One of my annual goals for 2025 (last year) was to establish and cultivate a Knowledge Garden, which is what I call my implementation of a Personal Knowledge Management tool or PKM.

The Backstory

My PKM journey started years before, using an app called Bear. This worked well enough for me as a passive note dump, but I wasn't consciously using it to gather knowledge in any kind of an intentional way. It was basically random meeting notes, discount codes I wanted to use later, and responses to journaling prompts.

In 2024, I noticed an app called Craft had been added to SetApp and I started getting curious. This led to a serial discovery process that led through Anytype and Capacities to Tana, where I was reveling in full nerd mode when I set that annual goal for 2025.

Sadly, the stench of techbro was heavy over Tana, and that soon gave me the ick. I almost gave up on my goal, but in retrospect I'm grateful.

Against the backdrop of some broader issues with depression that summer, one day I pulled enough motivation together to look around and see what else was out there. That's when I rediscovered Obsidian, which I'd known about but hadn't tried. This time I felt drawn in a way I hadn't before (not to mention fitting my digital sovereignty vibe perfectly), and everything changed.

Why It's Relevant

There is plenty of nuanced detail I could go into next with the full story of various plugin combinations and methodologies I've tried mixing and matching since then, but that's not really the intention of this post. Mainly I want to introduce the topic as an ongoing interest, and give the series an anchor point.

There's plenty of that still to come - Obsidian is a tinkerer's dream come true - and for me that is part of the joy. As I try various plugins and adapt my setup, I'll share what's working for me and how I'm using and developing my Knowledge Garden.

Digging In

Today's thrill has been swapping out a plugin called Luhman that I had been using for a new one (to me, anyway) called Note ID. These are both for the purpose of assigning folgezettel (sequence numbers) to the notes in a zettelkasten. I don't think of my Knowledge Garden purely as a zettelkasten; I use it for many things besides that, but the zettelkasten function is among them.

I was almost ready to abandon the numbering scheme altogether, as I was only using it one folder called "Zettels" that weren't even really the majority of my notes, but before I gave up on it I decided to see what else was out there and learn if there were benefits to numbering your zettels that I wasn't aware of.

That's when I found Note ID, this defense of folgezettels by its author, and the video I linked above, which sold me on giving it one more shot. What I like about this is that it lets me number my notes wherever, they don't need to live in the same folder to be numbered as I was doing with Luhman (I don't think the plugin required that, but you couldn't see the numbers all together very easily so they were much less useful).

Why I'm Hopeful

Note ID gives you a side panel where you can see your zettels nested in their sequence, while the notes themselves can continue to live in whatever folder they're stored in. This works out well for me, because a lot of my notes come out of my spiritual practices, so they're often stored in folders for various journaling and divination practices that I use.

I also have technology notes generated through client work and personal projects; these are in their own folders as well. You might wonder how these are even related at all, why they would ever mix in sequence, but as technomancy is one of my interests, and there are some really interesting correspondences between emerging technology and concepts of higher power, it happens more than you'd think.

And perhaps because it is Aquarius season, I was noticing that need a lot lately, which is how it came to the forefront today. I'm excited!! I am not a zettelkasten zealot by any means, I'm only familiar on a surface level with its core ideas, enough to make it useful for me, but the deeper nuance and benefit of the numbering system is a fresh idea for me so I'm curious to see if it adds to how I do things.

Final Thoughts

We're in 2026 now, and I have new goals. Probably the biggest and most exciting (and scary) is the decision to write a book. Now that my Knowledge Garden is bearing fruit, that's actually possible!! Or at least it feels like it could be, if I follow through. One of the huge benefits of all the self-improvement work I've done is that I actually trust myself to do that.

I think that's also why it feels so scary. There's a big difference between wishful thinking about stuff I'll do someday, and seeing that it could become real so that a major published creative work would be out there for everyone to critique.

I'm not sure how that's different than being in full view of 35,000 people every time I post to Facebook but it's real in a very different way. Imposter syndrome and crippling self-doubt may be things I've overcome, but that doesn't mean their thought patterns just vanished. Only that I can operate in spite of them.

I hope by sharing my experiences of personal growth and how I use my digital tools, I can inspire others. As we unlearn empire together, may all of us grow into the greatness they stole from us. Amen!!