DeveloPassion's Newsletter #157 - Knowledge Management for Beginners
Sébastien Dubois
I help knowledge workers create their space for deep thinking, and turn information into insights they can leverage. Trusted by 1,000+ happy customers ??
Welcome
Another week, another newsletter! I hope that you all had a great one ??
Whew! Yes, I'm alive!!
The Carnival of Binche is over. Actually it's been a week already, but it left me truly exhausted ??
You can find a few pictures over there, but if you want to have an idea about what it's like, you should look at the following videos. The first one shows what it looks like on Sunday, and the other one on the Tuesday (which is the most important day). But those can barely make you feel how it's like to be there. So if you ever have the opportunity, come and enjoy it for real ??
After the Carnival, I needed some rest, but ended up with Covid. It's been over a week, and I'm still feeling super weak.
Anyway, I've missed you all, so here I am!
Alright, let's gooooo ??
The lab ??
I've received some bad news recently. I've lost my last consulting client. This means that my business is now default dead. If I don't manage to increase the revenue of my side projects (including this newsletter), my business will die within the next few months. This means that the pressure is on.
Here's a quick back-of-the-napkin calculation:
This just cannot work for long. And I'm quite scared/sad when I think about it. I've been working hard since 2019 to build useful things, but after my startup has failed, I haven't managed to build sustainable revenue. My dream remains to quit my job as an employee, but I'm far from being able to.
Unfortunately, the IT job market is more complicated these days. It's pretty tough to find part-time clients here in Belgium, and even more so to find clients that accept remote workers. So I'm not betting on that. Instead, I want to double down on creating digital products and serving customers around the world. I feel like I can have much more impact this way, and this is work that I really see myself doing for years to come.
This means that I need to accelerate the pace, produce more, and convince more people to support me. That's why I've launched a promotion for my paid newsletter yesterday. I'll be honest, I need all the support I can get ??
Moving forward, I've decided to work on a new product: Knowledge Management for Beginners.
This will be a video course teaching the basics about Knowledge Management in general, and Personal Knowledge Management (PKM) in particular. I feel like there's a gap in the market. Many people currently stumble upon PKM and feel puzzled or lost. They don't know why it's useful, how it works, how to approach it, and how they can benefit. And I intend to fix that! I want many more people to grasp the ideas, see the benefits more clearly, and to know how to get started, armed with the right knowledge.
I've prepared the course outline, the sales copy, and have started working on the content. To give a good example, I've decided to build the whole course within my own Personal Knowledge Management system in Obsidian, combining notes, slides, and the power of my Knowledge Graph.
I hope to start recording the course next week.
In my humble opinion, Personal Knowledge Management has tons of potential to help people across the world grow and thrive. And I want to be one of the few voices that make it clear and obvious to everyone.
Here's a rundown of the main benefits for my future customers:
I'll tell you all about this course in the next editions of this newsletter ??
领英推荐
Next to that, I'm of course going to continue expanding the Knowledge Worker Kit. We are already 50 in the community, and the content keeps growing. There's a lot of work to be done, and I'm going to make sure to deliver as much value as I can to that community ??
We'll see how things go, but I'm not ready to give up. I'll do my best to keep going, no matter how hard it may be ??
If you want to support my work, then the best way is to become paid subscribers of this newsletter, as this generates recurring (i.e., stable) revenue for me, enabling me to continue working on this newsletter, to continue writing, and to continue adding value to the community:
New articles
I've published an article in which I defend the idea of using and relying on fewer tools. IMHO, fewer is better:
I have also published a deep dive into how to split long notes into atomic notes, as a means to enable creating more valuable Personal Knowledge Graphs:
These pieces are also going to join the Knowledge Worker Kit.
Quotes of the week
Thinking and learning
Ready to get to the next level?
If so, then check out the Knowledge Worker Kit, the Obsidian Starter Kit, the Obsidian Starter Course, the PKM Library, a PKM coaching session with me, my collection of books about software development and the IT Concepts Wall ??. If you want to discuss, then don't hesitate to join the Personal Knowledge Management community or the Software Crafters community.
About Sébastien
Hello everyone! I'm Sébastien Dubois (you can follow me on Twitter ??).
I'm an author, founder, and CTO. I write books and articles about software development & IT, personal knowledge management, personal organization, and productivity. I also craft lovely digital products ?? If you've enjoyed this article and want to read more like this, then become a member.