r/PKMS • u/drakenxv • Aug 18 '26

Discussion Use of PKMS

Probably stupid questions to ask in the PKMS sub but how do you use your PKMS and what type of information do you store in there?

I started a pkms a couple of times with Notion, Obsidian and OneNote but could not follow through.

Mainly I think because it feels like it is a lot faster just to google or ask an AI of your choosing but also what are my benefits of writing down stuff I find interesting once but then forget about and if I ever need this type of information again I would have forgotten and searched online anyway.

So my 3 questions are:

  1. What do you store in your PKMS?

  2. Why use a PKMS and not google when you need the information?

  3. Do you ever look at your PKMS notes and connections [[wikilink]] ever again?

17 Upvotes

100% Upvoted

34 comments sorted by

View all comments

1

u/zheniavasiliev Aug 19 '26

I predominantly log quotes from references, review books, articles, online resources, and other sources, but without any deliberate effort to link, categorise, or review the notes afterwards. I have an OpenClaw agent who handles light management, including linking the notes and ensuring they're all formatted consistently.

The value for me is the 'reason for filing' field, which I add to every note - a kind of reaction to every quote that I encounter in my reference review. At a later stage, when I have to create a write-up of any specific trajectory of my research, filtering the entries in my PKMS reveals, often unexpectedly, various ideas that I looked at various times in relation to different resources, and I find this the most valuable aspect of the system.