Massimo Curatella

Tag: personal knowledge management

  • Things You Should Stop Doing When Managing Information

    Things You Should Stop Doing When Managing Information

    Stop starting from scratch each time. Evolve what you know, connect your insights, and start from what you have. Starting from nothing could be a creative exercise leading to innovative results but it’s too much dependent on luck. Make your own luck by moving your bar higher at each iteration.

    Stop separating information. Connecting information, even when of different natures, coming from different places, creates that diversity needed to have original ideas. You need one knowledge repository with one information inbox. Let all fields and topics cross-pollinate to bloom new knowledge you would not expect otherwise. So, stop saving articles in multiple reading lists.

    Stop saving articles in a reading list. Process information now or never. Grow your system to store and organize knowledge, use it to annotate interesting things you find, now. Do not procrastinate or you risk hoarding information with the illusion of a future day when you will reread it again. Don’t delude yourself, read, understand and annotate it now.

    Stop separating projects. There’s no convenience in one-time research, create your research repository where everything you learn and discover becomes part of a connected set of information pieces. Each project will benefit from the unexpected associations and discoveries you can make.

    Stop taking notes. When you write on the books’ margin you are wasting your ink. You will never find again the thought you had. You won’t know how to search for it after a few weeks, you will lose reference to it. Extract the useful information by rewriting with your words and storing it into your note archive. Organize it by connecting it to existing notes by asking yourself “how do I want to find this again in the future?” Use organizational tools and techniques with the pure goal of providing value to your future self. Forget about biblioteconomy. Stop taking notes in different formats on different media. Use your unique personal knowledge base, all-inclusive, all-encompassing.

    207. Intertwine Threads Into Interconnected Quilts.
    207. Intertwine Threads Into Interconnected Quilts.

    Stop processing information inconsistently. Fill in one inbox with all of the notes you want to make about all of your personal and professional interests. Process your unique inbox once per day or at the maximum once per week. Don’t do that and get lost in chaos and entropy.

    Stop collecting information randomly. Set your goals, define your intentions. Create your 12 Favorite Problems to filter the World. Curate your interests and use them as lenses. Avoid distractions.

    Stop complicating your life. Clarify your goals, continuously. Focus on your objectives. Adapt tools and techniques your needs, not all the way around. Remove waste, useless things, and distractions. Go for simplicity as a means to higher effectiveness.

    Stop making To-Do lists. Follow your priorities according to your goals. Set meetings with yourself on the calendar. Now.

    Stop having no ideas. Curate your note archive, connect your ideas, evolve your thought and start having too much to write about rather than too little.

  • Slowly Connecting Pieces into Larger Ones

    Slowly Connecting Pieces into Larger Ones

    In “How To Take Smart Notes,” the author says that an essay is something that you write, piece by piece, every day.

    If you have one place where you store all of your writing pieces and, each time you write a new one, you connect it to the previous ones, then, one day, slowly or quickly, according to how you write and how much you write, you will accumulate several pieces in threads.

    The idea of the book is that you should always be writing and carefully curate your note archive so that you always have threads forming.

    It doesn’t matter if you continue to write on the same topic day by day. You can jump from one topic to another without any limitation.

    The most important behavior is for you not only to store your writings all in the same place, but you have to weave them into threads.

    You can start from any amount of information, drafts, articles, essays you have previously created. You don’t have to start from nothing. But you have to find connections between them to form threads.

    Those threads are your “80/20”, your Pareto’s law of creativity. They are drafts. For anything you want them to develop into: articles, essays, chapters, lectures, podcasts, etc.

    When you collect your draft by extracting a thread from your note archive, you change the environment. You rewrite what your initial idea expressed in that draft to transform it into the final copy was.

    I know this process very well, but I keep failing on the most critical behavior: connecting pieces. So each time I have to write, I am starting almost from scratch because I don’t have threads formed, I cannot extract drafts, I have only an innumerable pile of fragments, all shiny, all interesting, all relevant at the time I captured them but inexorable separate, distinct, distant. They are not connected.

    This is why I am starting my fourth reading of the book “How To Take Smart Notes,” with the idea of annotating it precisely as suggested by the author.

    It’s the nth beginning, starting again with the hope of making it right this time.

    So, I do want to write an essay, as well, and this is how I am setting it up.

    How will you write your essay?

  • A System To Think In

    A System To Think In

    If Niklas Luhmann said:

    “I never force myself to do anything I don’t feel like. Whenever I am stuck, I do something else.”

    I have found a way to cure my eclecticism.

    His Zettelkasten, a note archive, is “a system […]  to keep track of the ever-increasing pool of information, which allows one to combine different ideas in an intelligent way with the aim of generating new ideas.” 

    I never liked being a planner. I always find myself being an expert. I appreciate the confirmation in distinguishing between being student planners with the sole aim of passing exams vs. being experts in voluntary learning, which is rewarding and fun. That’s the learning I am looking for, the one that generates insights, accumulates, and facilitates ideation.

    Research, thinking, and studying are open-ended processes. How can you plan something that is, by definition, indefinite?

    Aiming at being an expert is also feeding self-doubt. You know that when you struggle to find insights or connect apparently incompatible pieces or discover that your ideas are not that original.

    Despite all of that, I don’t believe in accidental inspiration. At least, not as an absolute. There are happy accidents generating the right push at the right time, but I believe in hard work in preparation for the generation of new ideas.

    I like the definition of the Zettelkasten as a Personal Knowledge Management System you can think in.

    This article is based on the first chapter of the book “How To Take Smart Notes” by Sönke Ahrens.

    A System To Think In.
    A System To Think In.
  • Updating my Vision to Learn and Build in public

    Updating my Vision to Learn and Build in public

    I understood I need to create solid external motivators for me to pursue personal goals beyond professional ones. I must admit I went from unemployed to working, from no websites to a personal blog, from nothing written online to about a couple of hundreds of articles on the Web. I wanted to build a community to support my motivation, and after months of doubts and false starts, I also created it.

    Now, I have different threads going on with additional pushes and other needs. Finding the right balance is difficult. It requires making an inventory. I should review all parts of this little ecosystem I created and check my goals.

    The Personal Website

    Curatella.com is online. I publish daily or almost daily an article. There are about 200 of them. The following is low and quiet. I am dealing with diverse topics. There is no strong continuity. I tend to write a personal diary rather than offering content with a specific value for a defined audience.

    It’s the source of all ideas and experiments. It all starts here, and the other experiments are usually spin-offs of this central laboratory.

    The Daily Writing Habit

    CREAZEE.COM was born as an idea to challenge other people to build a daily writing habit. It has a more defined scope: it’s about building creative habits. It’s pretty comforting to have such a clear mission for a project. It helps me better to understand what I should put in it.

    The Creative Community

    The CREAZEE Community was the natural container for the participant of the writing challenge. We are now at the 60 days of life. I’ve learned a lot, and I discovered a lot about imagining an online service, setting up the infrastructure, promoting, hosting, and moderating a small group of creative people. It was fun, inspiring, tiring, sometimes frustrating but one of the best learning experiences I have ever had. That is the real learning-by-doing I was looking for.

    The Future?

    What’s next? How do I want to leverage what I have learned so far? How shall I evolve it?

    It all comes down to why I am doing it and what I want to get out of it. It’s painful to get in an unstable situation where I have to motivate others to get the motivation to create.

    Either this feedback loop is not convenient to me in terms of creativity, or it is working great but not in the right direction. I love sharing my creative process with others, and I feel blessed to collaborate in ideating and developing ideas. I don’t want to create additional fragmentation, though. I don’t want to be the only one responsible for leading and motivating a group to create because I need to be part of that group and receive the same motivation.

    It’s like having an engine started and getting in motion while lacking a clear direction to follow. We’re moving, where are we going?

    That’s another bi-faced aspect: adapting while moving. It’s motivating and, at the same time, limiting. I have so little time to dedicate to reflect and create that I cannot plan long term. So I can perform only those maneuvers allowed by those 15-30 minutes per day, stolen from life.

    Those are the two key issues:

    1. What’s my goal?
    2. Do I have enough resources to pursue it?

    What’s my goal?

    I want to think better, work better, live better. I know I can do that by learning better. I have a strong intuition towards learning by doing. Reading, understanding, communicating, and writing are the pillars at the base of a learning workflow enabling me to pursue my goals. I can motivate myself to build and refine my workflow only if I commit publicly to do it.

    So, I can only learn in public.

    So, whatever I do should be part of a shared, collaborative project to put myself into it.

    Learning about what?

    Nurture Nature.
    Nurture Nature.

    I am working on it

    So what?

    I need to involve a community of creative people by sharing what I’ve learned and learning from them and with them. But I cannot get too involved in different topics and threads than the ones I want to focus on. I need to find an abstract level to collaborate. A way to share questions, approaches, methods, tools, and techniques that apply to any topic. So, while everybody creates and learns, I can contribute to the progress towards achieving my goal.

    And now what?

    So the problems of habitual creativity and knowledge management are good and valuable. The service I want to provide should be about “how to be creative every day” and “how to manage your personal knowledge.” And that’s it.

    The Daily Writing Habit Challenge should focus on the approaches and the techniques to “write every day.” There should be less overlapping with the topic choice and each individual’s direction.

    This doesn’t prevent us from finding commonalities and ways to collaborate on the same topics, though.

    The Personal Knowledge Management System is my joy and pain. I’ve been struggling to build one for decades. There are no magic formulas, no perfect tools, no ideal workflows. I need to work and produce knowledge that allows me to pursue my goals: there are no other criteria. That’s my learning journey, my path of discovery, and there is a lot I can share with a community.

    What do you think?

    Thanks for your patience. I am aware I keep on raising questions and bringing uncertainty. This is the place where I can share this kind of thought. So if you reached this point, I am thankful for your attention. Do you have any suggestions about finding a better solution to motivate my learning while sharing it with others?

    Thank you.

  • Knowledge is Required to Make Connections

    Knowledge is Required to Make Connections

    – Oh, I like this version of “The Sound Of Music”!

    – Version? This is John Coltrane, 1961.

    – Yes, well, is the song sang by Julie Andrews in “The Sound Of Music,” the film.

    – Is it? Let me do a quick search.

    –Oh, you don’t need it. I know it very well.

    And she starts to sing it.

    If you have never watched “The Sound Of Music,” the film 1965, and you don’t know it’s a film adaptation of a famous musical, this might have happened to you.

    On the contrary, knowing that tune from the movie would have generated an instantaneous connection in your mind.

    That’s how we put pieces of knowledge together by connecting them. The requirement for the connection is to have the knowledge, not just data, nor information. We need to have a memory of sounds, words, pictures, and data about them. The fascinating power of our brain will do the rest if we pay enough attention. Yes, we should focus on observing relationships or, at the very least, be open to our senses when these opportunities happen by chance.

    We can maximize the opportunity for connections by exposing ourselves to the broadest and most diverse knowledge while intentionally observing. Serendipity is an additional factor that gets in the game when we allow our minds to wander through the paths of seemingly unrelated facts.

    I cannot confirm nor deny that I know.
    I cannot confirm nor deny that I know.
  • Contrast and Compare to find connections between ideas and concepts

    Contrast and Compare to find connections between ideas and concepts

     “Contrast and compare” is a creative technique to combine two or more ideas or generate new ones out of the creative tension between the selected group.

    The contrast makes something more or less readable. When we lower the contrast of a photograph, we flatten it. We make details disappear to reveal significant areas of color, light, and shade. We make the image sharper when we increase the contrast, with prominent areas highlighted and finer details more clearly readable.

    The comparison happens when we put, side by side, two objects to find similarities, differences, relationships, and thus, connections.

    By contrasting and comparing, we reveal the inner nature of the objects we are observing, facilitating the emerging of relationships. It could become apparent what was invisible to our eyes before this focused observation.

    Some of the outcomes we might achieve by contrasting and comparing:

    1. Finding previously unnoticed details.
    2. Discovering similarity between something apparently different.
    3. Establishing order in the observed group.
    4. Identifying hierarchy allowing to define what comes first, what dominates, and what doesn’t.
    5. Revealing connections leads to breakthroughs, discoveries, or innovation by creating new and advanced concepts born out of the comparison.

    This creative approach facilitates our observation skills and puts us in the role of judges, evaluators, reviewers, investigators, researchers.

    Contrast and Compare to find connections between ideas and concepts
    Contrast and Compare to find connections between ideas and concepts

    To compare, we need to know the objects of the comparison. We can only compare something against a reference, something else we already know. We also need to find homogeneous measurements when there is something measurable. To make a comparison, we need to do the work required to have an opinion: we must accurately research and study the samples to be objective and thorough.

    We contrast and compare to learn better what we thought we knew by looking through deeper lenses and a more critical perspective. In the end, we could get either new ideas, the marriage of the source items, or we could be in a better place to make decisions.

    Contrasting and comparing is a powerful tool in the toolbox of the researcher, writer, designer, artist, and creative person. It deserves further development as a creative tool with examples and applications.

    Do you contrast and compare to learn, discover and create?

  • Coherence between Ideas and Problems

    Coherence between Ideas and Problems

    Once you have created your 100 ideas to write about and then listed your 12 favorite problems, you should look for coherence between the two.

    I realized that after having dedicated some thinking time to my favorite problems. When I came back to the regular ideation workflow, it became obvious to ask myself: are my ideas coherent with the issues I am dedicating my attention to?

    Clustering would be helpful to see if you can organize ideas in groups. By mapping each cluster to one or more favorite problems, there should be, ideally, a 1-to-1 correspondence.

    It’s going to be challenging to have the outcomes of two different activities in two other moments to match perfectly. And this is an excellent creative opportunity. Can you feel the creative tension appearing between those two extremes?

    That is a productive occasion to create a feedback loop, a small creative system where ideas, concepts, and problems can become interdependent.

    Here are some creative prompts to apply to your Ideas and Problems Creative System:

    1. Did you establish a ritual revision of Ideas and Problems?
    2. After having written your 100 ideas, how did you feel about writing your 12 Problems?
    3. After the structured process of writing your 12 Problems, how did you consider your previously created 100 ideas list?
    4. If there are gaps between the two sets: what are they? What can you infer from the missing links?
    5. If you found inconsistencies, reflect upon them. How are those different positions creatively influencing you?

    This self- and meta-reflection should be done periodically, especially when you move from free-flowing writing or journaling towards more structured and interconnected thinking.

    Isn’t that a natural way to evolve towards a more systematic management of your knowledge?

  • Learning and Health (My 12 Favorite Problems)

    Learning and Health (My 12 Favorite Problems)

    Learning, Teaching, Education, Knowledge, and Culture

    Learning how to learn is important because if we are not effective and efficient in learning, We waste our time. We would not have good knowledge to make better decisions. How can I learn effectively and efficiently? What do I need in the different moments of my life to make the best decisions? 

    On the other side of learning, there is teaching. If education is something that somebody else does to you, learning is what happens in your mind, about the knowledge that you build, to do the things you want to do. They need to meet, To have the best learning, we should learn how to learn, but we can also get help from the best teachers. What’s the best way to teach? When and how do we need to teach? What are the best tools and techniques to teach in the best and most effective way?

    How to transfer knowledge between generations? Books, movies, stories, art, architecture, laws. Culture is how we make learning tangible. How is it possible that every human being has to start from scratch each time?. What can we do to optimize the synthesis of knowledge, its storage, and transfer to newborn humans?

    Knowledge and culture. What is the Minimum Viable understanding that every human being should have to be a good citizen of the world? What is that set of disciplines, fields, notions that everybody should know?

    What do we need to know to live a good life, be sustainable, healthy, make good habits, be of service to the community, minimize suffering, and contribute to the evolution and progress of technology, culture, and science?

    They are related. We need all of them to be interdependent. So, a question that I have at the intersection of many, if not all of those problems, is: how can I build the right set of habits to contribute to the solution of all of those problems at the same time?

    What about growing, nurturing, and educating children? A Child is a human being that changes quickly in a short time. How can we optimize the education and the inspiration of their minds in the different levels of growth and evolution in their path to becoming adults? How can we impact and inspire children profoundly before becoming fully developed citizens of the world and evolving them into changemakers?

    Health and Habit making

    Why is it so difficult for us to stay healthy? Why is it so easy to build bad habits to get unfit and prone to diseases? It is still a matter of culture, education, and learning, and also practices. So how do we install healthy habits? 

    The remaining problems to develop

    1. How to be a good thinker
      1. how to be a good thinker
        1. observation
          1. recognizing patterns
          2. cross-discipline / non-disciplinary
        2. how to think about the future
      2. how to make the best decisions
    2. Communication
      1. how to communicate in the best way
      2. Storytelling
        1. how to tell great stories
        2. how to create great stories
    3. Justice, equality, equanimity
      1. What’s the right word?
      2. How to create a just society
    4. Make the world better
      1. How to build a sustainable society
      2. How to make a living while making the world a better place.
      3. How to leave a positive, durable, compounding legacy
      4. How to put new things in the world to make it better rather than worse
      5. How to minimize unintended consequences
      6. How to create better futures
      7. How to improve the ecosystem’s health
    5. How to be a good designer
      1. How to understand, communicate, and manage complexity
      2. How to minimize unintended consequences
      3. Imagining alternative worlds
      4. How to create networks of networks of changemakers creating a positive impact on people and the planet
      5. How can I leave a legacy that will make me remembered in a positive way
      6. How to imagine better futures

    Another favorite problem is the one of solving problems and designing solutions and building the designed solution. So I think that the design approach should be one of the skills and the competence and every human being should acquire. What is the minimum viable knowledge needed to be an effective and an efficient and sustainable designer? That’s a beautiful question. That could go on the same level of being a scientist or being an engineer, but also being an artist. All of those aspects are needed in our life. As well as being a manager or being a leader of being a communicator. of the those skills are at the intersection of being a good citizen of the world.

    1. How to augment life
      1. How to raise the collective intelligence
      2. How to extend life, perception, augment intelligence, individual and collective.
      3. How to live multiple lives
    2. How to minimize the suffering of all living beings
      1. How to relieve suffering
    3. How to be more creative
      1. Teach everybody to be creative
      2. Make art a part of everybody’s life
  • PKM, When? Always.

    PKM, When? Always.

    When do you need a PKM system?

    You might need it on several occasions.

    When I encounter something resonating with me, which interests me, I need to capture it. I want to keep the memory of it. I want to know more. I’m curious about it because I like it, it makes me feel good. Or because it reminds me of something else that I want to make connections with. I don’t always have my phone or my notebook available. So, at that moment, I need to capture effectively that piece of information that I want to store in my note archive.

    If I go into the detail, I would say, when I’m reading something, and I discover a sentence or a concept, or a word, that is interesting to me, I want to capture it. The same happens with all the other media, when I’m watching a TV show or watching a video on the internet. Or I’m listening to a podcast or on radio, or to a song, and I want to extract a soundbite, a fragment that I want to study or store or connect. And of course, this also happens when I am listening to somebody talking, either a public talk or a conversation with somebody on the phone or the internet or real life. There are moments when I feel the need to capture a sentence, of capturing your thought.

    Speaking of thoughts, I frequently have ideas while I am walking or while I am sleeping with dreams or while I’m having a shower or reading a boring book. Something happens in my mind. And I have ideas, connections. I have insights and intuition. I have questions, and I want to capture those. I don’t want to forget them. So I need my PKM, especially the capture approach and tools, the capturing system when I want to store something, and I want to forget it.

    I need a PKM system when I need to organize information. I have too much knowledge sparse around: clips, fragments, video segments, quotes, thoughts, ideas. So I make an effort to have a unique inbox to collect all of it. And it’s complicated, but then I need to organize things with criteria that would allow me to find back what I need when I need it.

    And this ties to searching for something.  When I need a piece of information, and I go to Google it. Sometimes it is something I already searched for, or I have written about. So I need to search for it in my notes archive. That is when the power of the searching system and the organization system is beneficial to provide back what I need when I need it.

    And I need my PKM system to be efficient and effective when I want to share when I need to perform a presentation, sometimes improvised, sometimes I need to prepare the material for a presentation or a design project or write an article. That is when I need to have ideas or find references and to support my creativity. My PKM system has to be efficient, effective, and powerful.

    And I discovered by experimenting with a PKM system that I need a PKM system when I need to have new ideas because writing in my note archive is thinking. So, when I write, I am doing all of the stages of a PKM system because I am capturing what I am observing, I am reflecting upon it, making connections, and organizing my thoughts. I am also preparing a draft so that I can share it. So, even if it is not within the chosen tool of a PKM system, I am still working in my note archive when I am creating a draft to be revised and published. Because that same draft will be feeding my note archive, and it will become a building block, a part of it.

    If you understand the power of PKM, and if you have a flexible and powerful system, you always need it. You need it in every phase of your creative process.

    After is never.
    After is never.
  • PKM for whom? A Short Answer.

    PKM for whom? A Short Answer.

    Personal Knowledge Management can benefit everybody. If you think, you need PKM.