Sign in Subscribe
newsletter

DeveloPassion's Newsletter #179 - Ego is the Enemy

Edition 179 of my newsletter, discussing Knowledge Management, Knowledge Work, Zen Productivity, Personal Organization, and more!

Sebastien Dubois

Sebastien Dubois

— 14 min read
DeveloPassion's Newsletter #179 - Ego is the Enemy

Welcome

Another week, another newsletter! I hope that you all had a great one 🤩

Once again, I've missed one of our weekly meetings, woops! I've been working hard on Knowii, took a way off at the Belgian coast, and I'm back with fresh news about Knowledge Management 🎉

Alright, let's gooooo 🚀

Business

Nil novi sub sole on the business side. As I mentioned in the previous edition, I am now working 60% of the time as an employee, which leaves me less time to build my online "empire". I'm slowly adjusting to the new rhythm. Less time means I have to focus more to deliver at least the same amount of value to you all.

I want to make progress on Knowii, but if I want this business to survive, I have to make tough choices. And right now, I feel like the only option forward is to resume working on the Knowledge Worker Kit, and put Knowii on the back burner.

Knowledge Worker Kit and community (BETA)
Who is this for?You are an entrepreneur, founder, executive or leaderYou are a Knowledge Worker or Lifelong LearnerYou feel lost and overwhelmed by the pace of innovation, disorganized, or unproductiveYou want to be a top performer and stay ahead of the curveYou want to join a community of like-minded people you can exchange with, and learn fromYou want a solid system that scalesYou want to learn with the bestWhat is this?TL;DR: This is a private community accompanied by a detailed guide exploring many topics (e.g., Knowledge Work, Personal Organization, Learning, Time Management, Project Management, etc), sharing proven and scalable systems/guidance. The content will keep expanding over time, with courses, workshops, and more!The Knowledge Worker Kit is an evergreen project. You buy access once, and you get lifetime access to all the past and future content, courses, and events, including all the bonuses:Private communityDeep Dive Guide covering all the areas, as well as templates, references, and resourcesFree access to all future workshops, meetups, knowledge-sharing sessions, invited talks, AMAs, and to all the recorded sessions ...Included bonuses:Knowledge Management for Beginners Course ($69.99)Obsidian Starter Course ($69.99)Obsidian Starter Kit ($69.99)Personal Knowledge Management Library ($59.99)Beginner’s Guide to ObsidianTotal value of the included bonuses: $269.Evergreen ContentThe Knowledge Worker Kit is a living project, and a community of practice. It will continue expanding over time, and the value you will get out of it will keep growing. Day after day, week after week. Buy it once, and you will have access to all future content, courses, and events.Who is behind this?Hi, I’m Sébastien DuboisI’ve been passionate about Knowledge Management, Learning, Knowledge Work, Personal Organization, and Productivity for more than 20 years. As an author, entrepreneur, coach, and father of 3, I needed efficient and effective solutions to stay organized, focused, and productive. The Knowledge Worker Kit includes everything I know about these topics, and more!I have a proven track record of delivering at work, and with my side projects. I have worked as a software developer, team leader, project manager, IT architect, CTO, founder, coach, consultant, solopreneur, and more. I have also published 3 books, 300+ articles and newsletters, created courses, YouTube videos, digital products, and manage various communities. And I did it all with a busy life, a 9-5 job, and 3 kids.My personal system works and helps me learn quickly, achieve my goals consistently, with high quality standards, and without sacrificing my health and precious family time. And that’s why I want to share it with you: my system. Actually, my goal is not only to share my experience, but also to create a community of like-minded people, and help each other grow as much as possible.Tell me more...Being a Knowledge Worker today is much more challenging than it ever was. Getting started isn’t easy, and there are many traps to avoid. Spare yourself some time and benefit from my experience and battle-tested systems. I’ll share everything I know with you: my approach, my systems, my routines, my templates, guidance, my courses, my starter kits, and more! My mission is to help you be part of the top 1% of Knowledge workers.After you finish exploring the guide, you’ll have:Clarity in your life and an obvious path forwardSolid habits, routines, and systemsClear ideas about how to “manage” your careerAn effective approach to learning new thingsSolid knowledge management and personal organization systemsKnowledge about how to organize, plan, control, and manage projects (large and small!)A toolkit to prioritize workA system to manage your tasks at scaleEffective means to focus your attention and manage your timeWork methods that will propel your career forwardWhat’s included?WARNING: The Knowledge Worker Kit is in BETA. The content will be added and expanded over time. If you buy access now, you’ll benefit from the lowest price. The product is already available so that I can find early adopters and get as much feedback as possible in order to make it great for everyone.If you buy access to the Knowledge Worker Kit, you’ll get lifetime access to:The guide, the templates, guidance, references, and resourcesThe private communityAll past, and future courses (e.g., the Knowledge Management for Beginners course, the Obsidian Starter Kit)All past, and future community events (meetups, workshops, knowledge-sharing sessions, invited talks, etc)Ask Me Anything (AMA) Q&As with meMy starter kits (e.g., the Obsidian Starter Kit)In addition, you’ll also get free access to all future content updates. Over time, I’ll continue expanding the guide with new ideas, techniques, systems, templates, and more!What’s in the guide?The guide is a Notion space that includes detailed explanations, guidance, deep dives into the systems I rely on daily, links, references, templates, and various resources that all Knowledge Workers should explore.You will get to explore the content at your own pace, and to focus on what is useful to you right now, as each section is actionable on its own.Importantly, the guide will keep growing. It’s an evergreen knowledge base. Over time, we will grow the content further, adding new guides, deeper explanations, videos, and more.It covers the following topics:01. Clarity: values, behaviors, goals, non-goals, priorities, and intentions02. Habits, routines, systems, processes and methods03. Career Management and Anticipation04. Learning05. Projects Knowledge Management and Journaling06. Projects Organization07. Planning and Prioritization08. Task Management09. Focus, Attention, Time Management and Action10. Personal Development11. Control: periodic reviews, progress tracking, course-adjustment12. Personal Organization13. WorkOverview of the main topics01. ClarityThis part explores key elements that help bring clarity to one’s life:NeedsValuesPrinciplesGoalsPrioritiesEach of those is important to know what matters, what has value, and what to focus on.02. Habits, routines, systems, processes and methodsThis part explores the base elements of productivity systems:Habits and routinesSystems, processes, and methodsThose are key to building an “effortless” life, requiring as little willpower/motivation as possible to make things happen.03. Career Management and AnticipationThis part focuses on career management: its importance, your responsibility, the mindset you need to acquire, and all the related ideas.04. LearningThis part shares ideas about how to…Learn how you best learnLearn more effectivelyExplore new topicsResearchFilter informationLeverage AI and LLMs…05. Personal Knowledge Management (PKM) and JournalingThis part explores how to collect, organize, and link all your knowledge and information. It explores the main concepts of PKM, note-taking, note-making, tools of the trade, and structures/tips to help you keep everything useful, manageable, and maintainable as your knowledge base grows.It also introduces journaling and how to approach it to support your whole life.06. Projects OrganizationThis part focuses on how to organize projects and their information in a way that enables you and your teams to make focused progress.It shares ideas about how to organize project information, how to document projects, how to organize backlogs, etc.07. Planning and PrioritizationThis part focuses on how to plan projects and tasks, how to deal with deadlines, and how to prioritize work using various methods.08. Task ManagementThis part focuses on task management for personal and professional projects. It explores ways to keep tasks under control, how to organize personal work, and how to make the link between your different backlogs and your day-to-day life.09. Focus, Attention, Time Management and ActionThis part focuses on how to make things happen every single day, regardless of whatever is going on in your life. It’s all about techniques, tips & tricks, and tools to help you better manage your time, focus, and attention in order to ACT.10. Personal DevelopmentThis part explores important aspects of Personal Development that can make a big difference in a Knowledge Worker’s life. A sane mind in a sane body.11. ControlThis part is dedicated to control. How to control your progress, your trajectory, your projects, etc. And also, how to adjust course when things don’t go as expected.12. Personal OrganizationThis part helps better organize yourself and your information. It shares “zen” techniques you can use to remain organized, independently of how much information you have to juggle with.13. WorkThis part is all about WORK. How to do the work, how to improve your attitude, your results, and your recognition. It also dives into how to better collaborate with others to achieve your goals and those of your company/group.
Gumroad

The newsletter revenue is down to $112, still far below what I'd need for it to be sustainable. Each new paid subscription matters, which is why I keep kindly reminding you about the opportunity to support my work:

The lab 🧪

I'm happy to see that my SEO efforts of the past few months have finally helped:

SEO overview of dSebastien.net

I seem to have managed to break the downwards trend. We'll see if it continues going up.

I decided to take a paid subscription to Ahrefs ($30 per month) to go further. Hopefully it'll help me discover issues and opportunities for further growth. Because at this point, I don't have a "content" problem, but a distribution one. I need to manage to reach more people.

I'm also glad to see that more and more people seem to be using my Dataview Serializer plugin for Obsidian:

Dataview Serializer plugin downloads

Knowii status update

When I came back from vacation, I continued working on Knowii where I left off. I started by fixing the issues with WebSockets in production. It required some fiddling around because of current limitations with Laravel Forge and origin server certificates issues by Cloudflare (SANs not recognized for Laravel Reverb).

Once I managed to sort that out, I added a deployment workflow through GitHub actions. That also took a few hours, again due to limitations. But I managed to figure it out 🎉

I also added filters to the dashboard to let users easily search for the communities they're interested in:

Filtering communities

I improved the self-hosting guide too: https://github.com/knowii-oss/knowii/blob/main/SELF_HOSTING.md

knowii/SELF_HOSTING.md at main · knowii-oss/knowii
Knowii is a next-gen Community Knowledge Management platform - knowii-oss/knowii
GitHubknowii-oss

Then, I added error handling to the API client: https://github.com/knowii-oss/knowii/commit/c9f2381025cb610e810bad8e256d3f1a9a838437

I also further improved the security by adding a Content Security Policy, and adding the "__Secure-" session cookie name prefix. These are really valuable for ensuring the Knowii users are safe from harm when using Knowii.

Security headers analysis for Knowii.net

I didn't managed to get an A+ grade because I rely on the "origin-when-cross-origin" Referrer-Policy. I needed that to avoid some redirection issues with the API. Bummer.

Last but not least, I've applied for funding through the FLOSS Fund: https://dir.floss.fund/view/project/@github.com/knowii-oss/knowii-oss-knowii

knowii by DeveloPassion - Funding — FLOSS/Fund
Free and open source funding for knowii by DeveloPassion
FLOSS/Fund directory logo

Hopefully, someone in the world will notice the potential of Knowii, and will give me the opportunity to spend more time on it.

Next, I'm going to add support for managing community members, and implement the resource collection page, displaying all resources.

By the way, the project roadmap is available here:

Knowii • knowii-oss
Knowii
GitHub

New articles

I've published an article trying to articulate the value of modern Knowledge Management practices for business professionals:

The Power of Modern Knowledge Management for Business Professionals
Unlock your business potential with cutting-edge knowledge management strategies for enhanced productivity and decision-making
Sébastien DuboisSebastien Dubois

My reason for publishing this is that I want to focus more on knowledge workers, entrepreneurs and business professionals in the coming months.

Books

I've finished reading multiple books recently:

Most were fiction books that I thoroughly enjoyed, but the three that I found most interesting were The Alchemist, the memoir of Matthew Perry, and the biography of J.R.R Tolkien.

The Alchemist was the most impactful one. It's a fiction story full of wisdom about life, personal development, following your dreams, etc. I can't recommend it enough, and I intend to read it a second time soon. I have taken ~15 pages of notes that I intend to share with you all.

I didn't know much about the life of Matthew Perry before reading his memoirs. And WOAW, he was really tortured, and suffered a great deal from his addictions. I didn't take notes for that one, but I recommend reading it to realize how hard life can become when one is stuck on a self-destructive path due to childhood "trauma".

Finally, I also enjoyed learning more about the life of John Ronald Reuel Tolkien, one of my favorite fiction authors.

Quotes of the week

  • Don't fear failure. Fear inaction
  • Life is inherently risky. There is only one big risk you should avoid at all costs, and that is the risk of doing nothing — Denis Waitley
  • Our job in this life is not to shape ourselves into some ideal we imagine we ought to be, but to find out who we already are and become it — Steven Pressfield
  • The future is already here. It's just not very evenly distributed — William Ford Gibson
  • What in your life is calling you? When all the noise is silenced, the meetings adjourned, the lists laid aside, and the wild iris blooms by itself in the dark forest, what still pulls on your soul? In the silence between your heartbeats hides a summons, do you hear it? Name it, if you must, or leave it forever nameless, but why pretend it is not there? — The Terma Collective
  • All that the conscious ego can do is to formulate wishes, which are then carried out by forces which it controls very little and understands not at all. When it does anything more - when it tries too hard, for example, when it worries, when it becomes apprehensive about the future - it lowers the effectiveness of those forces and may even cause the devitalized body to fall ill. In my present state, awareness was not referred to as ego; it was, so to speak, on its own — Aldous Huxley, The Doors of Perception

Thinking and learning

I recently shared an X thread about PKM flywheels:

The Obsidian Web Clipper has evolved quite a lot recently. If you use Obsidian, then you should definitely check it out: https://obsidian.md/clipper

Obsidian Web Clipper
Highlight and capture web pages in your favorite browser. Save anything and everything with just one click.

With it, you can capture Web pages and highlights right into your Obsidian vault, automatically apply templates to those, control the captured metadata, the tags, and more!

Obsidian Web Clipper panel

The plugin also automatically extracts metadata from the pages you capture, which is really cool:

Captured metadata

By the way, Capacities now also has a Web clipper:

Zsolt has published a video in which he shares is visual book summary process:

I'm a fan of SLOW (but concurrent) reading, so I was curious about how he captures book insights. If you don't know Zsolt yet, then you're missing out. He's the open source developer behind the Excalidraw plugin for Obsidian. He's a visual thinker, and he hosts Visual Thinking Workshops.

Last week, I stumbled on a cool video created by Mike Schmitz, in which he shared his approach to building a quotebook within Obsidian:

I personally prefer to create one note per quote, as it enables various useful scenarios, but it was still interesting to see a different way to approach that.

If you're curious about my own approach, then check out the Obsidian Starter Kit:

Obsidian Starter Kit
Jump straight to stress-free note-making with Obsidian
Obsidian Starter Kit

There's yet another PKM app out there. It's called Kortex, and it seems pretty nice:

Kortex | A Second Brain For Creators
Finally, one place for all of your ideas, notes, highlights, and writing. Capture any idea with our user-favorite capture feature. Use those ideas to write and build creative projects.
A Second Brain For CreatorsTaylin SimmondsCreator & Writer

The main person behind it is no other than Dan Koe, a prolific writer. No wonder he's enthusiastic about PKM!

Here's a review of the current version:

Kortex — First thoughts and Review
The newcomer to the competitive note-taking space offers an interesting twist to content creators
PKM PlaybookSimon Theakston

I'm not a big fan of Sam Altman, but I was interested in his interview with David Perell:

During that interview, he shared some insights into his own note-taking practice.

One person I'm much more interested in is Ryan Holiday. In the following video, he describes how he approaches writing. Quite insightful and well worth watching:

Andy Matuschak was interviewed in episode 63 of the "Clearer Thinking" podcast, where he discusses the secrets of effective learning:

Clearer Thinking with Spencer Greenberg
The podcast about ideas that matter
Clearer Thinking with Spencer GreenbergSpencer Greenberg

Read more