A Choose-Your-Own-Adventure on How to Absorb More Knowledge as a Founder
by Alex McQuade, Program Manager of the TinySeed EMEA Program
A Sponge Under a Waterfall: The Challenge of Too Much Information
When I joined the TinySeed team, one of the big selling points of the role was the people I would be working alongside. I’ve always been a believer in the saying “You are who you surround yourself with” (or something like that), and I knew I’d be surrounded by some titans. TinySeed mentors include Jordan Gal, Laura Roeder, and Rand Fishkin to name a few.
As exciting as it’s been trying to shove everything these people say into my brain, lately I’ve been hit with this nagging feeling that I’m not really absorbing all of this knowledge. I hear it, and I appreciate it, but most of it seems to disappear into the abyss after a week or so.
I know I’m not alone in this. TinySeed founders, and most founders who make it into any other strong accelerator, are presented with a ridiculous amount of useful information. In the first six months of the TinySeed accelerator program, we cover topics like marketing, sales, hiring, funnels, pricing, M&A, and more. You could spend an entire career mastering each of these alone.
Needless to say, being in an accelerator can sometimes feel like being a sponge under a waterfall of information.
So that begs the question: is there a way to increase the capacity of your “sponge”? How do you make sure you’re absorbing these insights that will guide your future decisions?
In this post, I’ll be diving into the research I’ve done to tackle this conundrum and figure out how to better manage my personal knowledge. This was written for anyone out there, founder or not, that is searching for a similar solution.
Why You Need to Manage Your Personal Knowledge
Building a “second brain,” also known as Personal Knowledge Management, is all the rage these days (you’ve probably read about it in a few engagement bait Twitter threads by now!)
If you look around, you can see examples of people using programs like Obsidian, Notion, or just good ‘ole plain text files to record and manage knowledge.
As someone who is painfully aware of the limits of my short term memory, I love this idea. Why rely on my silly slow-evolving primate brain, when I could build a fancy new optimized one in the cloud?
Human memory is not exactly a reliable thing. Our brains are capable of amazing things, especially when it comes to innovation — but memory is kind of a short fall.
What if we could have the best of both worlds? A system that not only allows us to better store what we learned, but also helped us facilitate new ideas and innovation?
Fortunately, there are a number of personal Personal Knowledge Management methods out there that aim to do this. They each share similar goals of helping people collect, organize, and synthesize information— but go about doing it in different ways.
Which one is right for you is a personal choice. Not to worry though, dear reader, I’ll dive into a few of your options below.
Choose Your Own Adventure
If you’re someone in a position similar to me, such as a startup founder in an accelerator or other high knowledge community, consider this a “Choose your own adventure” post. I’ll give you three options, and point you in the direction you need to go to figure out what happens next.
For each idea, I’ll share my thoughts, a brief summary, and then a list of additional resources you should check out if you’re interested in going down that path. Each of these concepts has a plethora of well researched posts, communities, and even books written on them. These resources can help you take action from here.
Option #1: The Digital Garden
This one is my favorite, probably because it uses the metaphor that speaks most to me as someone who admittedly views plants as a good replacement for children.
In all seriousness, this method will resonate with anyone who is more interested in enjoying the journey of knowledge growth, rather than necessarily being an efficient knowledge machine.
The “Digital Garden” method views your knowledge as a garden where you plant seeds of new ideas, and nourish them over time with readings and gathered knowledge that will let them mature into beautiful refined concepts over time.
The garden isn’t limited to one idea, it’s filled with them, all at different levels of growth. Just like a garden, this method embraces the reality that knowledge can be messy, imperfect, and changes over time.
The Digital Garden shuns the type of preparation we tend to take for projects such as writing blog posts, where we languish in private before trying to put out a perfectly manicured article for the public. Instead, it promotes sharing your imperfect knowledge in public, even on concepts where you’re probably still ill-informed and trying to figure it all out.
So what does that look like in practice? At first glance, it loosely resembles a blog. The creator’s thoughts are explained and developed through notes that are hyperlinked together. However, unlike a blog, most of the ideas are in progress, and the author will go back to them over time to develop them further or link in new notes. It’s essentially always a work in progress. In addition, the material isn’t presented in chronological order, but more like a series of rabbit holes that you can go down depending on what hyperlinked notes you follow.
Here’s a great example to check out: Joschua’s Garden
Next Steps:
Read Maggie Appleton’s beautifully illustrated and well-written summary: A Brief History & Ethos of the Digital Garden
Then read her equally useful explanation of growing evergreen notes
Follow this up with a read-through of Andy Matuschak’s review of EverGreen Notes
Surprise, you’re in another digital garden! Andy’s site is another great example of public facing evergreen notes. Click through the rest of his site to see how it works in action.
Option #2: Building a Second Brain (BASB)
This one may be the best fit for you if you’re an organized, systems-type person. Fans of GTD (Getting Things Done) or Inbox Zero will feel right at home with this system. The PARA (a system for organizing notes into four categories: projects, areas, resources, and archives) and CODE (a system used to maintain the second brain by collecting, organizing, distilling, and expressing information) techniques used here make this a practical and straightforward option, although perhaps not as inspiring over the long term.
BASB is the new cool kid on the block. This makes sense considering it’s the methodology taught in Tiago Forte’s recent Building a Second Brain book, based on his popular course.
In Tiago’s own words, BASB is “a methodology for saving and systematically reminding us of the ideas” as well as “ not only for preserving those ideas, but turning them into reality”. He teaches relatively simple processes and rules (using clever acronyms) focused on how to best capture information, start to make connections and insights with this information, and ultimately create something with all of this.
The BASB method doesn’t emphasize learning in public the same way digital gardens do, so there aren’t as many examples floating around. However, this video does a good job of visualizing what the different steps of BASB would look like in practice.
Next Steps:
If you want to read a preview of Tiago’s thought process, he wrote this handy article that summarizes the BASB concepts.
As the creator of the BASB system, it’s worth reading Tiago Forte’s “Building a Second Brain Book” — get the book here.
Maggie Appleton has a wonderfully illustrated review of the overarching concepts for this as well: Building a Second Brain: The Illustrated Notes
Option #3: The Zettlekasten
The very beginning of a Zettlekasten web of knowledge
Aside from having the most dramatic name, the Zettlekasten is also the oldest methodology of the bunch. The OG of second brains, if you will.
This is probably the best option for “system builder” type people who like to tinker and optimize the way they do things. With a few decades behind it, and lots of obsessed followers, there’s no lack of articles and fiery forum debates you can find on how to best implement this time-proven system.
This methodology was famously created by a German sociologist, Niklas Luhmann, who used it over the course of his life to publish over 70 books and 400 articles. Luhmann used an ancient technology called “note cards” to record his learnings and organize them into new concepts and ideas
Fortunately for us, his devoted followers have converted the proven Zettlekasten system into a digital format since then.
The Zettlekasten system focuses on collecting notes learned from various materials, but more importantly, it emphasizes creating a web of knowledge by hyperlinking concepts together. This web is a personal journey of you making mental connections of how different ideas (often across multiple disciplines) can connect or relate to each other, which in turn will allow you to create original thoughts and develop your personal knowledge over time.
Next Steps:
Read How to Take Smart Notes by Sönke Ahrens
You’ll probably have a few questions at this point. Read this introduction to the Zettlekasten system to help cement what you previously read in Ahrens’ book (or if you’re lazy, skip the book and just read the introduction, I’m not here to judge.)
Now read everything at zettlekasten.de, they really nailed the topic!
For a practical example of how an author implemented Zettlekasten, check out David Kadavy’s blog post here.
When you’re ready to dive into the deep end, go to the https://www.reddit.com/r/Zettelkasten/
Don’t dwell there too long though or you’ll end up one of those people who focuses too much on the perfect setup, at the expense of actually starting anything.
From Sponge to Watermill
There you have it! Three different paths, all with the same destination of building a system that will allow you to collect and organize information while building out your personal knowledge.
If you’re like me, you’re tired of being that sponge under the information waterfall. The goal of personal knowledge management is to turn that sponge into a productive watermill, using your flow of information to create long term value .
So choose the path that speaks to you most, read through the articles, and give it a go. If you’re commitment-averse, you can sleep easy knowing these are all adaptable methods that you can change over time to meet your needs.
Finally, let me know what you chose and how it works out for you! I’d love to hear from you on Twitter (@alexmcquade or @tinyseedfund).
