The most important aspect of PKM is that it is personal. In order to stick with a routine over time, people have to find what works for them. Blogging has been a core part of my sense-making routine over the past decade. When I conduct workshops, my primary aim is help others discover what works for them. I do not have a secret formula, only some general guidelines developed through experience, plus a lot of ideas and suggested areas to explore.
My colleague Jane Hart shared her daily PKM routine recently and it’s different from mine, which of course it should be.
I recently chatted with Sacha Chua about PKM and archiving large blogs. Sacha has over 6,000 blog posts! We spoke for about an hour and then shortly afterwards she produced this visual of her routine, framed around Seek > Sense > Share.
My own routine is relatively simple. I use only a few tools or platforms on a regular basis. Feedly is currently my aggregator for my preferred blogs and newsfeeds. I get most of my news and insights from my ‘human filters’, primarily people I am connected to on Twitter or Google+. By using discernment in who I follow/circle on these platforms, I get a great variety of insights, observations, and commentary.
Connecting to the right people makes my own sense-making much easier. I use social bookmarks a lot and will favorite on Twitter to create my Friday’s Finds. However, my blog posts are where I put the most effort.
Sharing is easy because everything I save or write is shareable. I also share on-demand, or when someone raises a point or question and I can then quickly refer them to a post I wrote. It saves a lot of time having an archive of my own thoughts that I can easily share.
My review process is continuous, and as most long-time readers know, I will take an idea and continue to refine it over the years, as I have done recently with Industrial Disease which expanded on and updated a portion of Social Learning, Complexity and the Enterprise (2011).
So I would like to ask: What kind of PKM routine do you practice?
If you would like to share it, please add a link in the comments, share on Twitter or Google+, or send me an email.
More examples of PKM routines

my routine is sometimes disrupted but mainly follows similar patterns as you have sketched: instead of Feedly I use Netvibes …For the Sense making layer I have added Evernote as taking notes for later workout. Rest is sharing on my blog – http://jhagmann.twoday.net – or on box.net within a restricted CoP (eg. records managers or information governance specialists) – disruptions.http://jhagmann.twoday.net/stories/714906332/ .
Possibly for the seek layer it is also recommended to have alerts / SDI (eg Google) in addition to tweets and Google+. Also business networks like LinkedIn (alerts from topical groups) and Xing are under this category.
Thanks for writing this up! I’ve fleshed out mine in slightly more detail. Happy to help if you’re curious about any of the WordPress tweaks I use! =)
Here’s mine, Harold (a work in progress):
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/69746264/seeksenseshare.png
Harold– Thanks for the link! A question that comes up often in the K12 Education realm (and I’m sure others as well) is the division of personal-versus-school: Content, communication and voice. That has a large influence in how teachers can use PKM, especially when the tools that they have access to are restricted.
Removing barriers to learning, both at school & work, is sadly a large part of encouraging PKM. People on their own (outside the control of the organization) usually embrace it.
I love how you recycle content. This article came up in my PKM feed in HootSuite last week and totally inspired me to keep plugging away at my own (I’ve been trying for months). I think it’s a great list and I hope it keeps growing. Here’s what I am trying to do. Maybe it will help someone else: https://rusticlearning.wordpress.com/2015/02/02/my-pkm-rountine/
Capability development hinges upon programmatic work supports that one habitually adopts and purposefully adapts to the next series of habits/supports. ~ Self-determined PKM
(this was perhaps my favorite post, in our shared series – as I’m a process/support system guy)
I hadn’t really appreciated how different PKM routines can be, and yet it seems so obvious (and natural) in retrospect. Since I hadn’t included this before, I thought I would share it here, inspired by the comments above. I’ve recently restarted blogging regularly and, knowing it requires discipline to become habit, have made it a part of my routine. I deliberately bring reading material or draft work with me to the gym and do some sense-making while simultaneously doing less mindful physical activity. The result is a feeling of time well-spent and further encouragement to keep up both practices.
I think Seek > Sense > Share is a great framework for Personal Knowledge Management and it was very helpful to get started and think about my own process. The examples in this post and in the comments were inspiring for me to visualize my PKM-routine
The most important part of it is definitely Evernote. I really recommend it to anyone who needs a central place for collected information and ideas. For ‘Seeking’, Twitter and Feedly are by far my most important sources.
I loved taking the PKM online workshop and working through my daily routine these past few months has helped me add tremendous value to my organization and clients. Here’s my blog post with routine… https://benmcmann.wordpress.com/2015/12/17/my-pkm-routine/
Thanks again!
Very correct statement ”sticking with a routine over time, people have to find what works for them” and have started to experience.