2020-08-03 | Bronson Chang

Over the past two months, I’ve been diving into "personal knowledge management". I’ve read tons of articles, watched handfuls of YouTube videos, listened to hours of podcasts, shared my learning with my wife and close friends, and interacted in a couple online communities.

I’ve quickly gotten the lay of the land and built a general understanding of this fascinating and new space to me. I’ve learned by doing: applying Tiago Forte’s PARA philosophy and productivity workflows to setup my first PKM system and using known tools like Evernote and new ones like Things and Notion. I've even (finally) upgraded my physical workspace and tech for optimal energy, calm, and focus (love it!).

From Day 1, I felt like Neo after taking Morpheus’ red pill. You know that simultaneously exhilarating and terrifying reality-shift of “Holy moly this is what has been always been going on!”. Today, I still feel the same as I dive deeper: more dots are created and connected and my system gains momentum.

If two months of self-study can bring things much, I can only imagine what more time and deep learning support holds. I’m very interested to find out.

Coaches set trajectories, so choosing the best coach is a critical step to getting where you want to get. **Tiago Forte has earned my trust to be my PKM coach.** I admire his depth of experience and body of work that clearly evidences that he is one of the best people to learn PKM from; I’ve also enjoyed all the personal exchanges I’ve been fortunate to have with him on several occasions in events and e-mails.

At this point, I could continue to self-learn as a Praxis subscriber or sign up for the next Building a Second Brain Cohort 11 kicking off August 31, 2020. I’ve decided on the latter. I’ll be joining the “Architects” Cohort (see: Introducing BASB Cohort 11 - Idea Inception). I’m writing this to reflect/capture/process my thoughts and with the intention to share this with Tiago and certain friends who have shown interest in PKM during recent conversations.

I am convinced that what I’ll learn and apply from BASB will make a truly positive difference in my life.

• I will increase my personal wellness (clarity, calm, confidence, creativity) and supercharge my productivity as a learner, creator, and designer.
• As importantly, I’m excited to join, add-value, and collaborate with a high-level, leading-edge community of Second Brain builders. I’ve researched some notable alumni whose incredible output is an inspiring testament to the effectiveness of the BASB program and quality of the community. Here’s are a few: David Perell (Write of Passage), Marie Poulin (Oki Doki), Conrad Lin (Co-x3), Nat Eliason (Growth Machine)

I’m pulling the trigger now instead of waiting for another cohort because I see the trajectory of personal knowledge management. I sense and predict that PKM is moving from a niche interest to a mainstream topic/skill that will be foundational for all knowledge workers in this 21st century knowledge economy.

• With technology driving trends in all facets of civilization--economy, education, society, future of work--those who master knowledge management will thrive and those who ignore it will likely struggle.
• Another angle is observing the increasing detrimental personal and psychological impact of "digital deluge” (as coined by Jim Kwik in Limitless). The accelerating rate of information production and access to it continues to correlate with my own and many others’ experience of “information overload” that will lead to more personal dissatisfaction and limited productivity.

At $1,500, BASB will be the most expensive online program I’ve invested in to-date. Even more importantly, it will be an investment in the most valuable asset of all: time and energy. Opportunity costs are high with all the other things I could be doing.

But when I look at the lifetime value of this investment and locking in lifetime access at the current price point, it’s a no-brainer (pun intended).

Especially for me, as I transition and reinvent my life and career in 2020-2021, I see both the immediate high impact from present changes to my workflows AND the long-term future impact from the recurring dividends and compounding value of building a fundamentally sound personal knowledge management system and joining the BASB community. There has also been some significant course material and experience improvements that prime v11 to be the best offering of BASB yet. Furthermore with the increasing demand for PKM training in general plus Forte Labs/BASB recent internal enhancements and hockey-stick traction growth, I can only see the cost of the program naturally increasing over time (in fact I think the Spring 2020 cohort was $1000). And if that’s not enough, “11" is a pretty awesome number 🙂

About Bronson: www.bronsonchang.com