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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“† Block Priming: An Inside Look at My Pre-Time-Blocking Method

In this edition of Practical PKM: πŸ’‘ The Big Idea: How I'm Using Morgen as a Block Priming tool 😎 Something Cool: A Discbound version of the Ugmonk Analog system πŸ“£ The Practical PKM Cohort is now live! πŸ“š My book notes from Anti-Time Management by Richie Norton If you prefer to read this newsletter in your browser, click here. πŸ’‘ The Big Idea: An Interesting Twist to My Time-Blocking Routine Time-blocking is the simple practice of budgeting your time. Start by putting your meetings and...

a room with a desk, chair and two windows

In this edition of Practical PKM: πŸ’‘ The Big Idea: Leveraging Your Environment to Boost Your Productivity (& Creativity) 😎 Something Cool: Arc-style tabs in Obsidian πŸ“š My book notes from The Extended Mind by Annie Murphy Paul If you prefer to read this newsletter in your browser, click here. πŸ’‘ The Big Idea: Don't Underestimate the Impact Your Environment Has on Your Productivity & Creativity I mentioned in the last newsletter how I tend to be more creative when I go to my co-working space, and...

In this edition of Practical PKM: πŸ’‘ The Big Idea: Questions to help you learn from 2024 and hit the ground running in 2025 😎 Something Cool: A HUGE update for an already great quick capture tool for iOS users πŸ“š My book notes from Free Time by Jenny Blake If you prefer to read this newsletter in your browser, click here. πŸ’‘ The Big Idea: A Simple Reflection Framework for Reflecting on the Past Year and Planning the Next One For better or for worse, 2024 is just about over. Maybe for you, 2024...

red and blue book on white shelf

In this edition of Practical PKM: πŸ’‘ The Big Idea: The 8 productivity books worth reading from 2024 😎 Something Cool: A Core Plugin that lets you open external links inside Obsidian πŸ“š A collection of my mind map book notes from the best productivity books of the year If you prefer to read this newsletter in your browser, click here. πŸ’‘ The Big Idea: These are the 8 Best Productivity Books from 2024 I read a lot of books. Almost all of them fall into the self-help or personal development genre....

In this edition of Practical PKM: πŸ’‘ The Big Idea: A simple strategy for planning your perfect week 😎 Something Cool: Nerdy Obsidian Widgets for your iOS Home Screen πŸ“š My book notes from The One Thing by Gary Keller & Jay Papasan If you prefer to read this newsletter in your browser, click here. πŸ’‘ The Big Idea: Plans Are Worthless, But Planning is Everything I just got back from my quarterly Personal Retreat. Every quarter, I go to one of these tiny cabins in the middle of the woods and spend...

In this edition of Practical PKM: πŸ’‘ The Big Idea: Make constant progress through tiny experiments 😎 Something Cool: An Obsidian plugin that FINALLY enables Markdown links in Properties πŸ“š My book notes from Scrum by Jeff & J.J. Sutherland If you prefer to view this newsletter in your browser, click here. πŸ’‘ The Big Idea: You Can Be Accurate Without Being Precise Recently, I was listening to the Nathan Barry Show podcast, and he was talking to a guest about managing projects. (If you’re...

In this edition of Practical PKM: πŸ’‘ The Big Idea: The PKM case for finding the meaning of (your) life 😎 Something Cool: A huge performance upgrade for a classic Obsidian plugin πŸ“š My book notes from Man's Search for Meaning by Victor Frankl If you prefer to read this newsletter in your browser, click here. πŸ’‘ The Big Idea: How to Take Action on the Things That Really Matter Ever find yourself procrastinating on something important by doing something completely mindless or pointless instead?...

In this edition of Practical PKM: πŸ’‘The Big Idea: Gratitude is CRAZY powerful 😎 Something Cool: An Obsidian plugin that renders external link previews πŸ“š My book notes from The Power of Positive Thinking by Norman Vincent Peale If you prefer to read this newsletter in your browser, click here. πŸ’‘ The Big Idea: A Little Gratitude Goes a Long Way Practicing gratitude is one of the most powerful things you can do to improve your mental, emotional, and even physical state. In this newsletter, I...

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...