PKM Problems as a Sign of my Mental Problems

photo by Wd Toro Ozo at Unsplash

Last month I made a rushed decision with my PKM app: I´ve migrated from Obsidian to Capacities in a rush. I love the visuals, the way it´s designed like different customizable types of notes, and that it works with markdown language, where I mastered the basic shortcuts long ago. I love that I can send content from my phone with Whatsapp, which I´ve never seen in the PKM space before. The knowledge that the team is based in my home country with very strong data protection laws makes it even more attractive for me.

But it also comes with disadvantages:

1. No mobile app for the free version. They are currently working an app for the pro users.
2. No Readwise integration. So I still need either Notion or Obsidian for this and migrate to Capacities manually. As I tend to clutter my PKM with unneccesary information I try to see this friction by intention to become more intentional with the stuff I put into my system.

For some people the AI assistant might be worth paying like 9€/month when purchased as a yearly subscription, but for me it´s not worth it. AI is simply one thing I ignore in my everyday life, as I don´t have application for it.

This migration with apps is a bit ironically, because in spring last year I´ve migrated from an established app (Evernote) to Amplenote, which was a newcomer app as well. Now this pattern has repeated itself. I´m confident that the PKM disaster won´t repeat itself, but I´m aware of the danger this migration brings to my system.

Some irony is that one of the main drawbacks I saw within Obsidian was that it doesn´t have a proper mobile experience. And now I live without most of my PKM app on my phone and feel confident about it. Because I´ve integrated Google tasks into my system and an easy-peasy way to add stuff to Capacities.

All these PKM struggles boil down to some personal challenges I´m facing these days.

• I´m a heavy FOMO victim. I still have to work on myself to eliminate my information scarcity mindset. We live in a world with 24/7 access of the internet, so I have the right to miss something. Especially as I see PKM as 50% hobby / inspiration and 50% usefull for my blogging. This month I want to establish healthy PKM workflows finally.
• As mentioned before I´m totally commited of not switching apps again for a year. I´ll just tweak a system with adding the information I need on the go to Notion or Google tasks.
• These days I suffer from an extended period of low self-worth and self-worth. This results in a toxic business mindset, collecting information in Readwise for the sake of collecting, getting stuck in my content consumerism bubble, toxic “shoulds” and many more. I think my PKM struggles with establishing and commiting to one system are also the manifestion of these internal problems.
• For as long as I can remember I struggle with the toxic belief that the way notes are looking and structured are more important than the content or useablity of the note. I think it goes back to school and university times where my handwritten notes were known to catch 90+% of what it was told in that lesson / lecture and having perfectly recognizeable heading structures, indents, numerations etc.
• But I´ve graduaded from school 13 years ago and my last lecture at university was in early 2017. So I still don´t know if I´m just obsessed with notes as it represents a lot of a personality of a person, if it´s just an intrinsic interest, my identity as PKMler or simply the fact that as a hobbyist artist I have strong visual preferances. Or maybe a mixture of all.
• I guess my identity as PKMler is firing back sometimes. I have strong curiosity about all these PKM acronyms, frameworks etc. Same goes for journaling. But I try out less than 10% of the information I´m collecting.
• I´m collecting without proper goal in mind. I´ve braindumped my 12 favorite questions as part of a PKM practice Tiago Forte is recommending. They are on my pinwall right now. We´ll see if it helps with more intentional collecting.
• I tend to focus more on the app instead on the workflow I want to establish. I wrote some advice about this in the past, but I need to follow my own advise.
• The mayority of my PKM struggles can be seen in my journaling practice as well. I´m Bullet journaling for a bit more than 7 years now. The most constant themes are stuff like self-sabotage with the plans I make, not feeling to commited to act on what I write and so on. Since moving into my current apartment in January 2021 this blog and my job are the only things I feel really commited to.
• With journaling and PKM I don´t have a healthy relationship with “memory outsourcing”. On my worst mental health days I tend to see these tools as a thinking replacement, not as a thinking partner. Sometimes I think through writing only and not in my head anymore. I feel like my memory abilities have drastically declined for the last three years thanks to my complicated relationship with these tools.
• Being busy with organizing my PKM has become a badge of honor on some very bad mental health days.
• I see it as a duty of any adult to have some sort of PKM and journaling practice. No matter the lifestyle. From a rational point I know that this is wrong, but my feelings tells a different story.

I´m aware that all of these issues can´t be solved in just a month. Or two. Most likely it will take till the end of the year to make noticeable progress on the majority of these issues. I have all the tools within my system, such as the KAIZEN principle, the intentional cycle of Bujo practice and many more. But I have to learn to commit more and self-sabotage less.

To support this, I´ll work more on intentionality and tweak my life and habits one small step a time. I´ll keep you updated with my journey.