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Practical PKM

A weekly newsletter where I help people apply values-based productivity principles and systems for personal growth, primarily using Obsidian. Subscribe if you want to make more of your notes and ideas.

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πŸ§ͺ My Experiment to Eliminate Read-It-Later Backlog Stress

In this edition of Practical PKM: πŸ’‘The Big Idea: Read-It-Later needs a revolution 😎 Something Cool: The Obsidian Web Clipper πŸ“š My book notes from Meditations for Mortals by Oliver Burkeman If you prefer to read this newsletter in your browser, click here. πŸ’‘ The Big Idea: Reinventing Read-It-Later to Overcome Information Overload Over 400 million terabytes (or 4 billion gigabytes) of data are created every day. That number is increasing exponentially, making it increasingly hard to keep up...

In this edition of Practical PKM: πŸ’‘ The Big Idea: How to Improve Your Productiviy & Creativity Systems 😎 Something Cool: The Obsidian Tasks plugin gets a Date Picker πŸ“š My book notes from Work the System by Sam Carpenter If you prefer to read this newsletter in your browser, click here. πŸ’‘ The Big Idea: Using Systems to Improve Your Productivity & Creativity Systems are everywhere. Your life, like everything in the world around you, is, in fact, a system. And by learning how the systems of your...

In this edition of Practical PKM: πŸ’‘The Big Idea: Why willpower doesn't work (and what to do instead) 😎 Something Cool: A critical fix for the Query Control plugin (πŸŽ‰) πŸ“š My book notes from Willpower Doesn't Work by Benjamin Hardy If you prefer to read this newsletter in your browser, click here. πŸ’‘ The Big Idea: If You Want to Do More of What Matters, Don’t Rely on Willpower. There are lots of stories about famous people who eliminated trivial decisions in an effort to conserve willpower. One...

In this edition of Practical PKM: πŸ’‘ The Big Idea: Using music to increase your productivity 😎 Something Cool: An update that shows nested tasks (πŸŽ‰) πŸ“š My book notes from Soundtracks by Jon Acuff If you prefer to read this newsletter in your browser, click here. πŸ’‘ The Big Idea: Selecting Soundtracks to Boost Your Focus We all know that music influences our mood. But it can also have a pretty big impact on our productivity. In this newsletter, I’m going to explain why and show you how to pick...

In this edition of Practical PKM: πŸ’‘ The Big idea: The power of positive procrastination 😎 Something Cool: A lightning-fast offline grammar checker πŸ“š My book notes from Procrastinate on Purpose by Rory Vaden If you prefer to read this newsletter in your browser, click here. πŸ’‘ The Big Idea: Solving The Problem of Priority Dilution Ever feel like you keep falling further behind the harder you work? βœ‹πŸΌ It’s caused by a phenomenon called priority dilution. You get completely overwhelmed by how...

In this edition of Practical PKM: πŸ’‘ The Big Idea: How sketchnoting can help get more out of your ideas 😎 Something Cool: A free online resource to make you a better writer πŸ“š My book notes from The Art of The Idea by John Hunt If you prefer to read this newsletter in your browser, click here. πŸ’‘ The Big Idea: Want More "A-Ha!" Moments? Try Sketchnoting. The goal of personal knowledge management is to make sense of the information you are capturing, curating, cultivating, and connecting so you...

In this edition of Practical PKM: πŸ’‘The Big Idea: The Beginner's Guide to Flow 😎 Something Cool: An Obsidian plugin for time blocking πŸ“š My book notes from Flow by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi If you prefer to read this newsletter in your browser, click here. πŸ’‘ The Big Idea: How to Get (and Stay) β€œIn the Zone” A while back, I came across some transformative research by a Hungarian-American psychologist with an impossible-to-pronounce name. Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, or as he’d be known today, β€œThe...

In this edition of Practical PKM: πŸ’‘ The Big Idea: The focusing power of intentional constraints 😎 Something Cool: Obsidian Link Styling tied to Properties πŸ“š My book notes from Boundaries by Henry Cloud If you prefer to read this newsletter in your browser, click here. πŸ’‘ The Big Idea: Why Less (Options) Often Lead to More (Progress) The elimination of possibilities is never comfortable. Our primative brains often interpret scarcity as an existential threat. Whether it pertains to job offers,...

In this edition of Practical PKM: πŸ’‘ The Big Idea: How personal core values can benefit your PKM system 😎 Something Cool: A calendar that integrates with Obsidian for time-blocking πŸ“š My book notes from Hero On a Mission by Donald Miller If you want to read this newsletter in your browser, click here. πŸ’‘ The Big Idea: Core Values are Not Just for Companies Personal core values can provide the clarity you need to cut the things that aren’t really important so you can focus on what is. Here’s how...

In this edition of Practical PKM: πŸ’‘ The Big Idea: Writing in public is the best way to get good at writing 😎 Something Cool: An Obsidian plugin that can speed up loading times πŸ“š My book notes from Hidden Genius by Polina Marinova Pompliano If you prefer to read this newsletter in your browser, click here. πŸ’‘ The Big Idea: The Right Way to Use Social Media Cal Newport is one of my favorite authors. But I think he’s dead wrong about social media in the advice he gave a listener on a recent Deep...