If you prefer to read this newsletter in your browser, click here. 💡 The Big Idea: Clarity Comes From Asking Better QuestionsMarc Champagne is a fascinating human. He is the author of Personal Socrates (one of my favorite books), the host of the Behind the Human podcast, and a mental fitness strategist who studies the world’s top performers. But before all that, he co-founded a journaling app called Kyo that grew to over 86 million users without any advertising. And then, one day, he decided it was time to shut it down and move on. He tells the whole story in the book, but the detail I want to focus on for this newsletter is this: At any point, we are one question away from a different life. The Power of a Great QuestionThe right question asked at the right time has the power to completely change your life. I experienced this when I made the decision to leave the day job last year. I was battling the fear of stepping out into the unknown and feeling the pressure to provide for my family. But a simple clarifying question helped me go from a vague sense of uneasiness to clearly defining the dragons in my mind: What’s the worst that could happen? Talking through that question with my wife helped me realize that I had more options than I thought I did, which ultimately gave me the courage I needed to make the leap. But there are other examples of great questions out there. Here are a few I like:
Asking Questions & PKMWhen most people think of personal knowledge management (PKM), they think about connecting information. But I believe the key to PKM is asking questions. Asking questions is an important part of any reflective process. And that regular reflection practice is essential if you want to keep information flowing into and out of your PKM system in a way that is in intentional alignment with your vision and your values. Here’s a visual representation of how it fits into my PKM Stack framework that I teach in the Practical PKM cohort: Reflection is the thing that keeps the train on the tracks. Without it, it’s easy to get pulled off course. There are a couple of places I ask questions in my PKM workflows:
The Personal Retreat is basically all about asking questions. I have a whole process I walk through in my Personal Retreat course, but I’ll share one of the more powerful pieces of it here before we wrap up 😉 Every time I do a personal retreat, I go through what I call a retrospective, where I end by asking 3 simple questions:
I simply add as many things as I can to these 3 lists during a 2-hour period, then choose what I want to take action on during my intention setting for the next quarter at the end of the Personal Retreat. Every time I do a Personal Retreat, I force myself to pick at least one thing to stop doing. This creates the margin required for me to say yes to things that are exciting to me without feeling overwhelmed. How to Ask Better QuestionsIf you want to start asking better questions, here’s how to get started:
Lastly, stick with it! It may take a little while to find a groove, but asking better questions is an acquired skill. You may struggle a bit at first, especially if you’ve inadvertently trained your brain to avoid things that make it uncomfortable. Keep practicing, and you’ll find that when you learn to ask the right questions, the answers you’re after usually become clear. 😎 Something Cool: JournalCraft by TfT HackerObsidian is tailor-made for plain text nerds (like me ✋🏼) who love journaling. And if you’re looking to get started with journaling in Obsidian, TfT Hacker has a new resource called JournalCraft that can help you start asking better questions with a collection of templates and lessons. While I do have my own journaling course and Obsidian-based journaling workflow, it’s very specific. It’s something that I’ve crafted and packaged over several years of journaling in Obsidian (my Daily Notes go back to January of 2020). But JournalCraft is different, in a very good way — it gives you some simple templates and LOTS of examples of how you might use them. The whole thing is packaged as an Obsidian vault, so it’s kind of an interactive product designed to help your journaling habit gain some traction. The beauty of JournalCraft is in the simplicity IMHO. Both the information and the examples, I believe, will be incredibly useful for people who are new to journaling in Obsidian. It’s currently selling for $15, which I think is a great price for a resource like this. If you could use some help making a journaling habit in Obsidian stick, check this out. 📚 Book Notes: Personal Socrates by Marc ChampagnePersonal Socrates is a phenomenal book and easily the one that I gift most often (I’ve given away over 20 copies). While the 40+ character profiles are interesting, the real no-brainer value this book gives you is the accompanying questions. If you want to kickstart your ability to ask better questions, this book is a no-brainer. If you want to download my notes from this book, click here. But I have to say, this one deserves a spot on your bookshelf 😉 It’s also a beautifully crafted book and comes in a hard case with a custom bookmark. There are a lot of little quality details (like showing how many pages are left in each chapter), so I highly recommend you get the print version if possible. — Mike P.S. A while back, I had the privilege of speaking to Marc when he came on the Focused podcast. This was one of my favorite episodes, and you can give it a listen here. |
A weekly newsletter where I help people apply values-based productivity principles and systems for personal growth, primarily using Obsidian. Subscribe if you want to make more of your notes and ideas.
In this edition of Practical PKM: 💡 The Big Idea: How sketchnoting can help get more out of your ideas 😎 Something Cool: A free online resource to make you a better writer 📚 My book notes from The Art of The Idea by John Hunt If you prefer to read this newsletter in your browser, click here. 💡 The Big Idea: Want More "A-Ha!" Moments? Try Sketchnoting. The goal of personal knowledge management is to make sense of the information you are capturing, curating, cultivating, and connecting so you...
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