PKM Note-Taking System’s Info Map with Obsidian

Imagine an information management system, professional and knowledgeable, that can grow into a digital Leonardo da Vinci. This system can help us to find information quickly, and can also inspire better ideas through knowledge.

It is my vision how to build a better note-taking system that works through time and grows into a note-taking ecosystem.

With the combined application of P.A.R.A, MOCs, and Zettelkasten, and with the practice of productivity tools Notion, Obsidian, and Miro, I created my own best practices. After two years of reaping good results.

The professional and knowledgeable note-taking system, I called PK system, built PK system info-map using Obsidian plugins.

PK Note-Taking System

• P： Professional
• K： Knowledgeable

The PK system is designed to “organize information for better thinking”. A major is a specific project or goal that gathers information from multiple fields as part of the completion of the project.

The project carries content related to the profession, which is the most recent concern or urgent, and a small short-term goal The knowledge is divided into three main areas: science, art, and culture.

The division of erudition into the three modules of science, art, and culture is mainly derived from Leonardo da Vinci’s principle of developing a complete mind.

“To develop a complete mind: Study the science of art; Study the art of science. Learn how to see. Realize that everything connects to everything else.” ―Leonardo da Vinci

A scientist who understood medicine, architecture, and anatomy, and also studied mechanics, mathematics, and physics in depth, Leonardo da Vinci was also an observant, thoughtful, and innovative artist, and his paintings and sculptures have been hailed as among the masterpieces of art history.

Modern scientists generally agree that learning science requires rigorous logic and rational thinking. This type of thinking tends to be dominated by the left side of the brain. The arts, on the other hand, require more aesthetic and perceptual thinking, often dominated by the right hemisphere of the brain. Making full use of the left and right brain and learning across disciplines is a good complement to professional skills, which is the erudite design of the PK system.

PK System’s Info Map with Obsidian

PK systems are used for information management, and info maps are an old visual metaphor for quick navigation.

How to build the info-map of “The PK system”?

The visual management of the knowledge map requires the use of an Obsidian drawing board plugin, Excalidraw, which classifies projects, technology, art, and culture in four areas on a canvas, with projects in the center.

Excalidraw plugin can draw basic graphics, the plugin supports double link syntax, and the link information can be quickly dragged and dropped to the canvas. The knowledge map uses the size of the text to manage hierarchically, and the content of the information at the corresponding level can be viewed in the canvas at different levels. Information can also be differentiated using symbols and images and colors.

Our attention is a scarce resource and will only pay attention to the most prominent and attractive information, which is a practice of information visualization, and only care about the information in the current hierarchy in different levels of the knowledge map.

In addition to the visual management of information maps, hierarchical tabs of Obsidian can be used to assist in the hierarchical management of the tree. The tags are like an invisible folder that can be well managed from the bottom up.

This is the information map of my Obsidian’s PK system practice, where hierarchical management of tags and visual knowledge maps are managed together.