## About This Page Hello there! If you've not accessed this website via link specifically sent to you by me, Matthew Sparks in User Services at St. Edward's University: **wow, how did you manage to find this page?**. Please email me at **[email protected]** with an explanation of how you managed to stumble upon it, as I'd genuinely love to know. **For everyone else, welcome to the inside of my brain at work!** ### Knowledge Management: A Journey in Wrangling My Crazy Brain For the length of my time in this position at the university, I have always attempted, with varying degrees of success, to document my learning experiences, track problems I've worked on, detail solutions that have worked *and not worked*, manage projects that I've been put on or volunteered for, and any and all learning related to the job, IT, and technology-relevant topics that could help me be the best IT professional I can be, as well as carve out a potential career in the field or one adjacent to it. Due to some medical conditions, one horrific car accident on Labor Day 2023 (*wow, in 2 days it will have been a year since the accident--if you don't know, you don't want to*), and adult ADHD, I sometimes have a hard time remembering everything that I need to remember. Additionally, **I love learning**, and my hobbies and interests spread across a number of domains, many of which have little--*if not zero*--crossover with one another. Trying to track all my tasks and projects at work, continue learning in my academic field of choice--**behavioral neuroscience**--further expand and improve upon my skillsets in programming, web and software design, writing, research, and much more, **I simply became so overwhelmed that it felt like I became paralyzed and unable to move forward with any of these things.** On top of that, there were other subjects I was interested in diving into that I had no prior experience with or knowledge of. *No, I'm not having a manic episode, Mom.* **I needed a solution.** ### My PKM App Obsession **Enter, the PKM app.** Or, for normal people, "*personal knowledge management*" applications--sometimes also referred to as "*personal knowledge management systems*." One of the skills I have always prided myself on besides learning new things, and one that is inherently intertwined with that skill, is the ability to research. Very quickly I discovered the rapidly expanding marketplace of Knowledge Management tools like **Notion**, **Obsidian**, **Tana**, **Roam Research**, **Capacities**, **Heptabase**, and many, *many* more. I became obsessed with these applications and the creation of a **perfect knowledge management application** for my needs (one doesn't exist, in case you were wondering, and I've accepted that--I think). At this point, I have *thoroughly* tested a double digit number of these apps, determined which ones I found the most useful, and discovered which features I find to be not only the most valuable for me, but also the most fun to use. **Learning should be fun. Why can't the tools used to facilitate learning also be fun?**