The Workflow Got Better
I have been thinking about a strange problem in Personal Knowledge Management.
You can get better at a workflow and still make the whole system harder to use.
I designed my workflow for better capture, better tags, templates and automation. It feels like I am making progress because the work gets easier.
The hidden problem is local optimisation.
Better capture means more notes coming in.
Better automation moves them in faster.
Better tags and templates make it easier to keep everything.
But if the real bottleneck is processing, thinking, or turning my notes into something useful, all that efficiency just sends more work into the bottleneck.
This is a PKM version of what Chris Argyris called skilled incompetence.
You can become very good at a behaviour that keeps producing the wrong result.
So, the question I keep coming back to is:
What am I getting better at that I should stop doing?
With this in mind, I applied a simple audit to my own PKM system.
I picked one part of the system that I improved recently, then looked at what that improvement was actually doing.
- What am I getting better at? Capturing? Organizing? Linking? Reviewing?
- What is it supposed to improve? Better thinking? Better recall? Better writing? Better decisions?
- Did that result improve? If not, the workflow may be getting more efficient without becoming more useful.
- What happens if I do less of it? Capture fewer notes. Use fewer tags. Remove one template. Pause one automation for a week.
I think this is the part that is easy to miss.
It feels good when the workflow becomes more efficient.
But if the result stays the same, maybe I am just getting better at the wrong thing.
I am continuing to explore Chris Argyris's work on skilled incompetence and double-loop learning.
A simple lesson I learned this week is: Getting better at something does not always mean it is worth doing more of.
Until next time, stay smart.
Gav