Peanuts In My Pocket

Personal Knowledge Management, or PKM, might sound like one of those bloated corporate buzzwords that get thrown around in meetings to justify yet another piece of software. But it’s not, or at least it doesn’t have to be. PKM is simply the way we collect, organize, and connect the information we encounter in our daily lives so that it’s useful when we need it. It’s about creating a personal system—call it a digital brain, a second memory, or just a fancy file cabinet—that captures what matters most and helps us make sense of it all. It’s how I avoid drowning in the endless flood of information, and it’s become an essential part of how I think and work. But not for the reasons you might expect. I’m into PKM because of a brain injury I suffered back in 1979.

While working, I was hit on the head hard enough to knock me out and send me to the hospital. When I woke up, beyond physical coordination problems and weakness, I started to experience memory issues. Over time, my memories of the months before the injury faded. I lost most of what happened during my senior year of high school and continued to have memory difficulties as my brain healed. The years before the injury became difficult to recall or place in time.

As a coping mechanism, I began writing down events and notes on index cards. At parties, if someone said, “Do you remember that beach party…,” I’d take notes and later transcribe them onto index cards. A typical card would read: Beach Party, May 1978. I’d list every detail I could remember, who attended, what we did, and file it in chronological order. Over time, I was able to connect these events to the scrambled memories bouncing around in my mind. It has been a decades-long adventure.

In the 1980s, I discovered HyperCard stacks while building simple inventory management software on an Apple Lisa computer. I liked the idea of linking notecards via hyperlinks, so I kept trying to create a software-driven process to support my efforts. There were too many attempts to list, but a few stood out. On my personal devices, I eventually adopted Notion as my tool of choice, but later switched to Obsidian, which proved to be a much better fit for this kind of adventure. Along the way, I discovered Zettelkasten, a knowledge management technique pioneered by the sociologist Niklas Luhmann. I also realized that, much like my memory, I had a gap in my process.

A HyperCard stack is a digital collection of “cards” that work together like a deck of index cards, created and managed using Apple’s HyperCard software from the late 1980s and early 1990s. Think of it as a primitive but surprisingly flexible multimedia database where each card can hold text, graphics, and interactive elements.

At its heart, Zettelkasten is about creating a network of interconnected notes, each capturing a single idea, concept, or observation. Each note is like a tiny building block, small, self-contained, and linked to other notes through direct references. Instead of stashing notes away in a dusty folder where they would die (which is what I had been doing), Zettelkasten encourages you to connect them so ideas can naturally cross-pollinate. It’s like giving your notes a social life, letting them bump into each other and spark new insights.

I began connecting notes and, over time, started pulling them into “memory essays” that I write for myself to help fill in the gray areas of my life. I also started writing more for public consumption, which led to my first blog and eventually this blog. Along the way, my memory improved, and parts of my early life came back into focus. For example, I can now remember falling in love with my wife, which happened just before the accident. For a while, those memories were elusive, but the more I processed my notecards, the easier it became.

Life Story Work is often used in therapy or social work to help people reconstruct and understand their life stories. It might involve photos, diaries, or index cards as prompts, or in my case, memory essays.

These days, I’m collecting and adding essays to my knowledge base. I have a backlog of about seven thousand essays to work through. Yes, I write a lot, but I’m an older guy, so I’ve had time. One batch of entries includes the love letters and cards I wrote to my wife during the first year of our relationship. These add so much context to my life before my injury. I can’t wait to scan them, correct the spelling and grammar, and then add them to my index. I might even share one here if I find something interesting. I call writing a hobby, but it’s really part of my reading, writing, and photography triad of healthy obsessions.

Coping behaviors are an important part of my life for various reasons, but I especially enjoy this one because it knits together pieces of my life that might otherwise cause me stress and doubt. When information fits into place, the tapestry of my life becomes clearer and grants me a level of peace of mind that I find comforting. I enjoy this process so much that it’s part of my daily routine.

I’d love to hear about the processes you use to preserve your own memories. Do you rely on journals, photos, or some other system? Share your approach in the comments. I’m always curious about how others keep their stories alive.