If you don’t write it down, it doesn’t exist!
Codify your Knowledge & 10X your Productivity — a post on Knowledge Management.
How to 10X your Productivity? through knowledge Management!
Before I read Cal Newport’s Deep Work. I had an idea about who a “knowledge worker” was. But I did not have the language, a definition of what it meant to be an effective and productive knowledge worker in the modern world. It’s a fascinating read. 10/10 Highly recommend.
This book put me on a fascinating adventure on new key ideas in my life such as:
- Knowledge Management
- Mental Models
- Thought Leadership etc.
Today we shall be looking mostly at Knowledge Management.
Knowledge work engages all the Senses!
Any type of work is an active process that you are engaged in emotionally, physically, and mentally. Take for example design. Graphic Design let’s say. When you are tasked with the responsibility of creating a banner for a local business, you get started on the process of utilizing your design skills to make the design that best fits this particular business. You eliminate all ideas that seem trashy or wrong, hone in one direction that might go hand in hand with your client’s general expectation. Then you iterate upwards. Make a bunch of options, engage the client, get feedback, make a few more corrections, before finally wrapping up the project. While at it, all your senses are engaged. Emotionally because you desire for your work to be top notch, and for them to like it. Physically because you are going to have to sit down for hours and make this work, and mentally because you are going to think through all the decisions that you make.
Capture the Impulses.
Since knowledge work stimulates all parts of the senses. It means that while you are working, you are going to be bombarded with:
- Questions about What, Where, Why, Who, How!?
- Insight — New knowledge, things you never even knew about.
- Best practices.
- Observation on your mental and emotional residue.
As I am working on anything through out the day, I am acquiring new knowledge, I am getting curious about so many random things, and I am getting my questions answered in the process. It would be prudent to keep that in my working work flow.
New Technology tools & GOOGLE!
I feel like we pretty much all work online now, or have computers that have internet access. A solid part of any workflow, is googling things! I have tried to imagine a type of a knowledge worker who doesn’t use a computer and I just can’t seem to get one. Everyone can get exponential benefits from having some form of a computer. Be it a phone, iPad tablet, laptop or desktop machine.
Learning to google effectively is a great skill to learn. All the world’s information exists on the internet somehow. If you can learn to ask the right questions and sift through a bunch of misinformation and clickbait, you can reap much benefit.
Once you find these resources, how can you organize it effectively so that you maximize the advantages you can reap from it both in your life and career? This is the exciting field of knowledge management, where people are using digital tools to build a second brain, extend their genius by accessing their deep pool of internet resource.
I wrote about how I am using Notion to capture my knowledge and process it here: https://itskrox.substack.com/p/tame-the-noise
This is the exciting field of knowledge management, where people are using digital tools to build a second brain, extend their genius by accessing their deep pool of internet resource.
Knowledge Management is a professional habit.
To write things down, to document is a part of professional workflows. To organize and explain is a professional habit worth building.
You can write and document anywhere, as long as you put it in a place where it’s supposed to be. You can do it on MS Word, on a text editor, on Evernote, or even on email. As long as you bring it in harmony in one doc or spreadsheet, or place in Notion etc.
In the process of work, you collect so many things
- new knowledge -these are things you did not know about prior to sitting down to work.
- repeatable assets — ( for example if I wrote code for a layout, I don’t have to write all over again from scratch next time, it becomes my asset. Or if I have graphic templates, they can be reusable somewhere in a new project)
- improved workflows and better processes — When you learn a better way to do something, you can adopt that new process instead.
- new template for work etc. ( for example when I design a new flyer, poster, I now have a new template for when to begin or start my next project so it’s not out of nowhere of custom work. when it’s code, I can save it as a template for any project)
Most of knowledge work has a codified workflow anyways. Embed it to exploit it.
