The Problem with Tools for Thought!

There's something amiss with the term 'Tools for Thought.' Perhaps something as simple as having the word ‘Tool’ first causes us to focus on the tool more than the thinking. Maybe even using the term ‘Thought’ can lead us astray. It’s easy to confuse thought as an object rather than thought as a process. Once that happens, we seek to manipulate the thoughts we’ve already had rather than enabling their generation.

Perhaps it's no wonder that the Personal Knowledge Management (PKM) community is so preoccupied with the tools themselves. We’ve become obsessed with managing notes, the external indicator of thought, rather than the internal process of thinking.

Words have power! The way we describe the world around us impacts how we interpret and interact with that world. So perhaps it's time to consider the terms we use and how that shapes the community we build.

Where Are We Headed?

What's the point, you might ask, in spending what limited time we have discussing the triviality of terms? I have meta-data to add, workflows to polish, and integrations to refine.

But there's potential for division within the community because we've not yet come to terms. We use the same words with different meanings or different words with the same meaning, but more on that in a future…