This is the next chapter in a multi-part story on The State of PKM. By the end of this informal manifesto, you will leave with a clearer and empowered sense of PKM.

What is your relationship with Knowledge?

Too many of us are too unclear about this.

I mean, why do we care about the things we care about?

Is it just because we woke up one day, at a desk, employed by someone—and they asked us for the TPS Reports—so we started organizing stuff for them?

Put plainly: Is our relationship with knowledge merely to get things done?

It sounds silly when I ask it this way, but that's how society shapes us...

...if we don't push back.

I think—no, I know there is more to our relationship with knowledge than that.

Can we travel back in time together...to remember what we cared about when we first started making notes? Can you remember an early note of yours?

Think back.

It may have been a time you still hold dearly. Whatever you wrote—and whatever you thought—still has power in your heart. Were you doodling during class? Were you trying to solve some unclear question that was lingering in your mind?

Were you on a trip writing in a notebook?

I was.

Well, it wasn't a notebook, but a notepad.

I was on a bus in Tennessee, with my college football teammates, three days before we were to play in the NAIA national championship. Between practices, the coaches had to devise ways to keep 70 young men busy, so they put on on the bus and drove us to the nearby Shiloh Battlefield. The Battle of Shiloh was fought 160 years ago in the American Civil War. Up to that point, it was the bloodiest battle in the war, with nearly twice as many casualties as all the previous major battles combined.

Seeing kids my age, with their lives taken from them so early...it all had an effect on me. Back on the bus, I pulled out the notepad I grabbed from our hotel and started writing.

I don't know if I have that piece of paper anymore, but luckily, I did take a screenshot of it.

And happily, my PKM system successfully held it.

I don't expect this to mean a lot to you, but it means a lot to me. (By the way, can you see The 3 Laws of Sensemaking in that story.)

And I know you have something like this too. What was it? What form did it take? A drawing? Was it a journal entry?

Mine wasn't a journal really, but a map.

It was a way for me to make better sense of the world.

Wait wait?

It was a way for me to make better sense of the world.

That is the core—the very essence—of my relationship to Knowledge.

But society won't let us admit it. People online slap your wrists if you say, "I just like thinking." They say, "It doesn't count if you don't output!"

And I say, "What a sad life." What a sad life that this person has fallen for it, and believes that knowledge is merely a way to get ahead.

It's a utilitarian view of Knowledge: as a means to an end. Use it to get what you want, then toss it away.

Friends, this again is the most important of The 6 Battlefields of PKM:

• The Destination vs The Journey

This is a fight for the soul of thinking.

When did we lose our way? When did "getting things done" become our guiding light? When did the destination swallow up the joy of the journey?

Here's the thing...

You can be a professional and still spend time wandering in ideas for the mere sake of the activity itself. Do not underestimate a mind enriched with developed ideas and defined values.

J.R.R. Tolkien gives us our next Truism of PKM:

Not all those who wander are lost.

Linking, thinking, writing...these activities can't help but produce inherent feelings of joy and meaning. And that's not all, these activities can also create real value. (I'll explain how as part of another chapter.)