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.
🧠 Mind Mapping: The Key to Unlocking Your Creative Potential
|
Prefer to read (or listen to) this newsletter in your browser? Click here. 💡 The Big Idea: Mind Mapping is an Important Part of Any PKM System.You've been doing everything right with your PKM system. You're capturing notes. Creating links. Adding tags. Building your knowledge base in Obsidian. But when it comes time to actually CREATE something from all those notes? You hit a wall. That's because there's a gap between collecting information and generating insights. And there's a specific tool that bridges that gap. It's not another Obsidian plugin. It's not a new note-taking method. It's mind mapping. Mind mapping isn't a productivity method for right-brained visual thinkers. It's the key to getting more out of your notes and ideas. This week, I published a deep dive into my mind mapping process that covers:
I've used mind mapping to develop ideas for hundreds of articles, videos, and workshops. It's the creative engine that actually makes my PKM system work. This ended up being about 3000 words (far too long for an email), so I recommend you read this one on my website: The breakthrough insights you're looking for are already in your notes. And mind mapping is the key to unlocking your full creative potential so you can do more with them. — Mike |
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.
Prefer to read (or listen to) this newsletter in your browser? Click here. 💡 The Big Idea: My 5 best books from 2025. This year, I read 38 books. Almost all of them were non-fiction and fall into the self-help or personal development genre. Many of them were for the Bookworm podcast I do with my friend Cory Hixson where we talk about a different productivity book every two weeks, but a lot of others I read just because I enjoy learning new things and wrestling with big ideas. In this...
Prefer to read (or listen to) this newsletter in your browser? Click here. 💡 The Big Idea: Subtraction Beats Addition. As 2025 comes to a close, it's natural to reflect on the year and set intentions for what changes you're going to make. Most people set intentions like, "I'm going to lose 15 pounds," "I'm going to write my book," or "I'm going to finally start my side hustle." It's human nature to think that if we just did something additional, then our situation would change for the better....
Prefer to read (or listen to) this newsletter in your browser? Click here. 💡 The Big Idea: How I Built a Master Content Calendar for All My Writing Projects in Obsidian. This week, I spent some time figuring out how to create a master content calendar in Obsidian. I wanted something that would show me all the newsletters, blog posts, video scripts, and other broadcast emails I needed to send all in one place. But this isn't what I set out to build. This entire project started with what I...