Harness the Power of Curiosity in Personal Knowledge Management

URL: https://www.collider.space/issue-3-harnessing-the-power-of-curiosity/

For me, the turning point was when I got curious about curiosity.
Imagine if curiosity was at the heart of your PKM practice. Suddenly, managing your knowledge becomes less of a task and more of an exciting journey. (View Highlight)

The acronym SN(A)CK distills the process into its core elements: Sources, Notes, Creations, and Knowledge. The 'A' in SN(A)CK stands for 'Atomic creation', a dynamic process moving us through the elements of SN(A)CK, by dissecting sources into notes, combining them, and creating new insights. (View Highlight)

• Sources (S) refers to the information we absorb. It’s the input element, which handles anything from highlights from books and articles to snippets of videos and podcast episodes.
• Notes (N) involve making sense of our sources. It’s the processing element, where we break ideas down and combine them so that inputs become understanding.
• Atomic creation (A) is the active process of breaking down information into digestible atoms and combining them to create new insights and creations. Inquiry is intrinsic to this process, prompting us to question, explore, and unearth both gaps (information-gap theory) and connections (graph theory) in our pursuit of knowledge.
• Creations (C) is about expressing our understanding. It’s the output element of our process, where we are encouraged to combine and structure our insights logically.
• Knowledge (K) is the element that connects everything together. It reflects our Interest Landscape – the areas, topics, and concepts that we care about – and hence it forms the basis from which curiosity can arise and learning can unfold. (View Highlight)

For those of you interested in a more in-depth understanding of the technicalities of SN(A)CK, I've created a detailed video introduction and a Tana template.) (View Highlight)

Notes: Idea Connection and Inquiry (View Highlight)

Think of the connections you create between your notes like the bonds that form a molecule. Each atomic note represents an atom, and when these atoms (notes) interconnect, they form a molecule - a new insight or idea born from your curiosity. We can also relate this back to graph theory. Each note is a node, and the connections you create between them are the edges. This network of notes forms a graph of knowledge where curiosity guides the construction of connections. There's an innate excitement in finding ways to connect disparate ideas – a moment of revelation where something suddenly clicks into place. This thrill, this spark of understanding, is what fuels our curiosity further, driving us to dig deeper, to question more, and to forge more connections. Connecting our notes functions as a gamification of curiosity. (View Highlight)

Actionable advice:
• Cultivate the habit of note-making as an active process of exploration and sense-making.
• Foster an inquisitive mindset by routinely questioning and challenging the ideas in your notes and the connections between them.
• Revel in the thrill of connecting disparate ideas and let this excitement fuel your curiosity. (View Highlight)

Creation: Expressing and Inducing Curiosity (View Highlight)

Creation is the key to learning. It’s about making logical progressions of your notes. Through creation, you express your unique insights and interpretations, both to yourself and to the world. Creation can be a thought-provoking blog post or a captivating video, but it can also be an outline of ideas or a brief reflection. We can think of it as a walk through our Interest Landscape guided by our curiosity. Importantly, it can be incomplete and imperfect. (View Highlight)

Actionable advice:
• Regularly give shape to your understanding through tangible creative expression.
• Embrace imperfection and incompleteness. It's the process of learning that matters.
• Share your creations to open feedback loops of new perspectives and induced curiosity. (View Highlight)

Knowledge: The Foundation of Curiosity (View Highlight)

Knowledge is the centerpiece in the SN(A)CK system that connects all the other elements. In essence, it reflects our Interest Landscape, providing context to our sources, notes, and creations. However, knowledge is not a static entity; it's dynamic, continuously growing, adapting, and evolving in sync with our curiosity. As we explore different topics, we add new nodes to our knowledge graph, and with each new node, new connections are formed. More knowledge effectively means richer context and new branches to hang our ideas on. (View Highlight)

Actionable advice:
• Get started by learning the basics of a topic that catches your interest. This foundation increases the likelihood of curiosity to arise.
• Actively build connections between the new pieces of knowledge and what you already know.
• Commit to a lifelong journey of exploration and growth. Your knowledge is ever-evolving, and so too is your curiosity. (View Highlight)

The future of knowledge management is not about accumulating information. Instead, it’s about cultivating a mindset of perpetual curiosity and inquiry. It's about transforming our view of PKM from a task into a joy-filled journey of learning. (View Highlight)