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Personal Knowledge Management

Where Not What Resource Summary for EO Atlanta (and everyone else too)

A list of resources for my Where Not What Talk.

Scott Novis

• 3 min read
Where Not What Resource Summary for EO Atlanta (and everyone else too)

I want to thank everyone who came out to my talk on Monday at the offices of Homrich Berg in Atlanta. We had a great turnout and covered a lot of material. As part of my promise, I wanted to share some of the materials and overview of what we covered. Building a Second Brain - also known as a personal knowledge management system - can look daunting, especially when you see one the one, I have been working with for five years now.

However, it didn't start that way. It started pretty simple. The reason it looks the way it does, is that like a "real brain," it has grown organically over time. Instead of becoming more difficult to use, for me, it has become more useful. And that is my hope for you. That you can start small and grow a system that suits your needs.

Ethan King was truly kind to bring me in and offered some great feedback which I will incorporate into my blog and resources to help you build your own "second brain."

Where To Start

I did not start my second brain to be more productive. I started my second brain to wrangle my notes and get more out of what I was learning. Even before I became a member of the Entrepreneurs Organization where they hold monthly learning events, I was an adult learner. I started listening to "Zig Ziggler" and his "AutoU" - listening to cassette tapes, and then CD's as I drove to work. When I read Tim Ferris "The 4-hour Work Week" - I stopped watching news as he suggested, and started listening to Ted Talks. Man, smart people trying to solve hard problems is way more motivational than watching what Ryan Holiday called, "Outrage Porn." Then I started a morning routine, and an evening routine, both which included paper book reading.

I was learning so much... but retaining almost none of it. I had (and still have) piles of notebooks, more than 15,000 kindle highlights, and hundreds (possibly thousands) of hours of audible recordings. But what was I using? What was I applying? I needed a system to help me get more out of what I was learning. That was when I read a book called How to Take Smart Notes by Sönke Ahrens.

That book, introduced me to the wild, and wooly world of Personal Knowledge Management. It would lead to other discoveries, but the big idea is this: Ideas need to be connected to other ideas and expressed in order to create new value. Everything in the world started as an idea, but it only changes the world if it takes the next step from idea, into some form of expression. Ahren's was my first big step in learning how to connect ideas.

While much of what I do absolutely helps with productivity, I actually didn't start there. I started with managing what I wanted to learn. You may also find that's a good place to start.

Resources

I have pulled together a list of my video resources, and other blog posts to make it easier for you to find.

Videos

If you are a visual learner, here are a list of the YouTube videos I have shared with busy business owners just like you:

Most Watched Videos

Shared Notes

Obsidian has a few pay for services which are pretty cool. One of my favorites is Publish. It allows me to publish pages from notes directly to the web. I found it very useful for sharing tools, and thoughts with clients, and people who I coaches in EO Accelerator.

The root website is at: https://publish.obsidian.md/scottnovis

The very first article I shared on the topic focused on how [[Niklas Luhmann]] created his amazing note taking system.

Here are the articles broken out with individual links like a Table of Contents:

How To Handle Tasks:

Summary

I appreciate your curiosity and your interest in this topic. It inspires me to find better ways to make this more accessible, and actionable. If you have any questions, please don't hesitate to reach out.

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