organize myself

content/posts/2024-organize-myself/index.md

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+---
+draft: false
+categories: ["Management"]
+title: "Bicycle for my Mind - How I Organize Myself and My Knowledge"
+date: 2024-04-14
+image: "obsidian-linkedin.png"
+# social: "https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:7182998963174658048/"
+---
+
+Peter Drucker said in 1967: _"The knowledge worker cannot be supervised closely or in detail. He can only be helped. But he must direct himself.”_
+
+As a serious knowledge worker for a lifetime, I honed how I "direct myself" over the years quite a bit. I have settled on a relatively flat and simple system to manage myself, linking my active project to-dos and my entire knowledge base—comprising everything I've accumulated from YouTube, podcasts, etc.
+
+![Screenshot showcasing various core documents used in a personal knowledge management system, including strategic planning and core values, within the Obsidian tool.](obsidian-documents.png)
+
+## Tooling
+
+The cornerstone of my personal knowledge management system is [Obsidian](https://obsidian.md/). I switched from Roam Research a few months ago and have grown to appreciate its simplicity and robustness. It's primarily a tool for managing markdown files, but it also allows linking to other files and shows backlinks within documents. I use it fairly "vanilla" to avoid complications with future changes or if I want to switch tooling in the future, though I subscribe to the syncing feature to use it across multiple devices.
+
+## Core Documents
+
+Adopting an idea from [Cal Newport](https://calnewport.com/), I rely on a set of core documents that I routinely reference. These documents outline their purpose, my review frequency, and update procedures, serving as my operating system.
+
+### Core Values
+
+My 'Core Values' document contains my life values, often including excerpts from books I've read.
+
+### Strategic Plan
+
+My 'Strategic Plan' is crucial for quarterly assessing my current professional situation. It includes a 'Triage' section for new thoughts to consider in the following review that I maintain while life is happening.
+
+### This Week
+
+![Image of the "This Week" document in Obsidian, illustrating a weekly planning method with sections for each day and areas for immediate and upcoming tasks, inspired by the Hey Calendar.](obsidian-thisweek.png)
+The 'This Week' document is operationally vital for me. I update it at the beginning of the week and daily before I start work.
+
+I use this feel to organize my week in daily sections, sifting through various project calendars to construct blocks that ensure I achieve one meaningful goal each day while minimizing switching between different themes. For each day, I reference the specific project file I'm working on together with planned tasks and meetings.
+
+Alongside the daily sections, there is a "This Week" Section for important stuff that I don't want to miss, but I don't know yet what day to tackle. This is an idea that was inspired by the  [Hey Calendar](https://www.hey.com/calendar/). Other than that, a "next week" section also helps me de-scope work from the current week for more focus.
+
+### My Craft
+
+This document references other input documents, mainly from the web, with stuff I want to try when time permits.
+
+## Active Projects
+
+![Visual representation of the project management structure within Obsidian, showing the index file setup for major projects including sections like Triage and Follow-Up.](obsidian-project.png)
+I work on only 2-3 projects at any given time. In my case, this usually means a larger consulting project and a startup that I am currently working on. Each project has an index file with the following structure:
+
+![Detailed flowchart or graphical layout showing the workflow management within Obsidian for handling tasks categorized into Triage, Do This Week, Not This Week, Follow-Up, and Later](obsidian-flow.png)
+
+- **Triage:** This is where I initially dump everything that comes at me.
+- **Do this week:** I regularly refocus on what I still need to do this week and what should be moved to next week.
+- **Not this week:** Here, I shift tasks that I no longer want to tackle in the current week.
+- **Follow-Up:** This is when I depend on someone else to do something I am responsible for.
+- **Later:** This section contains things that I consider essential, but there are better times for them. I revisit these items during quarterly planning, etc.
+
+The additional files in the project deal with various topics related to the project, such as:
+
+- Strategy
+- Workshops
+- Etc.
+
+Almost every team member also has a file in the project folder. I make meeting notes in these files and jot down items I need to discuss with them.
+
+It's important to mention that I only keep current, evergreen files in the project folders. Once something is over (e.g., a workshop), I move it with the day's timestamp into the "Journals" folder to avoid clutter.
+
+## Processed Knowledge
+
+![Screenshot displaying the summarization of content from various sources like podcasts and YouTube within Obsidian, emphasizing the manual process of summarization for better knowledge retention.](obsidian-read.png)
+The files in those folders summarize things I've read, listened to, or consumed. The content comes from podcasts, YouTube, and web articles I've read using the [Readwise Reader.](https://readwise.io/read)
+
+It's important to note that I rarely use direct quotes or excerpts when processing knowledge; instead, I manually summarize the content. This ensures that I have a collection of copied and pasted items and have taken an additional step to understand what I've read (spaced repetition).
+
+For each of these knowledge nuggets, I reference specific other Obsidian files to retrieve the knowledge.
+
+(Usually, I do this in German, but for this example, I have translated it into English)
+
+## Referenced Knowledge
+
+![Image illustrating the backlinking features in Obsidian, used to organize and retrieve referenced knowledge across categories like business, product, and tech.](obsidian-backlinks.png)
+My referenced knowledge is organized into business, product, and tech categories. In those folders, for example, within the product folder, I have files named "Vision," "Discovery," and "User Experience." For tech, this could be "What I Think philosophically About AI," "How I Conduct 1-on-1s," etc.
+
+Sometimes, the files in these folders do not contain content. However, I use all the back-references that Obsidian offers when searching for the knowledge I have collected on a topic.
+
+This can be very useful when I'm writing a blog article about a topic or coaching a direct report on how to conduct one-on-one meetings with their team, etc.
+
+Whatever it is - I find everything that I know about this topic!
+
+Oh, and then there is also this folder named "Me," containing a lot of self-reflective stuff. I have thoughts on death, sleep, what I think when I experience imposter syndrome, when I'm too stressed, etc.
+
+## Notes
+
+In the 'Notes' section, I summarize things like journals, which helps me when drafting emails. I keep them out of project folders but maintain necessary references.
+
+## Journals
+
+I do not regularly journal, but sometimes, a journal-like format helps me. For example, when I write an email, I first draft it in a note (translating and editing it as necessary), but I prefer to keep it from the project folder. The references from the journal to the project are sufficient.
+
+## Conclusion
+
+That concludes the overview of my knowledge management loops and practices. With its two-way linking, Obsidian has been a fantastic tool in this regard.
+
+But the most important part of the daily doing is the file structure with the Triage Section at the top of every file and explicitly de- and re-scoping stuff from the current week

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