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
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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: Our Values and Our Technology are Permanently Linked Whether we like it or not, our technology use reflects our values. And our “digital footprints” consist of not just the data platforms collect about us, but also the trail of attention and choices we leave behind us every single day. This can be uncomfortable to acknowledge. We’re really good at creating narratives about who we think we are and how we...
Prefer to read (or listen to) this newsletter in your browser? Click here. 💡 The Big Idea: Daily Questions + DataviewJS = 😍 I’ve been journaling in Obsidian ever since I first started using the app over 5 years ago. The Daily Notes make it perfect for this, though I’ve crafted my own workflows using a method called Daily Questions that measure my intentions rather than the outcomes. I explain the whole process here, but the short version is this: I have a Shortcut that prompts me for a score...
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...