of colors to communicate with a style. I also like the typography, readable without being blunt, with different gray shades to differentiate headings and descriptions.
3. The potential use: “when looking for inspiration to design a flow-chart showing complex processes and their different states using a clean and elegant visual style.”
4. The related content: see “How to design a flow-chart”, “Interaction Design Diagrams”, “Diagramming Tools”, “Process Design”, “Information Design”
5. The classification: image, diagram, minimalism, process, reference

This found image let me state clearly my interest in process visualization and information design. I have the chance to create two collections where to store related content. I am not acting as a librarian trying to capture the Internet. I am on a journey to discover (or reinforce) my interests and capture information and knowledge useful for my growth in the related fields.

As a transdisciplinary designer, I am often involved in the design and visualization of processes and flows. I am stating that I am on a learning path to grow my knowledge and wisdom as an information designer and process designer.

What questions/prompts/criteria did I uncover while capturing data?

From that context, further questions emerged:

• Where should I store the downloaded digital image?
• What can I do to make it easily findable when I need it?
• How should I classify to facilitate findability?
• What are the criteria to observe and evaluate other data like that?

A systems thinker thinks in systems, and I was not.

I was sinning of reductionism by isolating the “why capture” from the “what to capture” in my growing Personal Knowledge Management System. A capital sin for a systems thinker. I discovered it to be more natural and logical to analyze an actual occasion of capturing a piece of information for my purposes and reflecting upon why I wanted to keep that bunch of bits.

A working system is grown, not built.

Instead of making an inventory of all the possible forms of data and information to be captured that would have been too technical and not strategical, I’ve found it helpful to analyze context-by-context the data capturing events. That way, I can connect the “why” and “what” to capture. That is more meaningful and positively contributing to create a PKMS personalized, focused, and oriented to personal creativity rather than just storing data mindlessly.

After asking why capturing knowledge, I’ve reflected on the distinction between data, information, and knowledge. Although it’s dangerous and limiting to draw strict boundaries, we might take advantage of those differences to better define the material we capture.

Suppose we map the continuum of data -> information -> knowledge on a line indicating the leftmost as the rawest and the rightmost one as the most refined. In that case, it will make sense to imagine data being the raw material captured in its rough shape.

That’s another way to distinguish the three.

Data is raw, unprocessed, and context-less content.

Information is data with a context, either already found or added by us during the capturing.

Knowledge is far from being captured but instead developed, and it would become more tangible in a more evolved phase in our workflow. In this context, we want to refer to knowledge as connected information, data you have refined, checked, validated, put into contexts, and connected most robustly with the existing knowledge in your PKMS.

BE CAREFUL: It’s not wise to take the previous statement as a rule or as a universal principle, we need to create a model representing the processing level of the material we capture. It might well happen that you find yourself capturing data, information, and knowledge as the input of your PKM workflow. We want to observe that a note captured is usually something that will need further processing, and it’s seldom something we could use as it is. There is a higher chance you will capture raw data more frequently than refined knowledge.

After defining Personal Knowledge Management (PKM), I’ve identified an initial  Personal Knowledge Management workflow. Then I researched the differences between data, information, knowledge, and wisdom. I am now Learning Out Loud about the Capture phase in my PKM to explore why you should capture knowledge.

Reasons to capture knowledge

“Capture” is the phase where you acquire data, information, and knowledge to be added to your Note Archive. By exploring the motivation to capture information, we can be more intentional. By being more conscious, we can focus on what matters to pursuing our research goals. As usual, we can go “top-down” by defining the capture criteria a priori or capturing “bottom-up” by following curiosity and instincts.

The following is a non-exhaustive list of reasons to capture knowledge.

To remember

You are your memory. Anything related to your personal and professional life worth to be remembered should be a potential candidate to be captured. By keeping track of important dates, events, and writings, we can be more efficient in our lives, avoid little and big problems and reduce redundancy by reusing saved forms, templates, and models.

To learn

Capture what you don’t know. Yes, there’s a lot that you don’t know, of course, I know it because I feel the same. Would you capture every single unknown bit moving around you? No, dear, follow your interests. Capture what stimulates your curiosity or your intention. You should capture what you want to learn or must learn, and I am thinking about you, students. But also professionals needing to get continuously be up-to-date in their fields.

Capture relevant information sources. If you have a purpose in creating something out of your PKM, you can drive your relevant material research. Capturing meaningful information related to your research field will allow you to develop your research question and provide some answers.

To develop your interests

Feed your curiosity. Create a list of your interests. It will be a useful prompt to evaluate something worth to be capture. Does it fall in any of the listed interests? If no, why am I even asking this question? It might be that you have found a new interest to add to your list. Establishing a feedback loop between you and your interest, you make progress towards being more self-aware. By knowing what you like, you can draw a better picture of yourself. Capturing information about your interests contributes to understand and define your identity.

To be more creative

Invest in your idea bank. Your knowledge base is like a bank. If you don’t put anything into it, you won’t have anything to withdraw. Capturing data is the most crucial activity needed to enrich your note archive.

Choose unique perspectives. Creative comes from “to create,” and a popular definition of creativity says something about “being novel and useful.” So capturing information from unusual sources or in uncommon ways could contribute to the next creative phase of your PKMS, especially the Develop one.

To deal with complexity

Complexity can be made of simple rules. A diversity of applications of simple rules in space and times generate complexity.

Capture information to extend your brain

Capturing data, information, and knowledge can be highly subjective. It depends on your needs and wants and the life you conduct, and the perspective you see. It might be helpful to write down your reasons to capture information. It would allow you to choose more wisely what is relevant or not.

What are the essential steps in managing personal knowledge?

To manage information and transform it into knowledge, we can go through different steps. By going to the essence of the process, we could identify these key activities:

1. Capture.
2. Organize.
3. Develop.
4. Share.

Let’s see what each of them entails.

Capture

It’s the acquisition phase: each time you need to remember something, or you want to write it down. Any piece of information contributing to either remembering personal and professional knowledge or keeping track of important events in your life is around you, always. Not everything is interesting, and you cannot capture all, but according to your needs and interests, you could capture many different types of information. Without aiming at an exhaustive list, you might need to capture data in some of the following scenarios:

• When reading a book, you should capture the passages resonating with you and paraphrase them to interpret them.
• During and after a meeting, you might want to summarize the key concepts discussed or plan for the next actions.
• Recording contacts for new people encountered and essential information about them would improve your networking and relationship management skills.
• To keep track of important dates, due dates, delivery dates, birthdays, recurrent events, celebrations.
• Lists: bibliographies, books to read, films, articles, or online resources like website bookmarks or podcasts.

Organize

The captured information needs to be stored in a safe, portable, and accessible way. If you fall into the Collector’s Fallacy trap, you may skip this phase, but that would be sad. Why did you accumulate all of that information if you’ll never look back at it again?

Captured information needs to be organized so that you can find it again when you will need it. You could easily get lost in Information Science or Science of Organizing Information, and you would never obtain the perfect information organization system, so get over it. You need to grow your information architecture. There are design principles, tools, and methods to follow, but you are unique, and you will never find somebody else’s organizational strategies to fit your needs perfectly. While you could start with some famous (or obscure) frameworks, you’ll discover that only by continuously refining your information organization approaches you’ll be able to reach a good result.

Develop

What are you going to do with hundreds of web bookmarks? Thousand of JPEG Images? An Infinite series of PDF files? What about your scribbled paper notes sparse all over the places? And your multi-GB digital scrapbook?

IF you want to make fair use of your life, you should have your note-archive to become your most powerful creative tool.

A piece of information stored without a future intent is useless. It could be well-manifest or uncertain, explicit, or to be discovered, but anything you add to your Zettelkasten should have strong connections with your future.

The idea of your future self is crucial in the development phase of your PKM, and it will need some time to be exposed.

Share

So you have a shiny, tidy, digital wall of well-organized notes. You can find any stored ideas within milliseconds. You can associate the most disparate concepts: Rare Mushrooms and Lysergic Travels, cooking and design, that small ache you have in your arm, and ergonomics.

Great. But now, what are you going to do with the novel and useful knowledge you’ve created?

Share it! If you don’t put your bright ideas into the World, what would you need a PKM System for?

In the Share phase, we need to explore the various content publishing media: personal essays, messages, letters, emails, and article drafts, papers, book chapters, lessons, tutorials, and also social media posts or forum thread replies.

Sharing is your ultimate goal, and the sharing phase in your PKM system should lead and inspire your entire workflow.

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