Using Notenik in Some Trendy, Cool Ways

Commonplace books have been around for a while

In the last week or so I’ve come across a couple of articles touting some trendy ways for individuals to collect information that is personally meaningful to them.

First, there was this New York Times piece by J. D. Biersdorfer telling you how to “Create a Digital Commonplace Book.”

Then there was a blog post at The Sweet Setup offering a “PKM Primer: An Introduction to Personal Knowledge Management for Creatives.”

Both pieces were well done, and I encourage you to read the pair.

A commonplace book, it turns out, is “a book into which notable extracts from other works are copied for personal use,” according to the New Oxford American Dictionary.

Personal Knowledge Management is a bit harder to define in a way that is both concise and enlightening. But if you just conjoin the ordinary meanings of the three constituent words, you’ll get the general drift.

And then there’s the whole Zettelkasten movement, in case I haven’t slung enough exotic terms around yet.

But while these are theoretically separate topics, I think they are all attempts to address some common problems for anyone interested in constructive thinking.

Consider:

1. If we read/watch/listen broadly, and with…