Personal Knowledge Management as Practice — Holding Ideas
Holding Information — A Working Learning System
There is an overwhelm and subtle anxiety that comes from collecting more information than we can ever truly hold in our minds and behaviours.
Bookmarks multiply. Tabs remain open. Backlogs get filled. PDFs gather in folders. Courses linger unfinished, some not even started.
Studio note
This is a working field note — not a system to copy, but a reflection on one person's practice of turning information into capability. It sits in the Flywheel layer of the Idea to Value system, where learning compounds into behaviour over time. The companion piece — Why Paper Still Matters — makes the wider philosophical case. This note shows what the practice actually looks like.
I noticed, some years ago, that my digital information library was growing faster than my understanding.
My Zotero library — a digital archive where sources wait, annotated, for the right moment
The act of capture had become easier than the act of crunching that information to turn it into knowledge.
And so, without really forward planning it, I began to refactor my Personal Knowledge Management System to suit who I had become and what my learning now needed. I moved to small digital and paper containers for information and knowledge.
The A4 artist's sketchbook — where information is condensed until only what matters remains
Just places where the growing backlog of thoughts, information and ideas could be turned into action, into knowledge, into something more than fragments and snippets of accumulated learning information.
In this essay I explore the movement of action along with the tools and process I use.
For a podcast reflection, video and essay exploring the tension of where we choose to invest our attention in learning, see Your Career as an Idea → Value System.
The Four Motions of Learning
Over time, I realised my learning followed four natural motions. Not stages. Not steps. More like waves that come and go.
Capture. The simple act of noticing, storing and keeping hold of something before it disappears. Learning sources, scraps, doodled, course material, books.
Curate. The quiet decision about whether it deserves space in my life, and if so, organising it for ease and retrieval.
Crunch. The work of turning information into action, to create knowledge and ability — the part that cannot be rushed.
Contribute. Letting what I have learned enter the world in a different form — a conversation, a diagram, a paragraph, a video, a podcast, a change in behaviour in the workplace.
I do not move through these in a strict order. They overlap. They blur. But they have become a useful way of noticing where my energy sits.
01
Capture
Noticing and holding something before it disappears — scraps, sources, doodles, course material, books.
02
Curate
The quiet decision about whether it deserves space — and if so, organising it for ease and retrieval.
03
Crunch
Turning information into action — creating knowledge and ability. The part that cannot be rushed.
04
Contribute
Letting what you've learned enter the world differently — a conversation, a diagram, a video, a change in behaviour.
These are not stages or steps — more like waves that come and go, overlap, and blur.
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