I have a problem storing all the important things I learn from the books, videos, articles, and other content I consume. A founder friend shared with me how he does it: he uses a variety of tools cobbled together. Doing some digging on the tools he uses and their competitors, I stumbled upon a world focused on this problem: personal knowledge management (PKM).

This world is new to me, and I was curious. I spent time this weekend watching PKM experts explain the frameworks, systems, and processes they use in their daily lives. A few early thoughts after today’s learnings:

• PKM is niche but seems to have gained momentum around 2020-ish.
• PKM is different from productivity management, but both were incorporated into many PKM experts’ systems.
• A ton of tools help with PKM, but they all do things differently. No one tool can do everything, so cobbling tools together is the norm.
• People consume information from so many different sources that it’s hard for one tool to be great at capturing all of it.
• The need to cobble together tools increases complexity. There are just too many systems and moving pieces for the average person to manage. This decreases the likelihood that someone will adopt PKM.
• Embracing the PKM approach that “experts” demonstrated requires a high degree of consistency in process execution. There isn’t a lot of room for error.
• I expected AI to be mentioned and utilized significantly. It wasn’t.

I’m still learning about this, but I get the sense that PKM can get rigid and complex very quickly. In my experience, rigidity and complexity often lead to spending more time managing the system than getting value from the system. I don’t want to use anything rigid and complex.

PKM isn’t the same as productivity management, yet many people combined the two in the approaches I watched today. My gut feeling is that this isn’t the right approach for me. My task management will likely be more effective if it’s managed separately in a simple and loose system than as part of a PKM system.

I haven’t reached a verdict on PKM yet, but I think a better use of my time going forward is to learn about the frameworks and methods used in PKM. If I find a framework I like and want to use, it may be better for me to create a simple, flexible system that suits me instead of copying a complex, rigid system developed by someone else.

PKM is still new to me. What I learned today was useful and gave me a good idea of what PDK is and how people are using it. There’s a lot I don’t know about PDK, and I’m not sure if it’s something I’ll adopt. But I’m curious to learn more so I can determine whether it’s for me.

I want to share more takeaways from The First 20 Hours: How to Learn Anything . . . Fast!. The major premise of the book, which I posted about yesterday, is that learning and skill acquisition are different. By combining the two, you accelerate your acquisition of a new skill. I found author Josh Kauffman’s thinking around the specifics of each area and how they work together interesting.

Skill acquisition

Kauffman defines rapid skill acquisition as the process of breaking down a skill into its smallest parts, pinpointing the important ones, and practicing those key subskills first. He believes “temporary obsession” aids skill acquisition and that “rapid skill acquisition principles” are a way to cultivate temporary obsession. Here’s a checklist of his acquisition principles:

• Choose a lovable project – Pick a skill you’re excited about. Your excitement will fuel you when you’re frustrated.
• Focus your energy on one skill at a time – Acquiring new skills requires concentrated time and focused attention. If you spread yourself too thin, your skill acquisition will likely be extremely slow.
• Determine your performance level – Rapid skill acquisition is about sufficiency, not perfection. Define what sufficiency means to you.
• Deconstruct skills into subskills – Identify what subskills make up this skill.
• Obtain critical tools – Get the tools necessary for you to practice the skill.
• Eliminate barriers to practice – Remove the soft barriers that will make it more difficult to practice the skill.
• Make dedicated time for practice – Schedule time to practice consistently. Commit to practicing regularly until you’ve completed at least twenty hours of practice.
• Create fast feedback loops – Figure out ways to learn how you’re performing when you’re practicing. The faster the feedback, the faster you can make the right adjustments. The faster you adjust, the faster you acquire the skill.
• Practice by the clock in short bursts – Set a timer for twenty or thirty minutes for your practice session.
• Emphasize quantity over speed – Do as many reps as you can without worrying about perfection. The more reps, the better your rep quality will become.

Learning

Learning about a skill is the acquisition of knowledge related to that skill. Kauffman doesn’t believe jumping straight into practicing a new skill is the most efficient approach. Doing some advance research and planning can reduce the amount of time and energy you’ll have to expend and the frustration you feel. He believes “learning principles” help you get the most out of your practice sessions. Here’s a checklist of his learning principles:

• Research the skill and related topics – Look for patterns—the same ideas and tools being mentioned repeatedly as you research. These will likely reduce your trial and error.
• Jump in over your head – You want to learn at an uncomfortable pace. Confusion is part of being uncomfortable and can pinpoint areas you should focus on more.
• Identify mental models and mental hooks – Look for ways to help you make sense of what you’re seeing. These mental models will help you understand the present and what the future could hold if you take specific actions. These will come in handy during practice.
• Imagine the opposite of what you want – Determining your goal’s natural opposite can highlight what to avoid. This is called inversion and is a technique Charlie Munger embraced heavily.
• Talk to practitioners to set expectations – Unrealistic expectations can be discouraging. Talking to others with more experience can illuminate blind spots so you’ll know what to expect.
• Eliminate distractions – Distractions can ruin focused practice, slowing or stopping skill acquisition. Figure out what could distract you during practice and eliminate it beforehand.
• Use spaced repetition and reinforcement for memorization – Review important information regularly. New or difficult information should be reviewed more often; familiar or simple information less.
• Create scaffolds and checklists – Create checklists to systematize your practice process and make it more consistent. Create a pre-practice sequence (i.e., a scaffold) to ensure that you approach the skill the same way each time you start practicing. A basketball player’s pre–free throw routine is a good example of a scaffold.
• Make and test predictions – Come up with your predictions based on your research and test them as you practice. Adjust accordingly.
• Honor your biology – If your mind and body aren’t good, your practice won’t be good. Put yourself in the best physical and mental state to get the most out of your practice.

Every principle won’t apply to every situation, but going through each checklist can prevent omissions that could hamper you from achieving your goal.

Acquiring a skill is the result of practicing it. How you practice impacts how fast you acquire the skill. Learning makes your practice more efficient and accelerates acquisition, but it doesn’t replace it. There is no replacement for practice. You must do the work. But how you go about it matters.

The insight and principles in Kauffman’s book aren’t earth-shattering, but his combination and articulation of them could provide clarity and an action plan to people who struggle to acquire new skills.

During one of my learning survey conversations, a founder friend mentioned he’d read The First 20 Hours: How to Learn Anything . . . Fast! by Josh Kauffman. He described the book as an approach to learning any skill quickly. It sounded interesting, so I ordered it. I just finished reading it.

The book highlighted that skill acquisition and learning are different. Acquiring a skill requires practicing the skill until you become proficient at it. Learning, though, is about understanding the skill. Learning about a skill doesn’t mean you’ll acquire the skill—it means you’ll know more about it. The book uses the example of learning about a foreign language. You can understand all the nuances and history of the language without being able to speak the language. Speaking it results from practicing by speaking it with others.

Kauffman goes on to say that to acquire a skill, learning about it isn’t necessary, but it is helpful because it’s important to acquire the skill rapidly. Learning about the skill helps you focus on the most important subskills, understand the key concepts related to the skill, avoid practice pitfalls, etc., all of which make your practice more efficient. And you’ll acquire the skill sooner if you improve more rapidly.

Kauffman’s distinction is helpful. I now think about learning as the prework I do that will make practicing a new skill more efficient.

I’ve been on a good roll reading books. I’ve got a solid habit down, and I’m getting more from my reading than ever. This weekend I started another book. After a few days, I noticed that I couldn’t stay focused as I read and my pace was much slower. I tried to power through it, but today I had a realization.

The book I’m reading is killing my momentum. It was recommended in another book I read. But now that I’m into this book, I’m finding that it isn’t a good fit for me.

The book feels like a textbook. It goes into tons of detail about everything and contains many references to others’ works. And its main concept isn’t clearly articulated. This is all very different from the biographies and historical recounts I enjoy reading.

I tested my thesis: I started reading another book. Within thirty minutes, I was laser focused and reading twice as fast. I was back!

My takeaway is that all books aren’t for me. If a book is zapping my energy, best to put it aside for now and read something else.

I finished reading The Davis Dynasty: Fifty Years of Successful Investing on Wall Street this week. The book chronicles three generations of the Davis family and how an initial $50,000 investment in stocks by the patriarch has turned into more than $2 billion for the family and an investment firm that manages over $25 billion in total assets.

This book caught my eye because I enjoy learning about “investor entrepreneurs” —investors by profession who don’t want to work for someone else, so they choose to become entrepreneurs by starting companies that invest capital

In the 1940s, the Davis family patriarch had a unique insight about insurance companies. He realized that (1) the companies had hidden investment portfolios that would compound for long periods until claims were paid out, but they were disguised as unprofitable companies because of accounting rules, and (2) the market for life insurance was exploding because of World War II. He quit his job in 1947 and became a full-time investor specializing in the stocks of insurance companies. His timing proved ideal: his portfolio ballooned from $50,000 to roughly $10 million by 1959.

One key takeaway from this book is the patriarch’s insistence on writing and distributing a weekly bulletin about the insurance industry. In the early 1990s, his grandson began helping him write this newsletter. He asked why they should bother when the lack of feedback suggested that no one was reading it. The patriarch’s response? “It’s not for the readers. It’s for us. We write it for ourselves. Putting ideas on paper forces you to think things through.”

The patriarch used the weekly bulletin as a tool for reflection and learning. Distributing it to others added accountability to the process.

When I read this, I thought about a few successful founder friends with a similar habit—which I remembered because it’s rare. They’ve built companies worth hundreds of millions of dollars or more. Each sends a weekly email update to their investors and/or team. They’ve kept up with this habit for years, since their earliest days. I asked one of them why he keeps doing it. He does it for himself, he said, not the recipients. It forces him to reflect on the past seven days and plan for the next seven.

I’m a proponent of founders sending update emails. It’s a habit with superpower potential. Everyone can do it, and because few people do, it gives those who take the time for it an edge.

I’m continuing with my learning survey, which turned into a customer discovery exercise. I’ve been intentional about talking with entrepreneurs and investors who provide early-stage entrepreneurs with capital to build businesses.

Today I spoke with someone who has founded multiple companies and is now a venture capital investor. After I finished asking him questions, I shared what I’ve learned so far and some of my insights. As we chatted more about learning, he shared personal stories about how learning the right things at the right time changed the trajectory of his life. The more he spoke, the more excited he became.

As I reflected on this conversation, I realized that most people who’ve been part of my survey have shown similar excitement. The conversations have illuminated lots of friction for people learning outside of structured learning environments like school. But even with this friction, entrepreneurs and investors have a thirst for wisdom and are excited about learning. My conversations have led me to believe that that thirst isn’t being quenched in a way that suits their on-the-go, digital lifestyle.

I’ve been listening to more podcasts recently. I’m usually doing something else at the same time (e.g., exercising), so the time feels more productive. One of the problems I’ve had is noting important things I hear in podcasts. It’s inconvenient (and sometimes dangerous) to abruptly stop what I’m doing to note what I heard and when I heard it.

I figured I’m not the only person having this problem, so I did some research. I came across the Snipd app. It’s a podcast player that generates transcripts using AI. As you listen to a podcast episode, the app allows you to highlight and save parts you want to revisit with the simple tap of a button. You can even export the highlights to other systems, such as notetaking apps.

I began testing the free version of Snipd recently. I haven’t tried all its features, but so far it’s materially better than what I was doing before. The friction to record podcast insights has been reduced drastically.

I’m going to continue testing the app, but so far I like it and plan to add it to my list of learning tools.

Today I finished reading Kick Up Some Dust: Lessons on Thinking Big, Giving Back, and Doing It Yourself by Bernie Marcus, cofounder and longtime CEO of Home Depot. The book is about Marcus’s life. It describes his upbringing, career in corporate America, transition to entrepreneur, and transition to philanthropist. Marcus is almost 95 and has accomplished (and failed at) many things over the years. I was eager to hear about his experiences and the lessons he learned from them.

Marcus shares what he calls “core lessons in business and life.” He makes it clear that lessons are easy to grasp but hard to put into action. Here are the lessons:

• Confidence – You won’t get anywhere if you don’t believe that you can “do it yourself.” You must be confident that you have the skills and abilities to accomplish any task or solve any problem. If you don’t have the skills, you can learn most of them without going to school.
• Teamwork – On the other hand, you don’t have to do hard things by yourself. Some people will help if you give them the opportunity.
• Full-time – You must be committed and determined to make whatever you’re pursuing work. Marcus says “[t]here is no such thing as part-time passion.”
• Risk taking – If you find a problem or need that isn’t being met, you must take big risks to meet the need or solve the problem. Consider taking the biggest risks when you’re young; there’s less downside.
• Failure – “Failure is the price you pay on your way to success.” Marcus describes his ninety-plus-year journey through life as "stumbling" fueled by optimism.
• Storytelling – Marcus considers this the most important lesson. You must be able to articulate what you’re doing and why it adds value in a compelling story that’s easy to understand.

I’m glad I found this book. I learned a lot about Marcus that I wasn’t aware of. He’s a driven person who’s had a significant impact as both an entrepreneur and a philanthropist.

After reading the book by Home Depot cofounder Ken Langone, I decided to go deeper on the other cofounders. Bernie Marcus was the CEO for many years, and I discovered that within the last few years, he wrote Kick Up Some Dust: Lessons on Thinking Big, Giving Back, and Doing It Yourself. Bernie is almost 95 years old, so I was curious about the wisdom he’d accumulated after almost a century. I ordered his book.

I’m not finished with the book yet, but so far as I can tell, Bernie has a strong personality and entrepreneurial fire inside him.

Bernie shared his thoughts on failure, and they got me thinking:

"I think how you respond to failure comes down to whether your fear is stronger than your passion. People driven by passion see setbacks as unpleasant, but inevitable challenges. What they know that quitters do not is that failure can be eaten in small pieces."

I never enjoyed failing when I was younger, but my mindset shifted when I started being entrepreneurial. I was passionate about what I was doing and driven to see it succeed. This meant I was trying a bunch of things and a lot of it didn’t work. But I noticed a pattern. Going through the things that didn’t work led me to the things that did work. Instead of looking at things via a success-or-failure construct, I began looking at them as either a success or a lesson that got me closer to success. Failures became expected. Many were still painful, but I focused on what I could learn from each failure instead of the pain.

Failure is part of life. As they say in baseball, nobody bats a thousand. Even the best players strike out at the plate. But a single strikeout doesn’t stop them from winning the World Series as long as they don’t give up and keep playing the game to the best of their ability.

I recently finished reading Bull! A History of the Boom and Bust, 1982–2004 by Maggie Mahar. The book was published in 2004, not too long after the dot-com bubble burst. I’ve seen the book recommended a few times and noticed that the cover includes an endorsement by Warren Buffett, so I ordered it. Also, the book’s narrow focus on the period when interest rates started what ended up being a forty-year decline through 2004 was intriguing to me.

I enjoyed reading the book. Given the focus on a very specific period, it provides lots of details about the economic environment, who the main figures were who had an impact on the stock market, and the key decisions they made. Mahar does a good job of describing her perspective on the impact those decisions had on inflating and bursting the internet bubble.

One thing that caught my attention was her explanation of the role the inclusion of high-flying technology companies in stock market indexes (e.g., the S&P 500 and NASDAQ Composite) played in valuations reaching levels that were hard to justify. She believes that this, combined with the rise of the 401k and index funds, contributed to a significant amount of capital being allocated to these highfliers even though valuations were hard to justify. The valuations of companies kept rising because capital kept flowing into the index funds until the stock market bubble burst around 2000.

This caught my attention because last month, I listened to an interview of David Einhorn, founder of Greenlight Capital. Einhorn shared his opinion of the impact that passive investing is having on the valuations of certain companies in today’s stock market. Essentially, he believes that valuations of companies continue to rise because they’re part of one or more stock market indexes (e.g., the S&P 500 and NASDAQ Composite). Passive index funds track indexes, which leads to the funds buying more shares in these companies, regardless of the valuation, as more investors allocate capital to the passive index funds. For this section of Einhorn’s interview, listen here.

I found this interesting because there’s a twenty-year gap between this book’s publication date and Einhorn’s interview.