# How to Design Your Own Personal Knowledge Management System | by Martine Ellis | Aug, 2021 | Medium > ## Excerpt > In this article I explain what PKM is, how I do it and how you can design your own system. --- [  ](https://martineellis.medium.com/?source=post_page-----92b455b97ee4--------------------------------)  Photo by [Gabriella Clare Marino](https://unsplash.com/@gabiontheroad?utm_source=unsplash&utm_medium=referral&utm_content=creditCopyText) on [Unsplash](https://unsplash.com/s/photos/knowledge?utm_source=unsplash&utm_medium=referral&utm_content=creditCopyText) There are books, articles, podcasts, courses and videos out there with the potential to change your life. The problem is, there’s just too much. We are spoilt for choice when it comes to incredible content to consume and, as a result, (to coin a phrase I heard a lot at school), it often goes “in one ear and straight out the other”. This potentially life-changing information hangs around in our short-term memories for a few minutes (hours if we are lucky), and then it’s gone. If you want the content you consume to stand a chance of finding its way into your long-term memory, you need to do something with it — you need to interact with it and create new ideas. Furthermore, you need a system — your input, ideas, and output need a home and an operational toolkit. This is where personal knowledge management (PKM) comes in. According to Tiago Forte, PKM is: > “the practice of capturing the ideas and insights we encounter in our daily life, whether from personal experience, from books and articles, or from our work, and cultivating them over time to produce more creative, higher quality work” (Forte Labs, 2019). For me, PKM is about ensuring the content I consume (usually, text, audio and video) is not wasted. It’s helpful to consider why you consume certain types of content before you start designing a PKM system. The three main reasons you might consume content are: - Entertainment - Information - Understanding For me, entertainment content is primarily fiction books and dog videos on TikTok (my guilty pleasure). This type of content does not enter my PKM system — I do not need to learn from it or use it again — it is pleasurably passive. In “[How to Read a Book](https://amzn.to/3xUEUXJ)”, the authors distinguish between “reading for information” (for example, a newspaper) and “reading for understanding”. The latter is described as when: > “a person tries to read something that at first he does not completely understand” (Adler and Van Doren, 1972). This doesn’t just apply to reading — it works for audio and video too. My PKM system mainly handles the content I consume for understanding. The process is active — it involves thinking, asking questions and making notes. The ultimate end goals are learning and creating new content. Start designing your PKM system using sticky notes as you can allocate an item per note and move them around quickly. Once you are happy with the process, draw it as a flow diagram using a free tool like [Excalidraw](https://excalidraw.com/). Here are the steps I recommend you follow: First, identify your input sources — in other words, the places you consume content (for example, YouTube, Twitter, Kindle, podcast app and academic libraries). Then, think about what you want to achieve as output; for example, do you want to write blog posts, create a podcast, create tweet threads or write a dissertation? You now have the beginning and end of your PKM system. All that is left to do is design the workflow in between. Consider the following stages: - Capture - Literature notes - Permanent notes The stages and terminology in my PKM system are inspired by Niklas Luhmann’s [Zettelkasten](https://zettelkasten.de/). The capture stage is where content enters your PKM system. Literature notes are taken when you consume content, for example, you might make highlights and annotations in your Kindle. Permanent notes are written in your own words and are the starting point of new content and ideas — it is recommended that these are atomic (in other words, the notes are short and cover a single idea). I capture content in several different places. My literature and permanent notes live in [Obsidian](http://obsidian.md/) (see the screenshot below). Obsidian is a free markdown tool.   You can use any selection of tools for your workflow — I explain what I use and how below. Here is my PKM system:   You will note that [Readwise](https://readwise.io/i/martine48) is integral to my system (affiliate link because I love Readwise). Readwise brings all of your notes and highlights from other platforms into one bucket and syncs beautifully Obsidian. Readwise costs $7.99 per month (billed annually), and there is also a Lite version which costs $4.49 per month (billed annually). Discounts for students and educators are available. My input sources are: - Twitter (I am primarily interested in threads) - Web articles (not including Medium articles) - Kindle books - Medium articles (I keep these separate as Medium integrates with Readwise) - Podcasts (I use Airr app as it enables audio clipping and syncs with Readwise) - PDFs (usually academic papers sourced from various databases) I capture threads in Readwise by replying “@readwiseio save thread” to the thread directly in Twitter. If someone else has already commented on a thread to save to Readwise, all you need to do is like the comment, and it will do the same thing. Readwise sends saved threads to Obsidian, where I can re-read them and make permanent notes if I want to. Web articles are captured in [Pocket](https://getpocket.com/). Pocket is a free read-it-later app with a paid option (£35.99 per year). I read, annotate and highlight in Pocket. My highlights and annotations are automatically synced to Obsidian via Readwise into my literature notes area. After that, I might make permanent notes. I use either the Kindle app or my actual Kindle, the Medium app, and the podcast app [Airr](https://www.airr.io/) to consume, highlight and annotate books, Medium articles and podcasts. Airr is a free app and so is Medium, although I do opt to subscribe to Medium for $5 a month as I like reading their premium content. The highlights and annotations sync to Obsidian via Readwise and land in my literature notes area. I spend a lot of time reading research — articles tend to come in PDF format. PDFs are captured in [Papers](https://www.papersapp.com/) (by ReadCube). Papers costs $5 a month for full-time researchers and $3 a month for students. I read, highlight and annotate in Papers and then make permanent notes in my academic vault in Obsidian, linking ideas where possible. Here’s a summary of my PKM system tech stack: - [Readwise](https://readwise.io/i/martine48) - [Obsidian](http://obsidian.md/) - [Papers by ReadCube](https://www.papersapp.com/) - [Pocket](https://getpocket.com/) - [Airr app](https://www.airr.io/) - Medium app - Twitter app - Kindle Most of the tools I use have free options, as explained above. A solid PKM system will help you learn and generate new knowledge. My setup works for me, but I encourage you to devise something specifically tailored to your needs — everyone is different. Adler, M. J. and Van Doren, C. (1972) _How to read a book_, Rev. and updated ed., New York, Simon and Schuster. Forte Labs (2019) _A Complete Guide to Tagging for Personal Knowledge Management_ \[Online\]. Available at [https://fortelabs.co/blog/a-complete-guide-to-tagging-for-personal-knowledge-management/](https://fortelabs.co/blog/a-complete-guide-to-tagging-for-personal-knowledge-management/) (Accessed 16 August 2021).