Five must-read books to build your perfect personal knowledge management system
Table of Contents
Introduction
Exploring the world of personal knowledge management, and want go deeper? If you learn best by reading, you might be looking for the best books on personal knowledge management so you can figure out how to implement a more effective and efficient note taking strategy in your daily workflow.
A quick hello – I’m Elizabeth Butler, MD, PhD, creator of the Calmer Notes method for personal knowledge management (aka personal knowledge management for busy people). I’ve spent nearly two decades discovering the best strategies for personal knowledge management and note taking during my academic and medical career. I really enjoy the philosophy of note taking as well as the practical process. So I’m delighted to help point you in the direction of some excellent books on note taking and personal knowledge management to help inspire you to grow or refine your own PKM system.
Here are some personal knowledge management (PKM) books to get you started.
How to Take Smart Notes by Sönke Ahrens
What this book offers
One of the best-known books in the personal knowledge management space, written by a professor in the Philosophy of Education. Dr. Sönke Ahrens walks through the process of setting up a Zettelkasten personal knowledge management system based on “atomic notes” aka the smallest available pieces of information, then linking them together. His work is strongly influenced by Niklas Luhmann’s original Zettelkasten system, as reflected in Luhmann’s essay Communicating with Slip Boxes: An Empirical Account. If you’re interested in the philosophy of the Zettelkasten method, this is the place to start.
Author’s description of Taking Smart Notes
Take Smart Notes is a project dedicated to helping students, academics and nonfiction writers get more done – ideally with more fun and less effort. I never found a book on how to organize academic and nonfiction writing convincing enough that I felt good about recommending it to my students.
There are great books on time- and self-management in general, like David Allen’s “Getting Things Done,” but they usually don’t work for an open-ended process like research. Specific books on academic writing, on the other hand, are usually more collections of tips and tricks and not systematic enough to make a real difference.
I spent a lot of time trying out different note-taking systems and started four times over with different slip-boxes: Two on different sizes of paper and one in HTML before I settled with Lüdecke’s Zettelkasten. I learned a lot about what works and what doesn’t. As someone said: Learning from experience is the best way to learn – especially if it is the experience of others.
[description from author Sönke Ahrens]
Further reading about Taking Smart Notes
- How to Take Smart Notes: A Step-by-Step Guide by Nat Eliason
- How to take smart notes by Ness Labs
- How to take smart notes: book summary by Ali Abdaal
- How to take smart notes: a minimalist approach to effective note taking by Elizabeth Butler
Taking Smart Notes with DEVONthink by Kourosh Dini
What this book offers
If you’d like to implement a smart notes approach in DEVONthink, you’ll appreciate this guide from psychiatrist, productivity expert, author, and musician Dr. Kourosh Dini. You’ll implement the philosophy in the Smart Notes approach in DEVONthink, making the most of the AI technology available. If you’re a Mac user interested in using DEVONthink for note taking and building a Zettelkasten, this handbook is what you’re looking for.
Author’s description of Taking Smart Notes with DEVONthink
Taking Smart Notes with DEVONthink gives you the foundation build your ideas and store your digital stuff with the powerful data manager, DEVONthink. Taking Smart Notes with DEVONthink takes you from the basics to advanced uses one step at a time.
Build an idea system so you can get to them when and where you want. Use DEVONthink’s powerful AI to discover connections between ideas, references, and more. Learn how DEVONthink can manage a wide array of file types, including texts, emails, videos, PDFs, RSS feeds, and more. Build smart groups to hone in on what you want. Create a foundation of notes and their connections.
[description from author Kourosh Dini]
Further reading about Taking Smart Notes with DEVONthink
- New Book: Taking Smart Notes from the DEVONthink blog
- Kourosh Dini on DEVONthink from The Informed Life
- Taking Smart Notes with DEVONthink from MacSparky
Digital Zettelkasten: Principles, Methods, and Examples by David Kadavy
Author, podcaster, and self-publishing coach David Kadavy was inspired to write his “short read” book on digital zettelkasten after writing a popular blog post on the topic of Zettelkasten. In his post about the book on Reddit, he reports that he appreciated the philosophy and “why” of other articles and books on Zettelkasten, but wished he’d had a clearer path on “how” to build a digital zettelkasten.
Author’s description of Digital Zettelkasten
When I first started using the Zettelkasten method I was very frustrated with the information out there. But, as a nonfiction author, I had already had false starts with other note-taking methods, such as the “commonplace book” Ryan Holiday espouses. So, I was motivated to persevere and get a good first-principles understanding of how best to construct a Zettelkasten for my workflow.
For sure, How to Take Smart Notes was the best resource I came across, but I still had a lot to figure out after reading it. So, I wrote and just released a short book (about 80 pages), full of everything I wish I could have known from the start. It’s called Digital Zettelkasten: Principles, Methods, & Examples.
It’s a guide that helps you think through building your digital Zettelkasten in a way that will turn your computer into a “bicycle for the mind.” And – something I always had trouble finding – it has real-world examples.. I hope my short book helps some zettlers get started faster than I did.
[description from author David Kadavy]
Further reading and viewing about Digital Zettelkasten
- I wrote the book I wish I had when I started Zettelkasten – post by the author on the Zettelkasten Reddit
Effective Notetaking by Fiona McPherson
This insight-packed book has plenty of practical, actionable steps you can take to make your note-taking richer and more effective. The book was written for university students, but has applicable tips and tutorials for lifelong learners, too. Dr. McPherson uses an evidence-based, research-grounded approach to help improve your note-taking and retention skills.
Author’s description of Effective Notetaking
This workbook looks at the most important group of study strategies – how to take notes (with advice on how to read a textbook and how to prepare for a lecture).
You’ll be shown how to format your notes; use headings and highlighting; how to write different types of text summaries and pictorial ones, including concept maps and mind maps (you’ll find out the difference, and the pros and cons of each); ask the right questions; make the right connections; review your notes; and, evaluate text to work out which strategy is appropriate.
There’s advice on individual differences and learning styles, and on how to choose the strategies that are right for both you and the situation. Using effective notetaking strategies will help you remember what you read. It will help you understand more, and set you on the road to becoming an expert (or at least getting good grades!).
Successful studying isn’t about hours put in, it’s about spending your time wisely. You want to study smarter not harder. As always with the Mempowered books, this thorough (and fully referenced) workbook doesn’t re-hash the same tired advice that’s been peddled for so long. Rather, Effective Notetaking builds on the latest cognitive and educational research to help you study for success.
[description from author Fiona McPherson]
Further reading about Effective Notetaking
How to Read a Book by Mortimer J. Adler and Charles van Doren
Want to learn how to be a better, more nuanced reader? Want to get more insights and wisdom out of every book you read? This classic book walks you through how to read with better attention to detail. You’ll learn the different levels of reading (elementary, systematic skimming, inspectional, speed reading) and the times when you should use each approach. You’ll learn how to process and extract the best from every book you read, and take better notes as you do it.
Publisher’s description of How to Read a Book
With half a million copies in print, How to Read a Book is the best and most successful guide to reading comprehension for the general reader, completely rewritten and updated with new material.
Originally published in 1940, this book is a rare phenomenon, a living classic that introduces and elucidates the various levels of reading and how to achieve them—from elementary reading, through systematic skimming and inspectional reading, to speed reading. Readers will learn when and how to “judge a book by its cover,” and also how to X-ray it, read critically, and extract the author’s message from the text.
Also included is instruction in the different techniques that work best for reading particular genres, such as practical books, imaginative literature, plays, poetry, history, science and mathematics, philosophy and social science works.
Finally, the authors offer a recommended reading list and supply reading tests you can use measure your own progress in reading skills, comprehension, and speed.
Further reading about How to Read a Book
- How To Read A Book by Mortimer Adler – Book Notes, Summary, Review by Michelle Mac
- How to read a book from Ness Labs
- How to Read a Book: The Ultimate Guide by Mortimer Adler from Farnham Street
If you’re a reader who is searching for a better approach to personal knowledge management, Calmer Notes might be just what you’ve been looking for.
The Calmer Notes method will take you through the process of creating and maintaining a tailored, mindfully-designed personal knowledge management system to organize your digital notes and files.
Wishing you all the best on your personal knowledge management journey!
