Personal Knowledge Management changes when you age.
That’s my feeling now.
My ‘documents’ folder sums more than 100,000 documents on a wide variety of topics.
My Evernote account has more than 4,000 notes. The majority of them are clippings from the web. Articles, blog posts, photos, memes etc.
Fifteen or maybe eighteen years ago when I started to feed in those repositories, I could remember most of the things that were stored into my elementary PKM structure, search and find them when needed.
Nowadays, I don’t have a clue. I don’t know what I have stored over time.
My PKM is a guessing process.
Not a tool anymore. Why? Because search tools don’t help me. They do their work just fine, but the problem is me.
I don’t know what to search for.
Most of those 4,000 notes in Evernote will be into a ‘digital blackhole’tm. They will never see the light of day again.
Does that bother me? Yes, a little bit. It does.
It does bother me because when I internalized the idea of PKM, the value proposition was immense.
I would be able to hold curated data with me and use it to create new knowledge whenever I need it. I knew I would have the tools.
But now, in the face of a gigantic repository — from my own perspective — I question my ability to create new knowledge when I need it.
I have lost control of my inventory. My knowledge raw materials.
On the other hand, generative AI and large language models provide an irresistible value proposition.
“Tell me what you need to accomplish, and I will create the knowledge you need. On demand.”
Well, well. Thank you. That is a great idea, but I still like my own repositories. They are with me for a long time. I owe them a lot.
I have to be honest. I don’t know what they are anymore. Blame on me.