The Cultivation of Knowledge Is the Objective of Knowledge Work
Dear Zettlers,
This sentence states perfectly the mechanics of the Zettelkasten as a tool and how to integrate it into one’s overall workflow:
The cultivation of knowledge is the objective of knowledge work and productivity workflows facilitate this effort. (Source)
Originally, knowledge work is a broad term that means all work entails “think for a living”. I use the term more literally and narrowly. To me, knowledge work is work that is performed to transform data, information, and knowledge into other forms.
Knowledge cultivation is a term that softens the angle. It brings in the association of nurturing and slow, deliberate striving for perfection. This was what I was drawn to when I started my Zettelkasten. I had the vision of building something that is worth building in itself.
I once had a discussion on meaning and what you should do in the world. During the conversation, the insane feat of Alex Honnold of climbing up El Capitan (3,000ft) without any protection equipment came up. We wondered if this feat was meaningful in a broader sense, good for us people, not just Alex Honnold. I said: Yes, it is good. It isn’t the best that could’ve been done in the world. Children saved from hunger would be a better action. But this act in itself transformed a tiny bit of the dangerous world into a slightly less dangerous part of the world.
There are two elements of this story: The external element of achievement and the internal element of self-cultivation. This is how self-cultivation works: We focus on an external object of focus, and if we choose right, we get rewarded with a more cultivated self.
Both the external and the internal elements of self-cultivation need to be balanced. I hope that it is pretty uncontroversial that the world would be an even better place if Alex Honnold had focused on more pressing issues. But as free people, we have to choose for ourselves and shouldn’t interfere with other people’s free choices.
So, what the heck does this have to do with the Zettelkasten Method and knowledge work?
To self-cultivate, we need to focus on the external object of focus as if it were the centre of the world. Only then do we reap the full benefit. In knowledge work, we must focus on cultivating knowledge if we want to fully reap the benefits of this work.
This is where the Zettelkasten shines the brightest: If you fully focus on developing ideas, your knowledge and thinking will benefit the most. The challenge is to align this focus on knowledge cultivation with the constraints of your life.
Productivity workflows facilitate this effort
I am a perfect example of a complete mismatch: I conditioned myself to fully focus on knowledge cultivation, while neglecting productivity workflows to facilitate this effort.
This is why I am such a big fan of Tiago Forte’s PARA-System. I am all about knowledge cultivation. I need to be balanced out with productivity. Or, in other words, I need to be forced to make public what I do in private. But I am not alone. Many people struggle with directing their efforts. For me, the struggle is to actually publish the knowledge I have built. For others, it is to clean up the information diet (e.g., reading everything and anything).
The catch-22 is to work as if you care only for the cultivation of your knowledge in the moment of reading and processing, while directing this effort.
These are some measures that help you with that:
- Clean up your information diet. That means that you become ruthless about what you consider a good source. I, for example, only read if a source was recommended by someone whom I trust.
- Only read sources that help you with your efforts. If you then process the sources after reading, let your mind wander left and right. The source will be your thread that always brings you back to your mission. So, by picking good sources, you create safety rails.
- Use the Barbell Method of Reading. It allows you to still enjoy the reading process and then choose what you process according to your current efforts. Since you can always read faster than you can process, you will pile up a bunch of sources. From these read and prepared sources, you start to process according to the relevance to your efforts. Think of read and unprocessed sources as a menu from which you choose the current best source.
Live long and prosper
Sascha