Newsletter Archive

DeveloPassion's Newsletter 184 - Knowledge Management Education

A newsletter discussing Knowledge Management, Knowledge Work, Zen Productivity, Personal Organization, and more!

Sebastien Dubois

16 Jan 2025 — 8 min read

A newsletter discussing Knowledge Management, Knowledge Work, Zen Productivity, Personal Organization, and more!

Hello everyone! I’m Sébastien Dubois, your host. You’re receiving this email because you signed up for DeveloPassion’s Newsletter. Thank you for being here with me ✨

If you enjoy this, please forward it to your friends 👍. If this email was forwarded to you, then don’t forget to subscribe and become a supporter. You can also follow me on X, Bluesky, and Mastodon.

Welcome

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

On my end, it's been a week of ups and downs. I've been making great progress on my Knowledge Management course, but then got hit by a nasty lumbago that made me lose a full day just trying to regain the ability to move. It's really frustrating when your body forces you to slow down, especially when you're in a great creative flow. Still, sometimes we need those forced breaks to remind us of the importance of taking care of ourselves...

In this edition, I'll discuss about the evolution of the Knowledge Management for Beginners course, check out some exciting updates in the PKM tools space, and I have a special request for you all!

Alright, let's gooooo 🚀

Before You Go Any Further

I want to reach more people. Got 60 seconds? Then share the link with one friend/colleague who would benefit from joining our community!

The Lab 🧪

I've been quite busy improving various aspects of my content creation process. I've vastly improved my AI ghostwriter, enabling me to produce more valuable content while maintaining my authentic voice and style. I know that some of you may not like the idea of receiving AI-generated content, but it's not what I'm doing. What I'm doing is accelerating my output, so that fewer ideas remain stuck in my "To Write" list. For me, it's a way to share more ideas with you all. But I still spend a lot of time developing the ideas in my knowledge management system, and it's the basis of everything I write together with AI.

When I ask my AI ghostwriter to help me write an article, it asks me a bunch of questions about the topic, the target audience, the level to aim, the type of content, etc. More importantly, it asks about my ideas and thoughts on the topic. Finally, before generating anything, I ask it to read my own notes on the topic. In practice, this means that even though the base structure is generated by AI, the content itself is all mine, and all based on my own ideas.

I've also heavily improved my AI podcast generation process. Again, I leverage my AI Ghostwriter for this, and the results are really good. I generate the podcast scripts using the AI Ghostwriter, and using the corresponding article and my notes as input. Then, I feed the content into ElevenLabs to generate the audio, before publishing it on Substack, which crossposts it to Spotify etc. At this point in time, I don't have enough time to record the podcasts myself, but I'd love to do that later on.

I'm very pleased with the current status of my AI Ghostwriter. I find it incredibly useful and valuable. And if you're curious about how I've built it, then please let me know. I plan on turning the "how" into a specific product later on.

I also recently started exploring n8n to automate different parts of my business. I don't know yet where I'll deploy it. I hesitate between self-hosting it on my PC, or deploying it on DigitalOcean or Hetzner. It all depends on the limitations I discover as I continue exploring. I have various ideas for automation and AI workflows, but I'll tell you more about those later on! 🚀

Last but not least, I've added various upsells for my products on Gumroad, all with a -15% discount:

Replacing any product with the Knowledge Worker Kit
Adding the Obsidian Starter Course to the Obsidian Starter Kit
Adding the Obsidian Starter Kit to the Personal Knowledge Management Library (PKM Library)
Adding the Obsidian Starter Kit to the Knowledge Management for Beginners course
Adding a coaching session for various products
Replacing the basic Obsidian Starter Kit with the premium version (which includes the Obsidian Starter Course)

Note that the Knowledge Worker Kit remains my main offer going forward. It includes all my other Knowledge Management products as free bonuses!

Knowledge Management Education

I'm excited to share that I've made significant progress on the Knowledge Management for Beginners course. Module 5 is now complete, and Module 6 is nearly finished!

Module 5 dives deep into essential PKM concepts including:

Note-taking fundamentals
The power of externalization and centralization
Atomic notes methodology
Various ways to connect ideas (links, backlinks, tags, Maps of Content)
Key PKM methods like LIFT, FILE, PARA, Johnny Decimal, and Zettelkasten
The dangers of the Collector's Fallacy

Module 6 focuses on practical PKM recommendations:

Building sustainable capture habits
Understanding the importance of going all-digital
Managing the transition from analog to digital notes
The value of journaling for knowledge management
Setting up effective journaling practices
Implementing periodic reviews
Organizing your knowledge base effectively
Various best practices for folders, tags, note naming, etc

The course is shaping up to be a comprehensive guide for anyone looking to start their PKM journey on the right foot! 🎉

Latest Articles

I've published several new articles that might interest you.

Explore why taking your time with reading can lead to better understanding and retention:

Learn how to simplify your note-taking workflow:

Discover how to transform raw information into valuable knowledge:

Obsidian Gems of the Year Awards 🏆

The Obsidian team is currently collecting votes for their 2024 Gems of the Year awards! The voting period ends on January 20th at midnight EST, and you can cast your votes via the official Obsidian Discord.

I'd be incredibly grateful if you could support the Obsidian Starter Kit in the "Best Template" category ❤️. This product has helped hundreds of people jumpstart their PKM journey, providing a solid foundation for effective note-taking and knowledge management. If you've found value in it, please consider casting your vote! 🙏

Quotes of the week

Some day soon, perhaps in forty years, there will be no one alive who has ever known me. That's when I will be truly dead — when I exist in no one's memory. I thought a lot about how someone very old is the last living individual to have known some person or cluster of people. When that person dies, the whole cluster dies, too, vanishes from the living memory. I wonder who that person will be for me. Whose death will make me truly dead? — Irvin D. Yalom, Love's Executioner and Other Tales of Psychotherapy
Overthinking is a symptom of keeping too much information in your brain
Life is like music, it must be composed by ear, feeling and instinct, not by rule — Samuel Butler, The Note-Books of Samuel Butler (book)

Meme of the week

Obsidian is really my favorite app ever. The more I use it, the more valuable it becomes.

New & Interesting Links

Obsidian Updates

Obsidian 1.8.1 has been released with some exciting improvements:

Enhanced Web Viewer plugin now supports images, video, and audio with relative paths
First launch guided flow after installation on mobile
Page preview in tab headers
Auto-scroll option in the Outline view
"Open in live site" option for Obsidian Publish
Sync plugin enabled by default

Check out the full release notes for Desktop and Mobile.

Videos

Techno-Visual PKM Community Launch Session of Zsolt Viczián. A must-watch!

Christopher Lawley recently published two cool videos about his Obsidian usage and workflows:

Mischa van den Burg shared a video about note-taking systems and why they're the cornerstone of his success:

About Sébastien

I am Sébastien Dubois. You can follow me on X 🐦 and on BlueSky 🦋.

I am an author, founder, and coach. I write books and articles about Knowledge Work, Personal Knowledge Management, Note-taking, Lifelong Learning, Personal Organization, and Zen Productivity. I also craft lovely digital products . You can learn more about my projects here.

If you want to follow my work, then become a member.

Ready to get to the next level?

To embark on your Knowledge Management journey, consider investing in resources that will equip you with the tools and strategies you need. Check out the Obsidian Starter Kit and the accompanying video course. It will give you a rock-solid starting point for your note-taking and Knowledge Management efforts.

If you want to take a more holistic approach, then the Knowledge Worker Kit is for you. It covers PKM, but expands into productivity, personal organization, project/task management, and more: