Connecting Ideas in a Personal Knowledge Management

Knowing depends on subjective interpretation

Have you experienced, having a tough time understanding a concept in the past, but years later, even though you have forgotten it, encountering the same concept was easy and straightforward?

Of course, you have. But it could be also the other way round, the first time it was easy, and later you found it difficult to understand.

Michael Polanyi's idea of Personal Knowledge is that knowing is always personal in the sense that knowing involves subjective interpretation and understanding of what you are trying to know.

The subjectivity lies in the context and the priors.

At any time, you have your prior experience, knowledge, values, beliefs, and interests.

The act of knowing includes an appraisal; and this personal coefficient, which shapes all factual knowledge, bridges in doing so the disjunction between subjectivity and objectivity - Michael Polanyi

Making sense of something new is connecting with your priors, but your priors are changing all the time.

Connecting is probably the most important process when building a Personal Knowledge System