The First Principle of Knowledge Development

How the brain functions is more important than the functionality of tools for thought. I’ve had to remind myself of this principle of Knowledge Development many times.

All The Features!

When I started learning about personal knowledge management (PKM), it was exciting to uncover the vast array of available applications, each with features more unique than the last. Everything from backlinks, tags, queries, and not to mention the possibilities for automation within and between all the apps within your PKM stack. So much time and effort went into building workflows that took advantage of all the latest functionality while integrating seamlessly with one another. Then, as always, in a competitive marketplace, more products became available with even more features, and content creators (myself included) were designing even more elaborate systems to stand out.

But alas, trying to take advantage of everything on offer was nothing more than a Sisyphean task. There’s only so many times you can start over before you lose hope that you’ll ever crest the summit and create that perfect knowledge system. So, the attention seemed to shift from the “bells and whistles” features to ones of a different kind. The focus was on the accessibility of notes online, offline, and between devices. The portability of data to ensure a quick transition to the newest app de jour, and of course, data security and privacy. Essential topics, to be sure, but one line of consideration seemed suspiciously absent.

Brain First

How do our brains actually function? If the goal is to develop knowledge, then the starting point should be understanding how we learn, store, and retrieve information in our wetware rather than delving into software’s ever-evolving capabilities. It’s a tragedy that the possibilities offered by external tools have shifted the spotlight away from the one tool we all have in common, the one thing we can’t swap out of our PKM stack.

I propose that the ultimate goal of knowledge development is to improve our lives by enabling better decisions and actions. Therefore, what matters more is not what’s on our hard drives but what’s stored behind our eyes. We’ll spend the vast majority of our time living without accessing our so-called “second brains,” so the emphasis should be on developing our “first brain” rather than producing a second one.

What’s the Product?

Is your system designed to produce notes or knowledge that serves you well without access to those notes? Could other people tell you have a knowledge development system without being shown a digital application or box of notecards?

You are the true product of the system, not the notes. It doesn’t matter if we split hairs on note-taking or note-making. Analog or digital. Tag or folder-based. Hierarchical or not. The actual project we’re faced with is living a meaningful and satisfying life.