I came to my interest in PKM as a retired educational psychologist with research interests in how students might take and use notes more effectively. This connection led me to translate the popular books on note-taking, second brains, and secondary topics such as whether notes should be taken on cards using a pen or on a computer into the descriptive models of note-taking and studying and research that were already familiar to me.
What I missed with PKM was the applied research I knew was so common in answering questions and suggesting ways to improve classroom-based note-taking. I had my personal experiences to provide some insights. Academic researchers use what I learned could be called PKM techniques in their profession. They read books and journal articles and take notes at academic conferences. They highlight and annotate and for years have used tools such as Endnote to track the references they have accumulated over years of work. Most of us just did these things without guiding models or books focused on “the process”. Even those of us who studied student note-taking were likely oblivious to the possible connections to our own daily behavior. We didn’t discuss related topics with colleagues or share recommendations for new reference managers. My personal experience in recent years is still an exception. When I talk with colleagues about my new interests and describe permanent notes or building a second brain their eyes glaze over. These folks are making a living with merit money depending on publication frequency and grant money secured and they are mostly oblivious to proposals for better knowledge management. I keep their reality in mind and it does make me wonder.
I know colleagues who have authored hundreds of publications. The Zettelkasten fans who point to the prolific publication record of Nikolas Luhmann have nothing on these scholars. Plus, the individual I have in mind collects the data necessary for these publications in addition to just writing. They do work with students so their situation while common may be a little different. However, to justify an approach anecdotally with Luhmann as the most common example opens a position taken to counter examples. There are many prolific counterexamples when it comes to knowledge workers.
The Knowledge workers I know have a body of information they have mastered and they tend to use this body in combination with just-in-time learning of material related to a topic that has caught their attention. They read constantly in narrow areas related to their work and the focus of this reading drifts about depending on the research that is their present focus. The component of PKM they tend to ignore is a way to connect over an extended period of time with novel associations that might lead to creative insights.
I do find some of the ideas and methods proposed by PKM and second brain advocates to be interesting. The point I am making concerns the lack of actual evidence regarding the proposed advantages of these techniques.
A category system for understanding and applying learning
I have come up with a potentially hierarchical system for the sources of information concerning learning. The items on this list differ in a variety of ways and different individuals likely value these levels to different degrees. Learning must be based in biology, but the success of a recommendation does not necessarily require a neurological basis. You can simply test a method against alternatives and determine which is most effective. Sometimes such tests at one level of my proposed hierarchy can be used to justify strategies at a different level. I think this is the case in using basic cognitive and memory research to provide insights into strategies to be tested at the applied cognitive strategy level and the applied cognitive strategy level has been used to justify strategies at the PKM and Second Brain level. However, speculative justification is not the same as actual experimental justification at the higher level. This is the issue I have with PKM and Second Brain proposals. As you move up this hierarchy, the complexity of the circumstances of application increases, and elements of this complexity may impact outcomes in ways that are not an issue at lower levels where these variables can be controlled. Things that work in the carefully controlled environment of the lab do not necessarily work outside of the lab. This does not mean the lab results are not real. It just means proposed applications need to be tested to see if potential and often unknown interacting factors can be ignored
Levels:
- Personal Knowledge Management and Second Brain Strategies
- Cognitive Note-taking strategy research
- Basic Cognitive Memory and Comprehension research
- Neuroscience
PKM strategies
For those who have read one or more of the personal knowledge management “how to do it” books, I will identify some of the recommended strategies I think should be tested. For others, I will try to include a few additional comments to offer a short idea of what these strategies recommend.
- The notes intended to be retained should isolate specific concepts or ideas with enough context that at a later time the note taker or someone else with relevant background could understand the meaning of the note without access to the original context that prompted that note. Isolation of specific, meaningful ideas in storage is an important attribute of this strategy. (e.g., Atomic notes, permanent notes)
- Immediately and over time, these isolated notes are to be connected with other notes (links). The connections are to suggest ways in which ideas relate to each other as similar, contribute to a process, or are part of an argument. Systems argue that important notes should immediately be stored as part of such relationships and new relationships can be added as they become apparent to the note-taker.
- Individual notes are often also grouped by the addition of one or more additional tags common to other notes for which the tags are appropriate. Tags are an important way to search for and retrieve related notes.
- Revisiting and reviewing are expected. Exploring the collection of notes as part of the process of developing the value of the stored information is an end in itself, not just something done when using stored information to accomplish a specific project. The review, which is sometimes random, increases familiarity and allows for the addition of new tags, links, and notes.
- Note-taking and note-use are long-term processes in which notes are not necessarily taken with a specific purpose in mind. Tags, links, and other organizational strategies can be used to find relevant information when a novel purpose emerges.
My goal is not to challenge whether these tactics are beneficial. I am of the opinion that any external activity that results in analysis, decision-making, personalizing through summarization, or self-evaluation deepens understanding and improves retention. Simply put?—?thinking is good. A better way to explain my interest is whether the specific strategies I have mentioned are an improvement in comparison to what I would describe as a control condition. For example, do these tactics offer an advantage over the way say students traditionally take free-form notes and then review these notes from time to time? If the answer is yes, we should be emphasizing and teaching the PKM strategies to high school and college students. I think other control conditions may also be important. For example, in a recent post, I suggested that AI allows a learner to “chat” with stored notes and highlights and that using this means of interacting with content may have advantages over “manual” strategies emphasized by PKM enthusiasts. This approach might render many of the PKM strategies busy work.
As is so often the case with research, the investigation of one issue leads to the need to investigate related assumptions. For example, many have now concluded that reading from paper is advantageous to reading from a screen, and taking notes by hand is advantageous in comparison to taking notes with a digital device. However, with long-term goals for learning in mind and depending on the comparisons I have proposed, wouldn’t having stored information in a searchable and AI-accessible form be essential?
I wonder. There are so many areas in which developments and thought experiments can move faster than the research that would support or reject advocated practices. Ideal tests of some of the issues I have identified probably will not happen. Part of the rationale for PKM is to create a system for improved use of the learning experiences we have over long periods of time. Longitudinal research is expensive and fraught with problems of maintaining a commitment to treatment alternatives. How important are these issues and are they important enough to invest time and money? However, ideal approaches aside, I cannot find research that even considers the proposed benefits of the PKM component strategies I have identified over a short period. I think some of the issues I have identified warrant at least that level of commitment.
