knowledge management personal statement

A Complete Guide to Tagging for Personal Knowledge Management

• Posted in Building a Second Brain , How-To Guides , Note-taking , Organizing , Productivity , Technology
• On January 9, 2019
• BY Tiago Forte
• Last modified
• January 31, 2020

Estimated reading time: 25 minutes

Personal Knowledge Management (PKM)  is the practice of capturing the ideas and insights we encounter in our daily life, whether from personal experience, from books and articles, or from our work, and cultivating them over time to produce more creative, higher quality work. I teach people how to master PKM in my online course Building a Second Brain .

By collecting our knowledge in a centralized place outside of our own heads, we can create an engine of creative output – a “second brain” – to advance a career, build a business, or pursue a passion. By making this knowledge digital , we can reap the benefits of searchability, backups, syncing between devices, sharing with others, and more.

But there’s one aspect of personal knowledge management I haven’t fully addressed, which is tags. In the past, I criticized tags harshly as being too taxing, overly complicated, and low value for the effort required. I advised people not to use tags to manage their knowledge, favoring notebooks or folders instead.

But I’ve changed my mind since then. Over several years of observations, findings, and experiments, I’ve come to believe that tags could be the missing link in making our knowledge collections truly adaptable – able to reorient and reconfigure themselves on the fly to enable any goal we wish to pursue.

Let me tell you what I believe is required to unlock the immense potential of tagging for personal knowledge management.

Hierarchies vs. networks

There are two kinds of basic structures that permeate reality: hierarchies and networks.

We currently live in a “network age,” as the internet and digital technology have given people the ability to connect and collaborate directly with each other across the world. Organizational charts are flattening, social movements rise and fall without central direction, and borders of all kinds are becoming more porous as the internet flows across them.

Our infatuation with networks has led to a widely held belief that the era of hierarchies is over. That we now live in a golden age of individual self-expression and autonomy, uniquely enabled by networks. In this view, hierarchies are inherently restrictive, oppressive tools of control that we should abolish whenever possible, and networks are inherently open, democratic tools of personal liberation.

The history of information revolutions tells quite a different story. Networked information is not an exclusively modern invention, and hierarchies are not necessarily doomed. The tension and the balance between them has existed for millennia. Today we’re witnessing only the latest chapter in this history.

Definitions

But first, let’s settle on definitions.

A hierarchy is a system of nested groups. A standard organizational chart is a hierarchy, with employees grouped into business units and departments reporting to a centralized authority. Other kinds of hierarchies include government bureaucracies, biological taxonomies, and a system of menus in a software program. Hierarchies are inherently “top-down,” in that they are designed to enable centralized control from a single, privileged position.

A network , by contrast, has no “correct” orientation, and thus no bottom and no top. Each individual, or “node,” in a network functions autonomously, negotiating its own relationships and coalescing into groups. Examples of networks include a flock of birds, the World Wide Web, and the social ties in a neighborhood. Networks are inherently “bottom-up,” in that the structure emerges organically from small interactions without direction from a central authority.

These two structures are not mutually exclusive – in fact, they coexist everywhere. A company might have a formal organizational chart that is hierarchical, but at the same time, it is permeated by a network of “influence relationships” between employees that don’t respect official boundaries.

There is a network in the hierarchy.

Even the internet, the most prototypical example of a pure network, requires hierarchies to function. The servers that send us data are organized hierarchically, as are the packets of data they send. The web browsers that allow us to view webpages are designed hierarchically, as are the menus we navigate to find what we’re looking for.

There is a hierarchy in the network.

Hierarchies and networks are constantly giving rise to each other

Not only do networks and hierarchies peacefully coexist, they are constantly giving rise to each other. They are like symbiotic organisms, each one balancing and complementing the other.

One theory of the origins of life on Earth envisions the first multicellular life forms as self-organizing networks of simpler, single-cell organisms. First coming together to exchange byproducts and for mutual protection, over time a hierarchy emerged: a complex nervous system. These complex organisms in turn coalesced into even higher-order social networks, which provided even more survival benefits.

The online encyclopedia Wikipedia has long been praised for its crowdsourced, populist approach to gathering knowledge. But in recent years, Wikipedia’s rapid growth has forced it to develop a series of hierarchical control systems, such as a governance body and approval process. Networks can self-organize and spawn novel ideas and connections, but a hierarchy is required to give it form and structure to survive in the long term.

As John Seely Brown and Paul Duguid write in The Social Life of Information , “While it’s clear that self-organization is extraordinarily productive, so too is formal organization. Indeed, the two perform an intricate (and dynamic) balancing act, each compensating for the other’s failings. Self-organization overcomes formal organizing’s rigidity. Formal organization keeps at bay self-organization’s tendency to self-destruct.”

Hierarchies are effective for large-scale, slow-moving efforts in relatively predictable environments. They enable centralized direction and tight synchronization between many moving parts. In times of command and control warfare, mass producing a standardized product, or managing a vast bureaucracy, only a hierarchy will work.

Networks are good in small-scale, quickly changing situations in unpredictable environments.  They favor adaptability, flexibility, and individual autonomy. In times of guerrilla warfare, revolutionary innovation, or open-ended creativity, networks are indispensable.

Hierarchies and networks balance each other

Throughout history, every time we reach the limits of one form, the other emerges as a counter-balance.

Francis Bacon’s scientific method, first introduced in the 17th century, was a bottom-up, networked approach to building scientific understanding. Scientists were expected to reach their own conclusions and then verify each others’ work directly through scholarly networks. This approach contrasted with the tradition of receiving knowledge from hierarchical authorities like the church and state without questioning.

In the 18th century, the encyclopedia movement promoted most famously by Denis Diderot moved in the opposite direction. So much knowledge was being produced from so many sources that people sought a top-down categorization to make sense of it all. Thus the modern encyclopedia was born.

In modern times we face a similar dilemma. The explosion of digital information on the internet has overwhelmed every tool we have for classifying and categorizing it. Only a bottom-up, automated tool is capable of making sense of so much data. Google’s PageRank algorithm made it possible to assign importance and meaning to a webpage not through human judgment, but by analyzing keywords and hyperlinks. It is a bottom-up, algorithmic approach to making meaning out of the network.

Hierarchies are resilient

Despite the popularity of networks in the Information Age, the hierarchy persists as a simple, consistent way to organize knowledge.

Numerous studies (Bergman et al. 2008; Fitchett and Cockburn 2015; Teevan et al. 2004) have found that people strongly prefer to navigate their file systems manually, scanning for the file they’re looking for, as opposed to searching. Manual navigation gives people a concrete structure to navigate, with folders and labels giving them visual feedback and control in incremental steps (Jones and Dumais 1986).

Searching relies on declarative memory – remembering and entering the precise contents of a file – which is a higher-level brain function that consumes a lot of energy. Manual navigation, on the other hand, relies on procedural memory (Barreau 1995) – specifying partial information, recognizing clues and context, and receiving feedback (Teevan et al. 2004; Jones 2013). This kind of memory uses “older” parts of the brain that developed to navigate spatial environments, and thus comes to us more naturally.

In other words, it’s clear that hierarchies aren’t going away, even as our search tools become ever more sophisticated.

But the weakness of hierarchical systems is that knowledge remains siloed from other ideas that could spark interesting connections. Adding a network to our file systems can help us preserve the benefits of hierarchy, while infusing it with cross-connections and associations.

This is the true purpose of tagging in the modern digital age. Not to replace the hierarchy, but to complement it. Tags allow us to create alternative pathways that tunnel through the walls of our siloed folders, while leaving them just as we left them.

The intelligent use of space – tags as virtual spaces

Thinking of tags as “tunnels” through our knowledge connection allows us to make use of our rich understanding of humans’ relationship to physical space. Tunnels have a beginning and an end, a top and a bottom. We are comfortable navigating tunnels.

By adding a label to a collection of related notes, you can more easily think of them as a coherent group. They occupy a “space” in your notes (and in your mind) that makes them easier to examine, connect, share, and refer to. In this way, tags act like real spatial organization, without having to move anything from one place to another.

In his classic paper The Intelligent Use of Space , David Kirsh described three basic ways in which physical space can be utilized:

• To simplify perception : such as putting the washed mushrooms on the right of the chopping board and the unwashed ones on the left
• To simplify choice : such as laying out cooking ingredients in the order you will need them
• To simplify thinking : such as repeatedly reordering the Scrabble pieces so as to prompt new ideas for words

These are the same capabilities that tags provide: they help us to perceive, to choose, and to think about novel groupings of data on the fly. But crucially, to do these things to facilitate action , not just abstract thought.

Tagging notes across different notebooks allows us to perceive cross-disciplinary themes and patterns that defy simple categorization. Tagging all the notes we want to review for a project could make our choices easier, by creating a boundary around the information we’ll consider before taking action. And tagging notes according to which stage of a project they are best suited for can improve our thinking by allowing us to focus on only the most relevant information for the given moment.

In his book Supersizing the Mind , Andy Clark describes “simple labeling” (or tags) as a kind of “augmented reality trick.”  With the simple act of assigning labels to things, we invite the brain’s pattern recognition ability to identify their similarities and thereby predict what other items would fit the label too. We are essentially tuning the informational environment of our notes to highlight or suppress the features most relevant to the task at hand. Our mind shapes the environment, and then the environment shapes our mind.

By thinking of tags as virtual spaces that we can create on the fly, we recruit our intuitive sense of spatial navigation to make sense of complex, abstract topics. We are able to create more concrete conceptual structures, and use our procedural memory to navigate them. 

The next question is, “What do we want to use these spaces for ?”

Information mapping – tagging for the knowledge lifecycle

As useful as it is to think of tags as “virtual spaces,” this still leaves us with overwhelming complexity. Conceptual spaces are vast, ever-changing, and complex. The failure of every attempt throughout history to create a “universal taxonomy” for all human knowledge is a testament to how incredibly difficult (or impossible) this task is.

I believe that what is needed for tagging to fulfill its potential while remaining feasible is to change its function: from labeling the “conceptual meaning” of bits of knowledge (which is labor-intensive, time-consuming, and fragile), to tracking its lifecycle .

What is a “knowledge lifecycle”?

It is the series of stages that knowledge moves through on its way to becoming a finished product. The stages vary based on what exactly that finished product is, but can include:

• Identifying knowledge
• Capturing knowledge
• Verifying knowledge
• Interpreting knowledge
• Organizing knowledge
• Categorizing knowledge
• Disseminating knowledge
• Combining knowledge
• Creating knowledge
• Using knowledge
• Re-evaluating knowledge

The key feature of these stages is that there are relatively few of them, and they change slowly. The products of creativity are constantly evolving and in flux, but the creative process is ancient and unchanging. By tagging according to the stages of this process, we can facilitate creativity without having to constantly redesign our organizational systems.

This idea is anything but new. In 1969, Robert Horn first published a paper outlining “information mapping” as a new approach to creating technical reference books. It was a system of principles for identifying, categorizing, and interrelating information to make learning easier in complex, information-rich environments. It was first applied to the military and to computer instruction, and has since been applied to dozens of other fields and scenarios.

At the heart of information mapping is a project lifecycle methodology. It assumes that the overarching goal of knowledge collection is to put it to use in real projects. But there is not one fixed, predetermined use. The same chunk of knowledge might be used in different ways at different times. For example:

• Initial learning
• Relearning or review
• Briefing and browsing
• Updating with changes
• Using as job aids (preparing checklists, menus, or protocols)

All these activities may use the same bits of knowledge, but in different ways and at different levels of detail. A training manual has to be able to adapt and reorganize itself according to the needs of different kinds of readers, instead of offering a “one size fits all” version. Horn’s solution to this challenge was “information blocks” – organizing knowledge into standardized “chunks” that could be mixed and matched to suit a specific need.

Information blocks replaced paragraphs as the fundamental unit of meaning and presentation. Unstructured information was “clustered” into information blocks with clear labels, which were linked together and further refined in the writing process.

Horn and his collaborators identified 40 types of information blocks that could be categorized as one of seven types:

• Classification

These types were standardized across all kinds of topics and projects. Research by Horn and others indicated that about 80% of virtually any subject matter could be classified using this system. It was found that by chunking a body of information in this way early on in a project, there were tremendous benefits at every subsequent stage.

Information mapping was, on the surface, designed to make writers’ jobs easier, specifying standardized ways of gathering and presenting the right information for a given document. But it also made the readers’ job easier. With each information block labeled according to its type and purpose, readers were able to scan a block and quickly understand its content and structure. This allowed them to customize the learning process: they could read from beginning to end if it was their first pass, or go directly to the block most relevant to their needs if they were already familiar with the subject. The labels made it easier to manage the intermediate stages of what they were reading, increasing reader’s confidence in their ability to understand and make use of the text.

Information mapping was an important step toward “Just-in-Time Learning.” Instead of giving readers a massive text and expecting them to hold it all in their mind until some future, unspecified date, information was structured so that it could be retrieved quickly and efficiently just as it was needed.

What can information mapping teach us about tagging? Decades of research in this field have shown that the best use for labels is as an output mechanism, not an input mechanism . Horn’s breakthrough was distinguishing two very different functions of information – learning and reference – and recognizing that we needed to enable flexible, dynamic ways of re-organizing blocks of information to suit these different needs.

By labeling our notes when they are being used, instead of when they are created, we move the work of tagging as close as possible to the problem it is meant to solve. And by making that work conditional on the execution of a project, we ensure that every bit of effort spent in tagging is put to use.

How to use tags effectively for personal knowledge management

Building on that foundation, these are my four recommendations for how to use tags effectively in personal knowledge management.

#1 Tag notes according to the actions taken or deliverables created with them

My first recommendation is to change the function of tags from trying to describe broad themes like “psychology” and “investing” to tracking the use or function of a piece of information. This could include tagging the note:

• By action – What actions have you taken (or will you take) with this note?
• By deliverable – What have you used (or will you use) this note to deliver?
• By stage of your knowledge lifecycle – Which stage is this note currently in (or does it best belong to)?

Tags should answer the question “Is this relevant to my current need?” just enough to make the next action clear. Don’t let your ideas get bogged down in layers of categories and classifications. Speed them through your creative process and out into the real world.

Here are a few examples of tags that have been applied according to the use or function of a chunk of knowledge:

• Tags for [reviewed] and [added], for tracking which notes have been reviewed for a deliverable, and which have been incorporated into it
• Tags that designate the kind of information a note contains, such as [content], [admin], and [meeting notes]
• Tags that track the status of notes through a workflow, such as [inactive], [active], [next], and [completed]

Here is an example of notes collected over the course of a year related to my online course Building a Second Brain . In the right-hand column you can see a few different kinds of tags that I use to segment this stream of notes into distinct types:

• [reviewed] means that I’ve looked it over and considered it for use in the course; [added] means I’ve incorporated it into the course in some way
• [admin] designates notes that don’t contain subject matter content, but are used for planning or technical information
• [PARA,] [PS], and [JITPM] refer to the three main parts of the course, allowing me to only consider notes for one at a time
• [basb] designates notes that I’d like to consider for the book I’m writing on the same topic; this allows me to “extract” a subset of notes for a different project, without removing them from this notebook

Notice that these tags don’t tell me what each note contains, or try to label them with every possible association. All they do is facilitate their incorporation into a concrete project, which is my online course. Because there are so few tags needed, I can use a few different kinds of tags at once without cluttering the notebook.

I can perform a search for one of these tags, and click this button to show only results from this notebook:

I am shown only notes with the [admin] tag within this notebook:

This use of tags is reminiscent of the “kanban” cards in Toyota’s just-in-time manufacturing system. Instead of long, complex forms detailing every part in a bin, a simple card reveals at a glance the most important things: what it is and where it goes.

Why did Toyota create such a system of cards? Why couldn’t each part simply be placed on the assembly line in the correct order?

In post-war Japan, there were not enough factories and not enough demand to justify dedicating an entire line to one model of car, as was done in the U.S. with Ford’s Model T. The small batches of different kinds of cars that the market demanded required them to create networks of production, with different lines overlapping and sharing the same machines. One of the uses of kanban cards was to track an item through the factory regardless of which machines it passed through, in what order, and at what speed. Each item was “tagged” with its current state, so there was never any doubt as to how it should be handled

This is much the same situation we face today as knowledge workers. We rarely have enough demand for a single activity to dedicate ourselves solely to it, but instead work on an ever-changing mix of different projects and activities that wax and wane unpredictably. And these activities use the same scarce resources – our intellect, time, energy, and skills.

We should use tags in the same way that Toyota used kanban cards: to create intertwined networks in which the right “part” (or note) can be pulled from our “inventory” (or knowledge collection) at just the right moment. I should be able to capture a note today while reading a book on financial planning, and know that it will show up when I need an insight into that subject, whether that is next week, next month, or next year. The tags should remember exactly where I left off, so I don’t have to.

With tags, we have the opportunity to network our knowledge. But these networks shouldn’t be merely conceptual. They should be networks of production , pushing our ideas through our creative process and into the hands of people who can benefit from them.

This approach to tagging addresses each of the pitfalls of tagging I identified in Tagging is Broken :

• Tags should be easy to remember: since there is a limited number of actions you take with your notes, you have only a small number of options to remember
• Tags should be easy to decide on: it is usually easier to decide how a note is going to be used, rather than what it means or what it’s about
• Tags should be concrete: tagging according to actions and deliverables is far more concrete than theoretical categories
• Tags should enable the right behaviors: in this case, using tags to manage the stages of a workflow enables the productive use of knowledge, instead of mere cataloguing
• Tags should be forgiving: by maintaining tags as a supplement to a hierarchical organizational system, we reap most of their benefits without having to adhere to them perfectly

#2 Add structure slowly, in stages and only as needed, using accumulated material to guide you in what structures are needed

It is very tempting when organizing knowledge to decide on one kind of structure upfront, and then stick to it no matter what. Although there are benefits to consistency, when it comes to personal knowledge management, the most important priority is that it suits your day to day needs. Even the perfect organizational system, if you stop using it, is not perfect.

One of the most valuable features of digital information is that it is highly malleable . It can change form almost instantaneously, with nothing more than a few clicks or taps. We can take advantage of this malleability by adding structure incrementally , in small steps, as our knowledge of a subject accumulates and our needs change.

For example, if I become interested in learning Spanish for a vacation, I might save some useful Spanish words I learn to my “Travel” notebook. No structure is needed at this point, because everything I know about the topic is contained in one note.

But let’s say that I have such a good trip, I decide I want to explore the possibility of moving to Mexico. I start collecting notes with travel gear, blog posts explaining how to rent an apartment, options for cell phone plans, visa application forms, and guides on which credit cards to apply for, among other things. That original “Spanish vocab” note is now just one among many notes. The usage of that knowledge has changed. At this point, it makes sense to create a new notebook called “Move to Mexico” (a “project” according to my PARA methodology) and move these notes into it.

After a few months of research, I may have gathered several dozen notes, and the notebook might be starting to get too cluttered to find what I’m looking for. At this point I can easily “segment” the notebook by tagging notes according to broad types like [apartment], [language], [logistics], [financial], [gear], [research], [writing], etc. I suggest using a small number of types so you can see your options at a glance just by looking at the Tags column.

Clicking the “Tags” header at the top of the right-hand column will sort the notes according to type, which allows you to see related notes in one place while keeping them in the same notebook:

Let’s say a few months pass, and now I’m actually living and working in Mexico City. At this point, a single notebook no longer covers the many facets of life in a new city. I’ll need to create several new notebooks, including projects like “Find gym” and “Activate cell phone service,” areas of responsibility such as “Apartment,” and resources like “Mexican food” and “Spanish language.”

It wouldn’t make sense to have created all these notebooks upfront, when I had so little to store in them. It is effortless, once the relevant categories have revealed themselves, to move notes into these new notebooks (right click > Move notes to…):

With this approach, I’m only adding as much structure as is needed for a given stage of my learning journey. This helps ensure that I’m spending most of my time engaging with the content, instead of maintaining a complex organizational system. You would think that adding the structure later is more difficult, but in fact it is easier: instead of trying to guess which categories will be needed, I can look at what I’ve already collected and pick the categories that perfectly suit it.

How do you know which divisions or categories to use? Again, instead of trying to guess that upfront, start with the laziest approach: simply collect whatever seems interesting on a given topic. When the time comes, and only when the time comes, look at what you’ve already captured organically and look for patterns. The best time to do this is when starting a project that might draw on these notes, because often the divisions will come from the project itself.

For example, let’s say you’re hired by a company to improve their hiring process. You might have dozens or even hundreds of notes related to hiring if that is a service you provide. But the way the project is organized will often tell you what parts or stages are most relevant. Perhaps the contract is split between “Résumé collection” and “Interviewing.” By reviewing your notes retrospectively and tagging them with these two labels, you can very quickly re-orient your notes related to hiring along these lines. Using an organizational scheme that matches the structure of the project will make that project much easier to execute.

I’m constantly surprised at how clearly divisions appear, as long as I’m starting with a batch of real notes . If I try to theorize about the correct tags before I’ve actually collected anything, it’s always off the mark. The magic of digital information is that it is easy and frictionless to make such retrospective changes. This kind of backward-looking reorganization also allows us to jump into new topics much faster: instead of spending my precious energy getting set up when I’m excited about something, I plunge directly into the heart of the subject, capturing whatever seems interesting and trusting that I can sort it out later.

There is another benefit to this method: it is perfectly okay to not tag a note at all. So long as  you’re not using tags as your primary organizational system, there is no chance that a note left untagged will completely fall through the cracks. It will always be right there in the notebook where you left it. This avoids the frustrating experience of trying to force yourself to think of a tag for a note, even when nothing comes to mind, because otherwise it will be lost completely.

The lesson here is to not create structure before it’s needed. By adding just enough structure, at just the right moment, the work required to maintain it will always feel like a welcome relief, instead of a heavy burden.

#3 Tag notes according to their internal, external, and social context, and status

In their book The Science of Managing Our Digital Stuff , from which all the studies in this article are drawn, Ofer Bergman and Steve Whittaker identify the four attributes of a piece of information that can be used to describe its “context.”

• Internal context includes the thoughts, feelings, associations, concerns, and considerations you have about a note
• External context includes the other items that you are dealing with while interacting with a note, such as other notes, documents, folders, or apps
• Social context refers to other people who are related to the note, such as project collaborators, the person who recommended the source, or who it was shared with
• Current status refers to any actions taken with the note, or any deliverables it was used in

These attributes are universal in that they apply to any kind of note from any source, yet are also easy to apply. They don’t try to describe the content of the note; only its context . These aren’t abstract labels requiring intensive thinking. They are simple questions that can be answered by looking around at what you’re doing. They can be added incrementally and as needed. They will enable you to more easily return to the state of mind you were in the last time you interacted with a note, using contextual clues that our minds are made to understand.

Here is an Evernote note template that can be used to add these four kinds of context at the top of any note, including a  short video I created on how to save the note as a template to your account. Here’s an example of the template filled out:

#4 Develop customized, profession-specific taxonomies

The history of organizing information is largely concerned with “taxonomies” – hierarchical systems for categorizing information in one all-encompassing model.

Passionate debates about which is the “correct” taxonomy go back millennia. Aristotle believed that knowledge could be classified according to its substance, quantity, quality, relation, place, time, position, state, action, & passion. Francis Bacon categorized all human knowledge into memory (i.e. history), reason (i.e. philosophy), and imagination (i.e. fine arts). The 20th century Indian librarian Shiyali Ramamrita Ranganathan argued that any document could be defined according to its personality, matter, energy, space, and time.

The goal has always been to create a single, completely comprehensive ordering of knowledge that any future idea can be placed into. But over many hundreds of years, as our knowledge has exploded in size and complexity, the possibility of a universal taxonomy has faded. It is now quite clear that any such taxonomy will either be too broad to be useful, or too narrow to be universal. The dream of a universal taxonomy is dead.

But for specific fields and professions, it is clear that taxonomies have tremendous value. Biology would be a hopeless tangle of overlapping specialties without the Linnaean taxonomy. Chemistry would be futile without the periodic table. Trends in art would be impossible to make sense of without schools and periods. As long as you can rely on a “controlled vocabulary” of agreed upon terms, it makes a lot of sense to put everything into a category.

A student in one of my courses explained his system for writing scripts (emphasis mine):

“If you know what the constituent parts are of your particular art form, you can collect “snippets” of evocative ideas for any one of them in a single notebook and use tags to label them. So, for example, I have a “Film Ideas” folder where I store ideas and then tag them with one of the following labels:

• C = description of Characters who could be used in a story.
• L = interesting and visual Location.
• O= curious or evocative Object.
• S = loaded or revealing Situation.
• A = unusual or revealing Act.
• T = any Theme that intrigues you or that you see embodied in life

Then I can see all of these notes side by side and if any particular combination of elements sticks out to me, I have the beginnings of a story idea .”

Such a taxonomy can be even more specific than your field or profession, since you are the same person recording and retrieving this knowledge. They can be “personomies,” or personal tag vocabularies, containing the terms that you use to refer to the parts of your work. This personomy is something you will have to develop yourself, but your profession or industry is a good place to start.

The scalability of tagging

In my experience, it is only necessary to use tags when your collection becomes formidable. After nearly 10 years of note-taking and more than 8,000 notes created, I am just starting to seriously run up against the limits of a no-tagging system.

This finding has been echoed in the research. In the 1960s and 1970s, IBM conducted a series of experiments with their new Storage and Information Retrieval System (STAIRS), one of the first systems in which the computer could search the entire text of documents. They found that search accuracy could run as high as 75 to 80%. They happily proclaimed the “death of meta-data.” Why spend time and money having humans index documents when the computer could just search everything?

But there was a fatal flaw in the experiments. They used small collections containing only a few hundred documents. It was assumed that these results would apply equally well to large collections, as long as they had enough computer power. But it was a language problem, not a computer problem.

In the 1980s, researchers David C. Blair and M.E. Maron tested a full-text litigation support system containing about 40,000 documents with 350,000 pages of text. The lawyers depended on this system to retrieve all the documents that might help them win their cases. But Blair and Maron showed that recall averaged only about 20%. The system was retrieving only about 1 in every 5 relevant documents! And this was with trained researchers.

The trouble is that language has numerous, often vague, overlapping mappings to ideas. As David Blair recounts from a real example, a system with 1,000 documents contained 100 that contain the word “computer,” with the word being used 10 different ways. But in a system with 100,000 documents, 7,100 contained the word, and it was used in 84 different ways. The number of possible meanings and interpretations explodes almost as fast as the information itself.

This is where tags come in. They can provide the essential missing piece of data that computers still cannot determine: what a note is about . As long as you follow the recommendations in this article – using tags to track where a chunk of knowledge is in the knowledge lifecycle, adding structure and tags slowly and incrementally, and adding contextual data to notes – you can create paths of action for your future self to follow, without being burdened by rigid bureaucracy.

In the context of personal knowledge management, we need both hierarchies and networks. Notebooks allow us to gather a batch of related material in one place, and look for patterns and associations between the things we’ve collected. Tags add a network to this hierarchy – a distribution network for more efficiently exporting our ideas into the external world.

Ambient findability

“Ambient findability” is a term coined by information architect Peter Morville in a book of the same name. It describes the practice of creating environments where relevant information can be found and used, whether that is a library or a smartphone. When an item is “findable,” it means that it is easy to discover and locate.

The key skill in navigating such an environment is wayfinding, which refers to “the series of things people know and do in order to get from one place to another, inside or outside.” It is a skill we developed to navigate physical environments that we’ve since adapted to virtual environments. But the virtual worlds we’ve created lack the natural landmarks we rely on in the natural world. They lack trees, rivers, seashores, and paths. In the digital world, we have to create them ourselves, out of words.

But the way we’ve used tags in the past comes from a different era. Morville recounts his memories of “online searching” at the University of Michigan’s School of Information and Library Studies, in the ancient epoch of 1993:

“We searched through databases via dumb terminals connected to the Dialog company’s mainframe. Results were output to a dot matrix printer. And Dialog charged by the minute. This made searching quite stressful. Mistakes were costly in time and money. So, we’d spend an hour or more in the library beforehand, consulting printed thesauri for descriptors, considering how to combine Boolean operators most efficiently, and plotting our overall search strategy. A computer’s time was more precious than a human’s, so we sweated every keyword .”

Elaborate, precise tagging systems made sense at that time, when every operation cost money. But the challenge today is not to conserve computer power, but to spend it. Instead of wasting hours of precious human time with laborious tagging just to make a computer’s job easier, we should generously spend the computer’s power to make our job easier.

Thanks to Andrew Brož, Chris Harris, Sachin Rekhi, and Jessica Malnik for their feedback and contributions

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The Power of Personal Knowledge Management [A 2023 Guide]

Hannah is a semi-recovered perfectionist and longtime subscriber to the squiggly model of success. She spent 11 years learning from the best at brands like HubSpot and Food52 and loves running, cooking, and helping people feel A++ at work. 🤗

💡 What is personal knowledge management?

Personal knowledge management (or PKM, for short) is:

• A term to describe how we collect, sort, store, search, recall, and share information.
• An intentional system to manage the flood of information—and ideas!—that flow through our brains on a daily basis.
• A bottom-up approach to knowledge management.

How many tasks do you do just infrequently enough that you can’t do them again without a refresher? How much time do you spend struggling to remember if, when, and where you jotted down notes for your future self? How frustrating is it to know you did something successfully before, without being able to quickly remember how?  

It’s not a personal failing. Or a question of intelligence. It’s a side effect of the sheer volume of information available today.

• We have an average of 70,000 thoughts a day . 
• A recent study reported we read an average of 1,968,000 words on our browsers, looked at 1,596 articles, received 6,852 Slack messages, visited 9,888 pages, did 3,528 searches, and spent 540 hours viewing, creating, and editing documents in 2022 alone. 
• Over the course of a lifetime, each of our brains will hold 1 quadrillion pieces of information . 🤯

If information overload is the new normal, personal knowledge management is the new necessity. 

In this article, we’ll go deep on personal knowledge management (PKM), explain the benefits of building a second brain (especially if you feel too busy to build anything!), share a four-step framework for effective PKM, round up nine popular PKM tools, and flag a few mistakes to avoid when creating a personal knowledge management system.  

What goes into a personal knowledge management system?

If you’re familiar with personal information management (PIM) and knowledge management (KM), you can think of what goes into personal knowledge management as a blend of both.

If that sounds like a lot of acronyms, here’s what you need to know:

• Personal information management → Covers the way you find, save, and apply information in context. 
• Knowledge management → Covers how you create and share knowledge. 
• Personal knowledge management → Covers how you do all of the above, in pursuit of individual and/or organizational goals. 

If you subscribe to the idea that we’re all responsible for our own growth and development—and everybody wins when we share what we’ve learned—personal knowledge management is a prerequisite.

Here are a few things to consider as you build your personal productivity stack:

What’s missing from this list? Tools that help you convert existing knowledge into new knowledge. More to come on the purpose of a personal knowledge management system in a second!

Personal knowledge management system goals

There are just as many ways to set up a personal knowledge management system as there are reasons to do it.

We touched on some common ones above—including increased productivity, efficiency, and accountability. Here are six more to add to the list:

• Faster time-to-learn. 🙌 So you can wrap your head around new data, technologies, tools, processes, and procedures more effectively—and learn from failure and feedback more quickly.
• Faster time-to-remember. 🕺 So you can spend less time searching and more time making an impact.
• Better focus. 🤓 So you can keep your brain from feeling like it has too many tabs open—and work on what matters most, in clear alignment with your goals.
• More knowledge applied. 🙏 So you and your team can shift from incubating knowledge to actioning new ideas.
• Fewer information silos. 🧡 So everyone's equipped to teach, learn, and do their best work.
• Smarter energy expenditure. 🎉 So you can spend less energy moving through cognitive overload and more energy sharing key insights with others.

Speaking of cognitive overload…let’s talk about something many of us wish we had: a second brain.

Benefits to building a second brain

Fun fact: Having access to a second brain isn’t just a pipe dream. 

You may already be familiar with the second brain movement. If yes—see you in two paragraphs! If you’re scratching your head—stick with us. 

There are two concepts to know. A second brain is an external digital filing system with ideas and insights to help you do your best work. “ Building a second brain ” refers to the act of expanding your ability to retain and apply knowledge.

None of us can remember everything—and it wouldn’t make sense to try. There are countless benefits to having a literal extension of your mind, including: 

• Less information overload (with a carefully curated information stream)
• A centralized “holding tank” for inspiration and insights gained through experience 
• Decreased forgetfulness 
• Less time spent inadvertently reinventing the wheel
• Deepened subject matter expertise 
• An organized way to stay current with new developments in your field 
• Increased ability to make connections between seemingly disparate pieces of information
• A valuable body of information to advance new initiatives and goals 
• More mental space to imagine, create, and be in the present moment
• A collection of knowledge that appreciates in value over time
• A chance to take full advantage of all the learning opportunities around you

A four-step framework for personal knowledge management

To reiterate, a five-star personal knowledge management system isn’t just a storage unit. It’s more like highly organized chaos, with a high probability of moments of brilliance. A good PKM system will help you minimize time spent sifting through the boxes, and maximize the collective impact of the invisible threads connecting the contents inside.

Tiago Forte , the mastermind behind the movement to build a second brain, has a four-step framework for personal knowledge management that needs no improvement. It’s called CODE, and it stands for Capture, Organize, Distill, and Express .

Step one: Capture

If CODE is the equivalent of a supply chain of information, you can think of the capture stage as the place where raw materials come together. Your antenna for interesting information should always be up. Whether it’s an article, an infographic, a webinar, a podcast, or a way of doing something, you should have a way to bookmark it (literally or figuratively).

Step two: Organize

To transform your raw materials into building blocks, you need a way to categorize everything you’ve captured. You might think about projects (with a start and end date), areas of responsibility, resources, and archives (to move inactive items as needed).  

Step three: Distill

Now you have lots of useful things—maybe too many. This is a good time to extract the knowledge that’s most relevant to your current goals. 

Step four: Express 

Capturing, organizing, and distilling are relatively easy, with a little discipline. But if you never go beyond those three stages, you’re keeping valuable information (too) close to your chest. To avoid information hoarding and promote knowledge sharing , it’s important to express what you found into the world.

Nine tools for personal knowledge management

Random acts of knowledge management won’t move the needle for long. But systems, habits, and top rated tools will. 💪🏾

Used to sending yourself emails, filling up your iPhone notes, bouncing between legal pads, fishing crumpled Post-its out of the recycling, throwing notes into assorted Google Docs, and/or scrolling through way too many browser bookmarks to find what you need?

There’s a better way. Or—more accurately—multiple better ways. Here are nine personal knowledge management tools waiting to transform the way you work. 

Tango—to create how-to guides, in seconds

Tango is a popular Chrome extension that takes the pain out of documenting processes by automatically generating how-to guides while you work. Learn how to execute any process on your browser or desktop once, offload it to Tango, and click “Guide Me” to do it again in the future—effortlessly.

Build your second brain with Tango.

Notion—to centralize all your knowledge in one place.

Notion is an all-in-one workspace for tasks, notes, wikis, databases, and pretty much anything else you can think of. The simple but powerful platform makes it easy to retrieve relevant information from the past to achieve your goals and projects faster.

Roam Research—to organize related thoughts 

Roam is a note taking and knowledge management tool that allows users to organize related thoughts without having to worry about which file and folder the thought needs to go into. They’ve been called everything from "the Superhuman of Notes" to a "magic junkyard for connecting ideas."

Obsidian—to make and follow connections with ease

Obsidian is a powerful and extensible knowledge base that works on top of your local folder of plain text files. Their graph view depicts your knowledge at a glance. With group, filter, and display options, it couldn’t be easier to see things your way.

Logseq—to give your notes a safe space

Logseq is a privacy-first, open-source knowledge base that makes it a breeze to organize thoughts and information using a combination of plain text and Markdown. You can add tags to notes and create links between related notes to make it easier to find and navigate your information.

Kinopio—to build new ideas and solve hard problems

Kinopio is a mind-mapping tool that allows you to take basic notes and sketch interconnected ideas. It works the way your mind works, with space to brainstorm, research, moodboard, plan and take notes.

Craft—to create beautiful, shareable docs 

Craft is clutch when it comes time to express your newfound knowledge in words. Craft AI Assistant will instantly improve your writing and take your documents to the next level, and with Craft Connect, you can send and receive info from a variety of apps.

Nuclino—to share information in real time

Nuclino is a cloud-based team collaboration software that allows teams to quickly collaborate and share information. It brings together knowledge, docs, and projects together in one place, so you can spread recent, relevant discoveries with the people who matter most.

Anytype.io—to break down barriers between applications

Anytype a personal knowledge base and digital brain that allows you to capture, describe, and connect information. Privacy is paramount for this one. Any digital assets and communities you create are truly yours, and you get to decide how your data is used, shared, and valued.

Five mistakes to avoid when creating a personal knowledge management system

Learning is easier when you can learn from those who came before you. Here are five things to avoid when you create your own PKM system:

• Overcomplicating the system. 🤦🏽 You want something appealing to use and easy to maintain. 
• Punting on prioritization. 😅 What’s a total joy? Surfacing what’s most useful with little to zero digging.
• Failing to use (and integrate) the right tools. ⚙️ To build a second brain, you need to take advantage of the latest technology.
• Not considering security and privacy. 🔒 Protect your sensitive information and data—the first time and every time.
• Forgetting to back things up. 🆘 Peace of mind is what we’re going for, here!

By avoiding these common mistakes, you can create a personal knowledge management system that is effective, efficient, and easy to use.

The bottom line

As you might have guessed, personal knowledge management helps us manage our knowledge. But it also helps us apply that knowledge—and share it with others. 

By shifting from capturing, organizing, and distilling information to expressing it, we can quickly move from incubating knowledge to actioning new ideas.

Personal knowledge management is a key part of continuous learning, with outcomes like improved productivity and efficiency, increased creativity and innovation, better decision making, and enhanced personal and professional development.

Popular tools for personal knowledge management include: Tango, Roam Research, Obsidian, Logseq, Kinopio, Craft, Nuclino, and Anytype.io.

PKM stands for personal knowledge management, and refers to a systematic approach to collecting, storing, accessing, applying, and sharing new insights.

Keep in touch

We'll never show up empty-handed (how rude!).

You may also like:

How To Get Started With Personal Knowledge Management

The idea of a robotic brain has intrigued science fiction writers for almost a century . But since no one has managed to replace the human brain, personal knowledge management (PKM) is the next best thing. It’s like having a second brain to capture and sort through all the information you’d otherwise lose.

In this article, we skip past the theory of PKM and get straight to business: laying out 3 steps to build your own personal knowledge management system.

If you’re interested in personal knowledge management, we can safely assume a few things:

• You consume a lot of information
• You spend much of your life online (or in digital spaces)
• You’re ambitious — you have a lot of goals and interests and are itching to make progress on them

A PKM system will help you address each of these realities: retain important information, organize your digital world, and of course, hit your personal goals.

Let's get started.

1. Identify your active projects

The easiest way to get started with PKM is to write down the projects you’re actively working on. A week's worth of projects is the sweet spot that will cover your most important stuff.

Don't worry about whether your manager would define your projects the same way as you. This list is personal to your knowledge management.

Why do we recommend focusing on active projects instead of say, areas of responsibility? Forte Labs has a great article on this topic. It explains that breaking your work into projects helps you generate the novelty that’s essential to motivation, especially long term. It's similar to the Zettelkasten method of developing knowledge clusters based on the topics that intrigue you most.

Now, think about the types of knowledge that you tap into while working on your projects. Which of these categories do you fall into?

You figure that information (from books, webpages, presentations, etc.) is more relevant when filtered through your own brain. Hence, you tend to take and save notes rather than saving the original source.

Resource collector

You think it’s faster and easier to save resources in their original form, and then have your memory jogged by revisiting the source when you need it.

Both approaches are fine — but it will impact the personal knowledge management tool you choose.

2. Find the right PKM tool

These days, personal knowledge management is handled almost exclusively with digital tools. This lets you take advantage of sophisticated search and tagging functionality; plus, it's easier to collect digital resources where you consume them.

But as the biggest PKM nerds will tell you , you don't want to over-invest in a tool that you haven't fully tested.

So how do you find the right personal knowledge management app?

Decide which of these statements is most true for you:

1. You use a wide variety of knowledge sources, and you want to save them all.

Workona is designed to organize everything for a project in one place: notes, tasks, links, cloud docs, and even browser tabs (optional). This makes it easy to switch contexts without losing your place.

Workona includes built-in notes and support for any cloud app (plus uploaded files). So if you're both a note-taker and resource collector, it's an excellent choice.

2. You prefer to take deep notes and spend time studying them.

A connected note-taking app like Roam or Obsidian can map the connection between your notes. In theory, this will help you tease out themes and insights over time.

3. You want to manage notes in a shared team setting.

If your priority is to build a knowledge base for a group of people, keep it simple with a wiki-style app like Notion .

4. You prefer to mark up sources to help you remember information.

A web clipper + notetaking system like Evernote could be a good choice for you. Keep in mind that Evernote isn’t being developed at the same rapid pace as the newer apps in this list.

3. Develop habits for knowledge capture & cleanup

When it comes to your personal knowledge management, habits are where the rubber hits the road. Specifically, you’ll need to develop habits for these behaviors:

• Capturing knowledge
• Cleaning up obsolete knowledge or finished projects

Capturing knowledge is easy enough. For example, in Workona you can click Opt + D (or Ctrl + D) from any webpage to save it. Or, click the blue “+” button in a workspace to see all your options for adding content.

It takes a little more effort to clean up old projects and remove knowledge that’s no longer relevant. In our article on How To Organize Multiple Projects , we recommend using BJ Fogg’s Tiny Habit method to keep projects clean and organized:

After I [ anchor event], I will do [ tiny habit that ladders up to a new desired behavior]

Your version might look like this:

After I [ sit down with my morning cup of coffee], I will [ spend 1 minute removing outdated information from a project workspace]

Be sure to celebrate consistently after following the recipe. According to Dr. Fogg’s research, this step actually wires the habit into your brain.

The world of personal knowledge management can be intimidating. But you already have a system in place; you just need to think about it consciously — and find the right tool to support your ambitions.

If you’re ready to improve your personal or team knowledge management, try Workona. It helps you organize everything for a project in one place: cloud docs, links, notes & tasks. With over one million workspaces created, Workona is transforming how modern work is done.

Knowledge management

Ivan Andreev

Demand Generation & Capture Strategist, Valamis

February 22, 2022 · updated April 2, 2024

14 minute read

Taking advantage of all the expertise within an organization is a great way to maximize its potential. Companies have a well of untapped knowledge within their workforce that is lying dormant or siloed to individual staff or departments.

With the proper management structures in place, this knowledge can be found, stored, and made accessible to the wider workforce, offering tangible business benefits.

What is knowledge management?

Knowledge management in practice, types of knowledge, examples of knowledge management.

• Importance of knowledge management

Benefits of knowledge management

Knowledge management process, knowledge management methods, what are knowledge management systems.

Knowledge management is the conscious process of defining, structuring, retaining, and sharing the knowledge and experience of employees within an organization.

As organizations evolve, expand into new areas, and define their approach to business, they develop significant institutional knowledge . This information is invaluable to the company. Imparting it to new or less experienced staff is vital for maintaining successful operations.

The primary goal of knowledge management is facilitating the connection of staff looking for information, or institutional knowledge, with the people who have it.

With practical knowledge management in place, organizations can spread information and raise the level of expertise held by specific individuals or teams to improve the efficiency of their practices.

It often refers to training and learning in an organization or of its customers. It consists of a cycle of creating, sharing, structuring, and auditing knowledge to maximize the effectiveness of an organization’s collective expertise.

Knowledge management can be separated into three main areas:

• Accumulating knowledge
• Storing knowledge
• Sharing knowledge

By accumulating and storing the staff’s knowledge, companies hold onto what has made them successful in the past. In addition, sharing this information throughout the organization informs staff of past approaches that improve performance or better inform new strategies.

To achieve the goal of knowledge management, companies have to enable and promote a culture of learning and development, creating an environment where employees are encouraged to share information to better the collective workforce.

How to conduct a skills gap analysis and what to do next

Start building your foundation for strategic workforce development.

When discussing knowledge management, it is helpful to consider the different types of knowledge and how it is possible to share them within an organization.

The information knowledge management covers can generally be broken down into three main types:

1. Explicit knowledge is knowledge and information that can be easily codified and taught, such as how to change the toner in a printer and mathematical equations.

2. Implicit knowledge is knowledge that explains how best to implement explicit knowledge. For example, consider discussing a task with an experienced co-worker. They may provide explicit steps detailing how to complete the job. But they may also use their understanding of the situation to consider different options and decide the best approach for your given circumstances. The experienced employee utilizes and shares their implicit knowledge to improve how the team operates.

3. Tacit knowledge is knowledge gained through experience. Therefore, it is more intuitive and less easy to share with others. Examples of tacit knowledge are “know-hows”, innovative thinking, and understanding body language.

While knowledge management for implicit and tacit knowledge can be harder to implement, with correct procedures in place, you can ensure all relevant information is shared around the company and retained as staff retire or move on.

Utilizing all the expertise in your company benefits the business as a whole, creating best practices for everyday tasks, improving situational awareness, developing employee intuition for course corrections, and enhancing organizational capacity.

Staff retiring

An employee’s knowledge and skillset grow as they spend time with an organization. As a result, staff typically retire with a wealth of expertise that the company needs to mine using efficient knowledge management processes in order to reduce disruption and prevent workforce knowledge gaps.

This means identifying and capturing the meaningful information that needs to be retained by the organization and determining the best approach for storing and distribution.

Employee transfer or promotion

When staff change positions within a company, they must develop additional skillsets and expertise to match their new role.

Efficient knowledge management procedures simplify delivering this information to create a seamless transition from one position to another.

Why is knowledge management important?

Knowledge management is important because it boosts the efficiency of an organization’s decision-making ability.

By making sure that all employees have access to the overall expertise held within the organization, a smarter workforce is built that is more able to make quick, informed decisions, benefiting the entire company.

Knowledge management allows innovation to grow within the organization, customers benefit from increased access to best practices, and employee turnover is reduced.

The importance of knowledge management is growing every year. As the marketplace becomes ever more competitive, one of the best ways to stay ahead of the curve is to build your organization in an intelligent, flexible manner. You must have the ability to spot issues from a distance and be able to respond quickly to new information and innovations.

Companies begin the knowledge management process for many different reasons.

• A merger or acquisition could spur the need for codifying knowledge and encouraging teams to share their expertise.
• The imminent retirement of key employees could demonstrate the need to capture their knowledge.
• An upcoming recruitment drive shows the wisdom in using knowledge management to assist in training new employees.

52% of respondents in Deloitte’s 2021 Global Human Capital Trends Survey stated workforce movement as the driving force behind proactively developing knowledge management strategies.

Whatever the reason is, implementing knowledge management processes offers tangible benefits that drive value. This is backed up by research , showing knowledge management positively influences dynamic capabilities and organizational performance.

A survey of over 286 people working in knowledge management across a range of industries, locations, and company sizes found the most significant benefits to be:

• Reduced time to find information
• Reduced time for new staff to become competent
• Reduced operational costs
• Improved customer satisfaction
• Improved bid win/loss ratio

Making knowledge management a significant part of a company’s leadership approach produces a more streamlined workforce with faster onboarding and well-informed staff that provide a better experience for customers.

Knowledge management is a critical tool for any company that wants to increase its bottom line and market share .

IDC estimates that Fortune 500 companies lose $31 billion from not sharing knowledge within their organization every year. Studies estimate improving employee access to information and tools could save organizations roughly $2 million a month for every 4000 employees.

Implementing effective knowledge management requires proactive strategies and incorporating multiple new processes.

Companies have to uncover the existing knowledge available to them, understand how to spread this information to produce additional value, and plan what this looks like in action.

Knowledge management process. Credit: Valamis. ( CC BY 4.0 )

1. Discovery

Every organization has multiple sources of knowledge, from employees to data and records.

This could be the education and skillsets staff bring to the job, the experience and unique expertise they develop on the job, or hard drives of data that can positively affect the business with proper analysis.

During the discovery process, organizations must identify all the available sources of knowledge, with a particular emphasis on information that could be easily lost.

This process is simplified by a strong understanding of where and how knowledge flows around the organization.

2. Collection

Collecting all the available knowledge and data creates the foundation from which future processes build.

Sloppy or incorrect knowledge collection leads to decisions without a complete understanding of the organization and its capabilities.

Companies must audit their existing staff expertise, documentation, and external knowledge sources. A range of tools is available to help, including automated surveys, document scanning, and metadata.

Post-implementation, many organizations redefine internal processes to make capturing institutional knowledge a part of everyday processes. This could be through continual employee feedback systems or more in-depth offboarding procedures.

3. Assessment

This process involves the deep analysis of the knowledge gathered in the previous two steps. Data must be assessed and organized into a structured, searchable, and easily accessible form.

Assessment of the gathered knowledge is required to ensure it is accurate, offers value, and is up to date.

Then teams can determine how best to share information to improve company performance and give staff the knowledge they need to maximize performance.

Utilizing the right knowledge management system simplifies this process by allowing leadership to organize, assess, segment, and store a comprehensive knowledge database.

The whole point of knowledge management is to give staff the expertise and information they need to do their job to the best of their ability.

Once you have built a detailed and accurate body of knowledge related to your company, you need to plan how it will be shared.

See the “Knowledge management methods” section below for examples of how to share information around your company.

While there are many examples of sharing information, one thing that should be universal is creating a cultural shift towards learning and development .

Leadership must prioritize and reward knowledge sharing, creating an atmosphere where team members are actively encouraged to both teach each other and learn from one another.

5. Application

This is the step where organizations reap the rewards of knowledge management. Discovering and storing institutional knowledge is just the beginning.

Staff utilizing newly acquired expertise in their tasks brings a range of benefits in productivity, accuracy, decision-making, and more innovative employees.

6. Creation

The final stage of knowledge management is to create more knowledge.

It should never be considered a one-and-done process. A single audit and rollout won’t deliver the results you are looking for.

Knowledge management is a continual process that maximizes a company’s performance for the expertise available to it.

Whether it is a team discovering a new, more efficient approach to a task or a better way of capturing data related to company performance, organizations should constantly be innovating and creating new knowledge to pass on to future employees.

Depending on what the company needs, their knowledge management will look different.

Below we have listed common examples of knowledge management methods in action:

1. Tutoring & training, communities of practice, and Q&A

These examples all involve transferring information directly from the knowledge holder to other employees.

This could be through in-person tutoring, company-wide training sessions, online chats, and group discussions – or a mix of these options and others.

Many companies value building a skills matrix that maps each employee’s expertise. This simplifies finding the employee with the most experience or knowledge in a given field. In addition, it identifies knowledge gaps within the workforce and shows areas requiring focus for specific knowledge management methods and training.

Some examples of this type of knowledge management may not require a formalized structure. For example, perhaps your company is having problems with a new project, which reminds you of a previous situation. Using the company Slack, for example, you can search for similar questions and find old threads discussing how you overcame the problem last time. Prior expertise that you may not have thought about in years is stored and discovered in old communications to help you right now.

• Questions can be immediately answered
• Clarifications can be made if the material is not understood
• Brainstorming sessions can be facilitated, taking advantage of the combined power of the group’s experience and knowledge
• In-person learning tends to be remembered more clearly
• It can be time-consuming and take away from the tasks the knowledge holder is trying to complete
• A system of expertise location can be time-consuming to build and maintain
• It can be challenging to document and save for future use
• Difficulty finding the right expert with good communication skills and knowledge of the company
• You can lose the knowledge if the knowledge holder leaves the company

2. Documentations, guides, guidelines, FAQ, and tutorials

Written communications are great for storing and transferring knowledge.

With text-based knowledge management, a system to store, categorize and navigate subjects is always available.

In many cases, metadata is a great help for this.

• The company has an invaluable source of information of up to date information
• Easy to find and share online (when organized well)
• Can easily combine multiple people’s expertise into one packet
• Requires a lot of time to create and keep up-to-date
• Must be appropriately managed to ensure relevant knowledge is easily found
• Requires infrastructure (internet access, etc.)
• It takes time to consume

3. Forums, intranets, and collaboration environments

These online resources spark conversation and bring many knowledge holders into the same place.

Threads, subforums, and groups can be divided by topic, level of expertise, or any number of other classifications.

• Collaboration drives innovation
• Many experts can be brought together into one place, no matter their location globally
• Facilitating contact with remote teams helps teamwork and knowledge transfer
• It can be a chaotic, noisy environment
• Knowledge is not actively being vetted as it is added to discussions
• Searching through many messages and threads for relevant answers is time-consuming
• Messages and threads might not be archived

4. Learning and development environments

Creating an environment where learning is considered an asset will continuously drive employees to educate themselves.

Incentivizing them to take advantage of your knowledge management systems will result in upskilled employees ready to take on leadership roles in your organization.

For this to happen, there must be structured and accessible learning and development technology in place that employees can use.

• Motivated employees can develop themselves at will
• Training pathways can be set out
• Wide range of resources available to produce a constant flow of fresh content
• The structure allows for easier discovery of subjects
• Authoring tools available such that internal experts can build company-specific courses
• Analytic tools are available to help find knowledge gaps inside the company
• Requires a lot of effort to develop and maintain in house
• Readily available solutions may be too generic to add real value for your company
• Content must be created and continually updated
• Requires an influential learning culture to motivate staff to participate

5. Case studies

These in-depth studies into particular areas serve as complete guides to a subject.

Looking at the actions taken, the results they produce, and any lessons learned is extremely valuable.

• Allow for complete documentation and archiving of lessons learned
• Easily shareable
• Efficient for communicating complex information
• It takes a lot of time and skill to create
• The case study may have limitations or require approval from the parties involved
• Can be too specialized to apply the knowledge broadly
• In fast-paced fields that are constantly innovating, case studies can become out of date quickly

6. Webinars

These online seminars can be beneficial in widely disseminating ideas throughout teams, branches, or the entire company.

• Accessible for all interested employees to attend
• Potential for interactivity where attendees can ask questions specific to issues they are having
• Can be recorded and reused
• Planning, finding the right speakers, and settling on a topic is time-consuming
• Requires organization
• External experts can cost a lot
• Requires time to find answer

Knowledge management systems are IT solutions that allow for the storage and retrieval of the information stored within the company, allowing for better collaboration and more efficient problem-solving.

Depending on what your company needs, they will have different features.

Examples of knowledge management systems are:

• Feedback database – Everyone involved in a product, from designers to salespeople to customers, can share their feedback with the organization. All stakeholders can access the feedback and thus quickly make fundamental changes armed with better information.
• Research files – In developing projects and ideas, a company does market and consumer research to determine what is needed, what niches are yet to be filled in the market, and what trends can be forecasted. The files are then shared within the organization to allow all departments to benefit from the research conducted.

Shared project files – This system allows for greater collaboration and teamwork, especially across distances.

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What Is Personal Knowledge Management & How It Can Help You

Personal knowledge management systems can help marketers create better, more successful content. Here's how you can build yours.

Every now and then, an idea or concept takes the productivity nerds of the internet by storm.

We get so obsessed that it breaks through to the mainstream, and you can’t seem to go anywhere online without seeing people talk about it.

It doesn’t happen often; the last time I remember it happening was with bullet journaling in the early 2010s.

But right now, it’s happening again.

Personal knowledge management is taking over the internet.

And even if you don’t get hearts in your eyes over productivity systems like me, this one’s something any digital marketer will want to pay attention to.

So here’s what you need to know.

What is Personal Knowledge Management?

Personal knowledge management is the concept of creating a process or system for collecting and storing information for future use, particularly for writing or content creation.

It’s different from how most of us currently collect digital information, which could more accurately be described as hoarding — accumulating hundreds of bookmarked articles, highlighted book passages, and jotted down statistics.

Digital hoarding doesn’t help you use the information you’re collecting; it makes it harder.

Personal knowledge management (PKM), on the other hand, involves creating systems , adding your own context, and making information easy to surface when you need to reference it.

While traditionally more popular in academic writing, it’s recently started gaining popularity in online writing as well.

Some of the established PKM systems popular with online creators and marketers include Zettelkasten , Building a Second Brain , and Linking Your Thinking .

But regardless of what popular framework you use (or whether you use one at all), there are a few steps you’ll want to make sure your personal knowledge management system includes:

• Capturing information and ideas as you find them.
• Processing them to add your own context.
• Incubating the ideas until you need them.
• Using them to create new things.

Let’s take a look at each one in detail.

Step 1. Capture Ideas and Information

The first step of personal knowledge management is to make a habit of saving any information or ideas you think are useful or inspiring as you come across them.

In the language of David Allen’s Getting Things Done method for planning and managing tasks, this is called developing a “ capture habit .”

The ultimate capture goal is to have a way to easily save these things, no matter where you come across them. Don’t worry about adding detail. You can organize and filter them later.

For example, my own “capture” inboxes include:

• A notebook that sits beside me when I’m working.
• An iOS note I can access from my iPhone’s home screen and add to via Siri.
• A similar note on my laptop.

Into these inboxes goes anything I think I might want to reference in my work. I add things manually as I come across them, and also have automations from IFTTT and Zapier sending things there.

In the past week, I’ve captured:

• Articles I want to link to in my own as a reference (like this one).
• Marketing campaign ideas based on conversations with customers .
• A messaging and branding idea based on a recent competitive analysis.
• Current requirements for Facebook ad copy length and image dimensions.
• Screenshots of website and graphic design I like.

By making things easy to capture, you can keep it without taking you away from whatever you’re doing at the time.

However, without the rest of the process, it’s just digital hoarding.

This is where the other steps, like processing, comes in.

Step 2. Process and Add Your Own Context

Processing is when you go through your inboxes and deal with everything you’ve saved recently, adding enough context that Future-You will be able to find it and use it when you need it.

Depending on how much information you capture, you’ll probably want to do this weekly or biweekly.

As you process pieces of information, you can:

• Delete anything you don’t find useful or relevant anymore.
• Add notes to your future self to create context (why you saved something, what you like about it, which parts you want to use later and for what, etc.).
• Add metadata like tags to make searching and filtering your PKM system easier.

Then, you’ll move the information from your inbox to wherever it should be stored more long-term.

For example, the items from my inbox notes will be moved to separate folders for reference articles, future project ideas, voice of customer data, inspiration, and my Facebook ad strategy.

This way, each piece of information is wherever I need it to be — where I’m going to use it.

When I’m working on advertising, I go to that folder, and the information saved will be there.

Or when I’m planning my content calendar , the list of all saved campaign ideas will be there in my content dashboard for me to choose from.

It’s able to be used, instead of lost in a bookmarks menu.

Step 3: Incubate Your Ideas

Once you have things organized, you’ll want to let them sit there. Leave them be.

Yes, really.

This takes advantage of the incubation effect , one of the four stages of creativity.

When you’re actively engaging with an idea, like organizing it in your PKM system, you’re making new connections for your brain.

Your brain then needs time to passively process those connections and draw conclusions from them.

If you’ve ever had an “aha!” moment while doing something completely unrelated to your work, that was the incubation effect at work.

For information that you saved “just because,” or because it inspired you, you can let it sit until you need it — until you’re working on the relevant project or writing the relevant piece of content.

For things you’re actively working on, it can be harder to find that buffer time, but it’s still possible.

Even switching over to another task or taking your lunch break will help your brain with background processing related to the one currently at hand.

Step 4: Create New Things

Finally, it’s time to use the knowledge and information you’ve collected.

The reason PKM is so great for anyone whose job requires writing or creation is that it makes it possible to never start from scratch.

And the blank page is one of the most overwhelming parts of creating anything.

Having a knowledge management system gives you a way to store and organize ideas and references as building blocks.

Then any time you need to start a project, you just select and combine the relevant building blocks into a finished piece.

For example, writing a blog post might mean assembling a combination of personal thoughts, expert quotes and statistics, and examples you’ve saved to your PKM already.

Planning an ad campaign means pulling the relevant competitor information, graphics you like, and creative requirements you already have to easily put together a project brief.

Essentially, when you have a PKM system you regularly save things to and maintain, the research and brainstorming parts of any project will take a fraction of the time.

Start Building

The sooner you start building a personal knowledge management system, the sooner you’ll start saving time and effort on almost any creative task.

We’re consuming more content and information constantly, so you want to start your PKM system soon.

I hope you now have what you need to get started!

More Resources:

• Got Writer’s Block? 25 Fast & Proven Cures for Content Creators
• 9 Productivity Tips to Save Time Content Marketing
• Your Guide to Google E-A-T & SEO

Featured Image: Andrew Krasovitckii/Shutterstock

Brittany Berger is a content marketing consultant, teacher, and writer at BrittanyBerger.com. She’s also the founder at WorkBrighter.co. She started ...

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3 steps to building your own personal knowledge management system

Imagine your typical workday for a moment. How do you access the information you need to complete your tasks? Do you use a system of folders on your computer or rely on your ability to remember every detail you need to know?

What about at home — do you have a personal filing cabinet or cloud-based storage system for your family's essential documents and information? If you were asked to produce a receipt for a major purchase or a prior year's tax document, would you know where to find it?

Now think about how you manage all the knowledge you've acquired throughout your life. What system do you use to remember the name of that book your friend recommended or the recipe for your grandmother's apple pie?

Most people would likely answer, "I don't really have a system." Although we may handle work documents carefully, our personal information is often stored haphazardly on our computers or in our heads. That means we spend a lot of time and energy searching for the information we need when we need it, eventually losing knowledge in the process.

Personal knowledge management is the solution to this problem.

We'll explore personal knowledge management in this article, learning what it means, who can benefit from it, and what it offers. Discover how to create a personal knowledge management system and grow your own knowledge base.

What is personal knowledge management?

Personal knowledge management (PKM) is a process for an individual to deliberately and systematically organize, store, retrieve and share their digital and non-digital knowledge assets. In other words, it's a way to manage our information and knowledge more deliberately and in a more organized way.

The goal of PKM is to help us become more effective at work, in learning, and in life by making it easier for us to store, find, reuse, and share the knowledge we need when we need it.

The concept of storing, sorting, and retrieving everything you know may sound complicated, but it's something we already do to some extent. Consider the way you use folders on your computer to store documents. You wouldn't put a picture of your family in the same place as your work contracts, and you wouldn't put your favorite recipes in the same place as your tax documents.

In each case, you're organizing information into categories so you can find it more easily later — this is personal knowledge management.

A brief history of personal knowledge management

The term "personal knowledge management" is relatively new — it was first documented in a working paper presented at an educational conference in 1998 — but the concept isn't. Since humans have existed, we've been trying to organize information to make sense of the world.

One of the earliest examples of personal knowledge management was the commonplace book. Unlike diaries or journals, which were primarily introspective and chronological, commonplace books documented knowledge. These elaborate writings contained personal observations, quotes, facts, recipes, formulas, and other information gathered under subject headings.

The greatest minds of history kept commonplace books to document their intellectual pursuits. It dates back to the Roman empire and Marcus Aurelius' commonplace books, where he recorded thoughts, quotes, and spiritual exercises that became his Meditations . The tradition continued during the Renaissance with Leonardo DaVinci's famous notebooks filled with detailed diagrams, sketches, and illustrations of anatomy, machinery, and other scientific observations.

Many intellectuals adopted commonplacing during the 17th and 18th centuries and beyond. But knowledge management wasn't always limited to books — other elaborate notetaking systems were also popular. German sociologist Niklas Luhmann created the Zettelkasten, a famous knowledge management system that sorts note cards in a slip box . Luhmann meticulously documented and linked over 90,000 cards during his research using a numbering system.

The notecard system continued with Ronald Reagan's prolific library of notes , collecting the knowledge of many important figures to pass on to Americans in his numerous speeches. Today, gathering and managing knowledge continues to be a powerful tool for many extraordinary people.

Who needs personal knowledge management?

Anyone who needs to remember, store, or share information can benefit from a personal knowledge management system. This includes students, professionals, business owners, knowledge workers, and lifelong self-learners .

Although you might not think a knowledge management system is necessary, if you've ever spent hours searching for a lost document or saved research, you understand how frustrating it can be to lose information. A well-designed personal knowledge management system can save you time and help you find the information you need more quickly.

A PKM system helps you become more productive, efficient, and creative by improving your ability to find and use the information and knowledge you need. Personal knowledge management systems are flexible and customizable, so they can be tailored to fit any need. There's no one-size-fits-all solution — the best PKM system is the one that works best for you.

What are the benefits of personal knowledge management?

Whether you're a student, professional, business owner, or lifelong learner, PKM can help you collect, store or share information in a way that works for you. There are many benefits to using a personal knowledge management system, including:

• Speeding up your workflow by making it easy to find what you're looking for
• Being more productive by reducing information overload
• Improving your memory and recall
• Generating new ideas by making connections between different pieces of information
• Sharing your knowledge with others
• Fostering a growth mindset by documenting your learning journey

These are just a few of the benefits of managing your personal knowledge. The best way to maximize your potential is to tailor your PKM system to your specific needs so that it works with, not against, your natural flow.

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Types of personal knowledge management systems

Personal knowledge management has come a long way from the simple origins of the commonplace book and notecard filing boxes. Storing, organizing, and sharing information has never been more convenient due to digital information and the internet. The popularity of productivity and organization apps has resulted in a wide range of digital PKM systems.

Whether you prefer digital or paper systems (or a combination of both), there's a PKM system for you. Here are a few popular types of personal knowledge management systems:

• Notetaking apps : Notetaking apps are digital tools that allow you to store and organize your notes in a way that works for you. Many are cloud-based so that you can access your notes from anywhere. Notetaking apps often come with various features, such as adding audio recordings, images, and files to your notes and collaborating with others. A few popular notetaking apps include Evernote , OneNote , and Google Keep .
• Notecard systems : Notecard systems can be a great option if you prefer a paper-based method. Students often use the notecard system to study flashcards, and many authors use cards to organize chapters and scenes. The Zettelkasten method is a famous example of a notecard system, but yours can be as simple or elaborate as you'd like. All you need are index cards and something to keep them organized.
• Bookmarking apps : Using a bookmarking app, you can save and organize links to articles, web pages, and other online resources. These tools help manage your research and save resources as you find them. Some popular bookmarking apps include Pocket , raindrop.io , and Pinboard . Several notetaking apps offer browser extensions with bookmarking features for quickly adding resources to related notes.
• Commonplace books : Commonplace books are physical notebooks that contain notes, ideas, observations, and any piece of information you want to remember. In contrast to journals, these books aim to collect and catalog useful information instead of being reflective. A commonplace book can be as straightforward or complex as you want, and many people find them more conducive to learning and creativity than digital systems.
• Personal wiki : A personal wiki is a digital tool for creating and storing personal information. Essentially, it combines the functionality of Wikipedia with your own personal knowledge management system. Wikis can be used to keep track of any digital information in various formats, from docs to photos. Some of the most popular personal wiki programs are Obsidian , TiddlyWiki , and Zettlr , a combination of wiki software and the Zettlekasten system.

No matter which type of PKM system you choose, the most important thing to remember is that there is no single best solution. The winning personal knowledge management system is the one you'll use — one that works with your natural style and plays to your strengths.

Build a personal knowledge management system in 3 steps

Now that you know more about personal knowledge management systems, you might wonder how to build your own. Taking the time to develop a PKM can be highly beneficial, personally and professionally. Here are three steps to get you started:

1. Choose the right system for your needs

After learning about the different types of personal knowledge management systems, you will need to select the one that best fits your needs. To help you decide, here are a few factors to consider:

• Think about what you need your PKM system to do for you. Do you want a simple template to follow, or do you need something more robust to help you curate your knowledge work and research docs? Thinking about what you want to use your system for can help you narrow your search.
• Look for a system that works with your natural learning style. Do you prefer learning by taking visual notes , such as mindmaps, or do you like to listen to podcasts? Are you more comfortable working with paper or digital tools? Knowing how you learn and what formats you prefer will help you select the right system.
• Consider how you'll access your knowledge base. If you work remotely or from different locations, you need a system you can access from anywhere, such as one that you can back up to the cloud.
• Estimate your budget. Consider how much you're willing to spend on your system. Some personal knowledge management systems are free, while others come at a cost.

Once you've considered your needs and chosen the right method, it's time to start building your personal knowledge management system.

2. Start small

When starting your personal knowledge base, it can be tempting to try to build it quickly. You want to bookmark every webpage you come across, save every article and document you read, and take notes on everything. Try to resist this urge because this won’t be sustainable in the long run. Trying to do too much at once will only overwhelm you, and you'll eventually burn out.

The best way to develop a PKM system is to start small and gradually add relevant information over time. Begin by choosing one or two areas you want to focus on. For example, you might want to use your system to streamline your workflow or curate bookmarks for a research project. Once you've chosen your focus, start slowly adding information and resources to your system.

3. Make it a habit

The only way to make your personal knowledge management system truly effective is to use it regularly. To make PKM a habit, start by setting aside time to work on it daily. Even just reviewing your knowledge base for 15 minutes a day can help you get into the habit of using your system regularly. You'll learn what works and what doesn't the more you use it.

Additionally, consider setting specific goals for what you want to accomplish with your PKM. For example, you might want to save bookmarks for a future project or track your progress on a current one. Regularly using your system will be easier if you have specific goals.

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Develop a knowledge management system that will enhance lifelong learning

Personal knowledge management proactively and intentionally manages our knowledge to optimize our work and learning. By developing our PKM system, we can take control of our learning and development rather than relying on others to tell us what we need.

Don't worry if your personal knowledge management system isn't perfect from the start. It takes time to determine the approach that works for you. The most important thing to remember about PKM is that it's less about storing information than how you use it to improve your learning . As you use your system and curate your digital information, you'll grow a knowledge base that you can use for years.

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Please note you do not have access to teaching notes, personal knowledge management and enactment of personal knowledge infrastructures as shadow it.

Information and Learning Sciences

ISSN : 2398-5348

Article publication date: 30 November 2020

Issue publication date: 7 May 2021

Personal knowledge management (KM) lends new emphasis to ways through which individual knowledge workers engage with knowledge in organizational contexts. This paper aims to go beyond an organizational approach to KM to examine key personal KM and knowledge building (KB) practices among adult professionals.

Design/methodology/approach

This paper presents a summary of the findings from interviews with 58 consultants from 17 managing consulting firms. Participants were selected based on their knowledge-intensive roles and their willingness to share information about their knowledge practices. Data analysis was inductive and revealed multiple personal KM activities common among research participants, and the way these are supported by informal ties and various technologies.

This work highlights ways in which “shadow information technology” undergirds personal knowledge infrastructures and supports KM and KB practices in the context of management consulting firms. The results uncover how personal knowledge infrastructures emerge from personal KM and KB practices, and the role of informal social networks as well as social media in supporting personal KM and KB.

Research limitations/implications

This study contributes an overall conceptual model of factors that help knowledge workers build a personal knowledge infrastructure. By affording an understanding of socially embedded personal KM activities, this work helps organizations create a balance between KM strategies at the organizational level and personal knowledge goals of individual workers.

Originality/value

Much of the previous research on KM adopts organizational approaches to KM, accentuating how organizations can effectively capture, organize and distribute organizational knowledge (primarily through KM systems).

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• Personal knowledge infrastructure

Jarrahi, M.H. , Reynolds, R. and Eshraghi, A. (2021), "Personal knowledge management and enactment of personal knowledge infrastructures as shadow IT", Information and Learning Sciences , Vol. 122 No. 1/2, pp. 17-44. https://doi.org/10.1108/ILS-11-2019-0120

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Copyright © 2020, Emerald Publishing Limited

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Questions & More Information

Answers to the most commonly asked questions here

Knowledge management (KM) is the process of identifying, organizing, storing and disseminating information within an organization.

When knowledge is not easily accessible within an organization, it can be incredibly costly to a business as valuable time is spent seeking out relevant information versus completing outcome-focused tasks.

A knowledge management system (KMS) harnesses the collective knowledge of the organization, leading to better operational efficiencies. These systems are supported by the use of a knowledge base. They are usually critical to successful knowledge management, providing a centralized place to store information and access it readily.

Companies with a knowledge management strategy achieve business outcomes more quickly as increased organizational learning and collaboration among team members facilitates faster decision-making across the business. It also streamlines more organizational processes, such as training and on-boarding, leading to reports of higher employee satisfaction and retention.

Use this model selection framework to choose the most appropriate model while balancing your performance requirements with cost, risks and deployment needs.

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The definition of knowledge management also includes three types of knowledge—tacit, implicit, and explicit knowledge. These types of knowledge are largely distinguished by the codification of the information.

• Tacit knowledge:  This type of knowledge is typically acquired through experience, and it is intuitively understood. As a result, it is challenging to articulate and codify, making it difficult to transfer this information to other individuals. Examples of tacit knowledge can include language, facial recognition, or leadership skills.
• Implicit knowledge:  While some literature equivocates implicit knowledge to tacit knowledge, some academics break out this type separately, expressing that the definition of tactic knowledge is more nuanced. While tacit knowledge is difficult to codify, implicit knowledge does not necessarily have this problem. Instead, implicit information has yet to be documented. It tends to exist within processes, and it can be referred to as “know-how” knowledge.
• Explicit knowledge:  Explicit knowledge is captured within various document types such as manuals, reports, and guides, allowing organizations to easily share knowledge across teams. This type of knowledge is perhaps the most well-known and examples of it include knowledge assets such as databases, white papers, and case studies. This form of knowledge is important to retain intellectual capital within an organization as well as facilitate successful knowledge transfer to new employees.

While some  academics  (link resides outside ibm.com) summarize the knowledge management process as involving knowledge acquisition, creation, refinement, storage, transfer, sharing and utilization. This process can be synthesized this a little further. Effective knowledge management system typically goes through three main steps:

• Knowledge Creation:  During this step, organizations identify and document any existing or new knowledge that they want to circulate across the company.
• Knowledge Storage:  During this stage, an information technology system is typically used to host organizational knowledge for distribution. Information may need to be formatted in a particular way to meet the requirements of that repository.
• Knowledge Sharing:  In this final stage, processes to share knowledge are communicated broadly across the organization. The rate in which information spreads will vary depending on organizational culture. Companies that encourage and reward this behavior will certainly have a competitive advantage over other ones in their industry. 

There are a number tools that organizations utilize to reap the benefits of knowledge management. Examples of knowledge management systems can include:

• Document management systems  act as a centralized storage system for digital documents, such as PDFs, images, and word processing files. These systems enhance employee workflows by enabling easy retrieval of documents, such as lessons learned.
• Content management systems (CMS) are applications which manage web content where end users can edit and publish content. These are commonly confused with document management systems, but CMSs can support other media types, such as audio and video.   
• Intranets  are private networks that exist solely within an organization, which enable the sharing of enablement, tools, and processes within internal stakeholders. While they can be time-consuming and costly to maintain, they provide a number of groupware services, such as internal directories and search, which facilitate collaboration.
• Wikis  can be a popular knowledge management tool given its ease of use. They make it easy to upload and edit information, but this ease can lead to concerns about misinformation as workers may update them with incorrect or outdated information.
• Data warehouses  aggregate data from different sources into a single, central, consistent data store to support data analysis, data mining, artificial intelligence (AI), and machine learning. Data is extracted from these repositories so that companies can derive insights, empowering employees to make data-driven decisions.

While knowledge management solutions can be helpful in facilitating knowledge transfer across teams and individuals, they also depend on user adoption to generate positive outcomes. As a result, organizations should not minimize the value of human elements that enable success around knowledge management.

• Organizational Culture:  Management practices will affect the type of organization that executives lead. Managers can build learning organizations by rewarding and encouraging knowledge sharing behaviors across their teams. This type of leadership sets the groundwork for teams to trust each other and communicate more openly to achieve business outcomes.
• Communities of practice:  Centers of excellence in specific disciplines provide employees with a forum to ask questions, facilitating learning and knowledge transfer. In this way, organizations increase the number of subject matter experts in a given area of the company, reducing dependencies on specific individuals to execute certain tasks.

Armed with the right tools and strategies, knowledge management practices have seen success in specific applications, such as:

• Onboarding employees:  Knowledge management systems help to address the huge learning curve for new hires. Instead of overwhelming new hires with a ‘data dump’ in their first weeks, continually support them with knowledge tools that will give them useful information at any time.  Learn more
• Day-to-day employee tasks:  Enable every employee to have access to accurate answers and critical information. Access to highly relevant answers at the right time, for the right person, allows workforces to spend less time looking for information and more time on activities that drive business.  Learn more
• Self-serve customer service:  Customers repeatedly say they’d prefer to find an answer themselves, rather than pick up the phone to call support.  When done well, a knowledge management system helps businesses decrease customer support costs and increase customer satisfaction.  Learn more

Companies experience a number of benefits when they embrace knowledge management strategies. Some key advantages include:

• Identification of skill gaps:  When teams create relevant documentation around implicit or tacit knowledge or consolidate explicit knowledge, it can highlight gaps in core competencies across teams. This provides valuable information to management to form new organizational structures or hire additional resources.
• Make better informed decisions:  Knowledge management systems arm individuals and departments with knowledge. By improving accessibility to current and historical enterprise knowledge, your teams can upskill and make more information-driven decisions that support business goals.
• Maintains enterprise knowledge:  If your most knowledgeable employees left tomorrow, what would your business do? Practicing internal knowledge management enables businesses to create an organizational memory. Knowledge held by your long-term employees and other experts, then make it accessible to your wider team.
• Operational efficiencies:  Knowledge management systems create a go-to place that enable knowledge workers to find relevant information more quickly. This, in turn, reduces the amount of time on research, leading to faster decision-making and cost-savings through operational efficiencies.  Increase productivity not only saves time, but also reduces costs.
• Increased collaboration and communication:  Knowledge management systems and organizational cultures work together to build trust among team members. These information systems provide more transparency among workers, creating more understanding and alignment around common goals. Engaged leadership and open communication create an environment for teams to embrace innovation and feedback.
• Data Security:  Knowledge management systems enable organizations to customize permission control, viewership control and the level of document-security to ensure that information is shared only in the correct channels or with selected individuals. Give your employees the autonomy access knowledge safely and with confidence.

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Free Project Management Personal Statement Guide

Table of Contents

A  project management personal statement  showcases an applicant’s qualifications for a job or special university program in the field of project management. 

It demonstrates an applicant’s knowledge, skills, and abilities necessary to succeed in a position or role. A project management personal statement provides potential employers with information about the applicant, such as:

• Education level
• Professional certifications
• Relevant work experiences 
• Goals and values

This document serves as a platform for the candidate to showcase their unique capabilities, strengths, and areas of expertise. 

The Importance of a Personal Statement

A personal statement is important in all applications, whether in school or as a professional. They provide recruiters and admissions board members with valuable insight into your suitability for a role or program.

An applicant’s values are of prime concern to any organization because they guide behavior and actions. Personal statements reflect who you are and what drives you to be the best candidate during challenging times.

Moreover, personal statements give applicants a lot of room for creativity. Your personal statement is an avenue you can showcase your communication skills and leave readers with a lasting impression . As most professionals know, it’s important to stand out from the crowd.

Tips for Writing a Strong Personal Statement

Start with an Attention-grabbing Introduction

Begin your personal statement by introducing yourself and highlighting a few key qualities that make you an ideal candidate for the role. Focus on qualities like your experience in project management or background in problem-solving. Many recruiters have specific skills in mind. If you want to know what they’re looking for, try looking through the job description.

Emphasize Relevant Skills

Use concrete examples to illustrate how your past experiences have equipped you with the right skills needed for success in this position. Focus on emphasizing leadership abilities, technical knowledge, team building, communication skills, etc. 

You can also include a few projects that you’ve worked on in the past when applying. This will help show your passion and interest in the job.

Demonstrate Passion and Enthusiasm

Discussing your passion for project management is important in creating a personal statement. Showcase how much energy you bring to a team and use vivid language to express your motivation and drive. 

Acknowledge Challenges

Demonstrating awareness of potential difficulties will show employers that you know how to troubleshoot issues if need be. Illustrate how you’ve handled difficult projects previously and approach them positively. 

Conclude with Confidence

Provide insight into what makes you different from other applicants and conclude your statement confidently. Restate why you would be a great fit and reinforce any unique qualities you possess that could benefit the organization.

Project Management Personal Statement Samples

I am a university student who has actively managed my academic and business endeavors in the past year. I have helped design and develop projects that have required extensive research and careful follow-up from related engineering studies to service requirements. 

My career choice is to become an engineer, so I can lead companies with a better understanding of the products they require. Completing this program will help me relate more deeply to the industry and acquire knowledge about project management and its application to businesses.

As a manager working for the past few years, I want to apply for a Master’s course in Project Management. I chose this field after a high degree of consideration. It includes a vast array of topics I can learn about and hone my skills. 

During the last year of study, I have had the opportunity to engage with project management tools and resources. These have allowed me to gain more insight into the field. 

I believe that obtaining a master’s degree in project management will prove to be beneficial in helping me progress further in my career.

I have actively participated in the project management industry for many years. I have worked on diverse projects and with many different teams. The wealth of experience I’ve gained makes me an ideal candidate to apply to this university course. 

My enthusiasm for business and drive to understand its complexities have enabled me to study extensively and gain relevant qualifications. I am eager to use my skills as a student to further develop my understanding of project management. With hard work and dedication, I can become a valuable asset to any organization looking for experienced professionals in this industry.

A project management personal statement is vital for students looking to advance their studies and for professionals looking for work. Make sure to follow our tips. While they won’t make you an instant master, they will help you write effectively. Whether applying to a project management job or a university program, you need to make good with your personal statement.

Abir Ghenaiet

Abir is a data analyst and researcher. Among her interests are artificial intelligence, machine learning, and natural language processing. As a humanitarian and educator, she actively supports women in tech and promotes diversity.

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Management personal statement example 4.

To be a top notch management cum logistical personnel, with wide range of knowledge in business management in all ramifications is my main goal. Managing resources, both human and materials today in this fast rising and expanding business world has taking a different dimension, with the introduction of e-business and other new innovative mechanism of transaction in the field of purchasing, procurement, production and industries has brought about a competitive playing ground, which require one to consistently update his knowledge and skills to be relevant in his chosen career path.

With my academic background in economics as a first degree, understanding the variables of the market mechanism and other applied reasoning, I had the opportunity to have a feel of the banking industry, during the one year mandatory national youth service corps programme upon my graduation, where I served with the first bank of Nigeria Plc. During this period I worked with several departments of the banking operations office vis a vis: Administrative, foreign operation, customer service and cash office respectively doing minimum of two months with each of the department, the experience really enhance my knowledge of the financial sector, preparing me for the task in the outside world, while discharging duties here, I was discover by an expatriate of a civil engineering firm PW Nigeria Ltd, a company that later become my first working place in the real world two months later i.e. Life after school.

Working with PW Nig. Ltd., is an experience that will remains unforgettable in my memory, drafted to a site where a forty two kilometer road project was being executed. As the site cashier, I was tasked with managing of the petty cash of the site as well as others, such as onsite settlement of suppliers/sub contractors, payment of compensation to the locals, life camp maintenance and so on; here I realized the importance of managerial skills. Where I need to interact with the indigenes making them understand the economic importance of the project and the direct long run benefits and value of the projects in their immediate life. I also enjoy the opportunities of having had to interact with people of different nationalities and background by working directly with them. All these require vast managerial skills and dexterity.

I progressed to Alkolaq Intercontinental Ltd from PW Nig Ltd, a firm that is into importation and exportation of herbal and nutritional supplements. I assume the post of logistics officer tasked with taking stocks, inventory and data management of the firm's. I was faced with the challenges of merging figures, items and consults, consequently, I came out with the required and accurate details to determine how the firm is fairing, both within the domestic and international markets, our operations with the foreign partners were captured by my department. While with the logistics department here, I brokered the pact that turn the company into a production firm which in turn reduce reliance on imported items thereby boosting the turnover of the firm. After which I moved on to Impasse Technologies Ltd.

Impasse Technologies Ltd, an engineering firm that is into power solution and shelter (steel and isothermal) production. Here, I am able to prove my prowess and zeal to learn more about the trade and techniques in the field of procurement, logistics and supply chain management. As the stock/logistics officer, I build an operational framework for the materials and products movement to and fro the company; thereby an accountable inflow of inputs and outflow of outputs, while liaising with suppliers on reduction in rates and on time deliveries, also among my duties is project progress monitoring, all these experiences and the quest to be an icon in my field of practice spurt my interest to pursue MA in management.

It has always be my dream to be a philanthropist, reason why, as soon as I have the opportunity to give back to the society, I have been giving ten percent of my earnings. Reinvesting in terms of human development and considerations of social responsibilities. Whereby I have consistently given my support to an organization that is into educating and welfare of children with down syndrome.

These and the zeal to excel are paramount on my mind, that makes me to decide that on completion of my study at Westminster University, I will gladly embrace the opportunity to serve and contribute my quota to my country and impact my acquired knowledge, skills and wherewithal to the benefit of my family and my society at large. So help me God.

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Personal Statement of Purpose - MSc Management

• Sample personal statement

07 July, 2022

Personal statement of purpose - msc management share.

• 12 May, 2013

I am intending to study the MSc Management at University of Brighton to enhance my academic knowledge and create better and further opportunities for my career. By doing a lot of research on the University website for the course, I can confidently say that this course will satisfy my curiosity and hope and it will lead me to a career that I aim to develop in a sustainable way.

In this MSc Management program at Brighton University, I will be able to do case study analyses, organization visits, and the choice of paid work experience which helps to prepare students for management-level positions and provides them the latest academic knowledge.Teaching is delivered with a variety of activities and students get the opportunity to interact and engage with tutors. I have found some demanding modules in this MSc Management programme which will help me to boost my career prospects. As an additional benefit, this MSc degree comes with an extra Postgraduate Diploma in Management awarded by Chartered Management Institute (CMI) which is highly regarded by professionals. These will add value to my achievements and will be key selling points when looking for jobs.

Following my SSC and Intermediate in Humanities, I completed my Bachelor of Business Administration major in Marketing from Royal University of Dhaka, Bangladesh in 2020. During my studies, I participated in many extra-curricular activities. I alwayslearn from my mistakes. I have my own critical thinking ability and leadership quality. As a person, I believe that I am a hard-working individual and tend to work patiently until I reach my goal. I have been working as a Sales Executive at Global Village International (Sylhet Zone) Bangladesh since 10th January 2018. Here, I came to realize that organizations give much value who has a master’s degree in Management. If I get the degree I will be able to gather the tools and techniques which will help me to fight with this globalization challenges. That is why I made a decision to enhance my academic platform and professional qualifications and skills and expand my career by studying the MSc Management at University of Brighton.

I have researched that this MSc Management course is designed to give students the best possible start for starting a successful career through invaluable insights and practical knowledge.After completion of this course, I want to be a Management Consultant in a renowned company of my home country in the short term. In the long term I have my goal increase my levels of independence and run my own business.I believe that this program will not only be a career enhancing as well as a potential career changing opportunity, but a life changing opportunity for me.

I prefer University of Brighton for several reasons. This is a public university based on four campuses in Brighton and Eastbourne on the south coast of England. The University welcomes over 3,000 international students to the University of Brighton each year. University of Brighton has received five National Teaching Fellowships and Brighton’s staff combines professional practice with teaching and research activity. Studying at Brighton offers an experience that goes way beyond the classroom. From day one they’ll help students to build the real-world knowledge and transferable skills that employers look for in graduate recruits. The University is awarded Silver by TEF ranking and ranked in the top 20 in the UK league tables for many subjects including health, fashion and textile, art, pharmacy and education. The university is in the top 25% of UK universities for world-leading research impact (REF 2014). At Brighton students can learn from industry experts who bring their professional experience into the classroom. I am confident that I can demonstrate the drive and ambition to position myself as the perfect student to study at University of Brighton.

Actually, I consider myself to be a dreamer with a vision. My to study in the UK because, UK is one of the top 3 higher education destinations in the world and qualifications are internationally recognized. Students get the opportunity to develop the skills, knowledge, critical thinking, and connections to drive forward their careers. In my home country, degrees have not got international accreditation. Tuition is provided to get students pass the course, no ‘soft skills’ given. UK courses are generally shorter than other countries, helping to reduce overall tuition fees and accommodation costs. In Bangladesh, there are only few institutions where thousands of students engage in admission war to get a seat. Beside this, political chaos makes it harder to complete the degrees in time. UK higher education is inspected Quality Assurance Agency (QAA) regularly. Hence, this degree from the UK will give me better chance for getting into career market in higher position and handsome salary. Apart from all, UK is more welcoming and tolerant to international students than other western countries. I am strongly determined to put the maximum effort to build up my career and a bright future which I have alwaysdreamed of. So I will have lots of scope to work in Bangladesh as well as internationally after my post-graduation from UK and by this certainly I can be a part of the development of society.

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