The Structure of the Digital System (Part II)
The Digital System emerges from its structure and it enables you to iteratively generate new knowledge based on your insights.
In the first part we looked at the building blocks of the Digital System — the digital apps and services and their basic functions that need to be known in 2023. Now it's time to give these building blocks a structure in part two. This is how the Digital System is created in the first place — it emerges from this structure and enables you to iteratively generate new knowledge.
A system consists of its elements and the relationships between these elements. The building blocks must therefore be related to one another — they must be given a structure. We then look at the processes in the third part. These processes are the methods and approaches, e.g. Getting Things Done (Book on Amazon) by David Allen and Building a Second Brain (blog post) by Tiago Forte. The three parts — the building blocks, the structure, and the processes — make up the full Digital System that empowers you for knowledge work.
In this article I give an introduction to the structure of the Digital System.
Knowledge Work
First a short excursion why I am convinced that everyone has to master knowledge work — that means knowing how to deal with the building blocks of the Digital System. In a few decades (or maybe just years, see ChatGPT) our activities will shift completely into the sphere of knowledge work, starting with our professional activities and then also private activities. All hobby activities are excluded here — activities that are done purely for joy. These remain as they are; they do well and continue to exist. After all, without leisure time, hobbies and fun, life makes no sense at all.
The ingenuity of digitalization is infinite and viewed as a whole, we are still at the beginning of the digital history. Digitalization and digital tools offer opportunities for technical automation and empowerment of activities that people perform. Humans always have sought and invented new ways to make performing necessary or desirable activities more productive. In other words, even the first humans had their first tools at hand with their sharp stones. Thousands of years later in the future, today, we actually still have our tools in our hands — our smartphones, tablets, laptops & Co. In between there is a beautiful story of human inventions and innovations — from discovering fire, the mill, the steam engine, the first computers and up to today's ubiquitous digitalization.
Each of these tools has optimized activities that humans had to perform manually and by hand. This happened because tools are placed between the people and the actual doing of the activity. The activity can thus be carried out faster, with fewer resources or with better quality — or even with a combination of the three improvements. The activity becomes more productive. Even new activities and thus completely new capabilities become possible that could not have been thought of before. I don't know about you, but I think this perspective puts the apps and digital services in a completely different light. They empower us to do things faster, easier, and better, and allow us to focus on what really matters — being productive.
Don't forget this view and never let yourself be taken over by digitalization itself. It is and remains a means to an end, and that end is in your hands.
With its structure, the Digital System gives you a starting point for your knowledge work.
The Meta-model
Without a structure, we would quickly face another hurdle of enormous complexity: we now understand the building blocks of the Digital System, but how are they supposed to work together or even interlock? And how do they enable us to work productively with our system?
In the first part we categorized the building blocks of the Digital System into passive and active building blocks. For the structure of our Digital System, we focus on the active building blocks, as these are the building blocks with which we actively work. In our context, “actively work” means everything that happens in the context of knowledge work. We can't use the building blocks directly either. We need an abstraction level to be able to define the structure — a so-called meta-model.
Active Building Blocks
First Thoughts
To-dos
Knowledge Work
Planning
Resources
Without a meta-model, a structure would look something like this:
While this "structure" isn't wrong, it doesn't really help us either — since these relations don't say anything about which elements are connected to each other. This structure only considers the building-block-level. We need a structure at the level of the actual knowledge work.
The aim of the meta-model is therefore to define the necessary entities and their relationships to one another, which in turn exist within the building blocks. Who is familiar with the modeling language UML: We need a class diagram for our Digital System.
In the following diagram you get a complete overview of the meta-model, which I also use for my Digital System.
In the meta-model I group the entities according to the active building blocks:
Entities for strategic planning (purple)
Entities for time planning (yellow)
Entities for to-dos (blue)
Entities for knowledge work (green)
Entities for resources (red)
This results in the following coloring of the entities, which provides some clarity.
In the following sections I explain these entities.
I will not explicitly explain every relation between the entities shown, but will only describe them briefly. Basically, the same as always applies here, design your meta-model in the way that is most productive for you. In most cases, the relations stand for a connection between entities or a classification in the respective other entity. In a detailed class diagram, a verb would be noted on each relation.
The directions of the relations are reversible — in the diagram my personal readings are shown. For example, "a project has a goal" or vice versa "a goal is achieved by a project" would be possible. These relations should give you an initial idea of how you can design the relations in your Digital System. This means that other relations can also be added. For example, projects can also be related to years (entity Yearly) — for me the relation to quarters (entity Quarterly) is sufficient.
I explain the entities at their meta-level and do not go into the specific development of the entities. For example, I will not explain further what a project is and how a project can be designed.
Entities for Strategic Planning
The entities for strategic planning are the most important entities. In the end, what matters is that your purpose is fulfilled. To do this, your goals must always serve at least one purpose. Areas of focus are the most significant areas in your life. Therefore, your goals must also fit into at least one area of focus. Consider these conditions of existence between the three entities in defining your purposes, goals, and areas of focus.
Purpose
Purpose is the why — the motivation and reason we do something. It is essential that you define your purposes. They are the strategic alignment of your system and show you the way. Purposes are timeless in their essence. They should be valid for many years or decades.
After you've defined your purposes, a good practice is to consolidate those purposes into a central phrase — a so-called strategic principle. A strategic principle shows the limits and meaningfulness of activities, is action-oriented and thus forces you to weigh up and decide between your competing resources, especially your time or your money. With a strategic principle, you always have a shorthand of your purposes and maintain your strategic focus and strategic consistency.
Goal
You always assign a goal to a purpose. A goal without an associated and suitable purpose must not exist, since it does not seem (or is very unlikely) to be in line with your strategic direction. A goal thus fits one or more of your purposes.
A goal must be defined SMART — it must be specific, measurable, attractive, realistic and timely.
Area of Focus
An area of focus is an area of your life that is meaningful to you. An area of focus basically exists permanently and is not completed or reached. Rather, an area of focus has a standard of competencies and capabilities that must be maintained or increased.
You must be able to clearly assign your goals to at least one area of focus.
Typical areas of focus are finance, health, work and family. But even more important are the areas of focus that are truly and specific to you. You have to be clear with yourself about which areas of focus make up you. One of my personal areas of focus is “AI & Automation”.
Entities for Time Planning
Time is the most important classification criterion. Since the five "time" entities differ primarily in their time period and are self-explanatory, I refrain from explaining each entity individually.
The five entities for time planning (scheduling) are used to organize the timing of other entities. This makes it possible to create a time schedule for the future and to carry out a retrospective (so-called reviews) for the different time horizons — it is always about looking into the future and looking into the past.
You relate your goals, projects and tasks to relevant and appropriate time entities. In addition, other entities can also be assigned to these time entities.
Entities for To-dos
The entities for to-dos are about the completing of tasks. A group of related tasks are managed in a project.
Project
A project has at least one goal and, like goals, is related to an area of focus. That means if a project is successfully completed, at least one of your goals will be achieved. A project is always time-bound and should not last more than 12 months (I try to plan projects always way below 12 months).
Again, these conditions of existence help you define your projects (and also your areas of focus and goals). A project without a goal can be described as a hobby and therefore does not have to be fundamentally wrong. Nevertheless, every project should initially have a goal. A project without an area of focus is outside of your core interests and should not normally be pursued. If this happens frequently, it may be an indication that you need to define a new area of focus. A project should a least, if only indirectly, relate to one of your purposes.
Task
A task is a necessary activity, primarily for the execution of projects. However, a task does not necessarily have to be assigned to a project. It would be possible for a task to be related directly to an area of focus — and serves to maintain or to raise the standard of the area of focus.
Entities for Resources
The entities for resources enable the consumption and utilization of resources. Resources are any form of information that can be consumed. Resources are therefore the basis of your knowledge work.
Resource inbox
The resource inbox is the central input channel for information. In this inbox you record any information that you want to consume. Typical types of information are articles, blog posts, newsletters, books, podcasts, videos, presentations, reports and scientific papers. What this information has in common is that you didn't create it yourself.
It is important that you only use one resource inbox — even if you use other input channels, in the end your information to be consumed ends up in a central place.
Resource
A resource is information you have consumed and that is personally relevant to you — that is, information that resonated with you when you consumed it. I recommend that you do not transfer trivia from your resource inbox to your resources. Trivia is information you can look up in a minute using a search engine.
That means, after consuming information, it is important to check whether it is relevant to you. If so, it becomes a resource for your knowledge work. You assign this resource to at least one area of interest to ensure a structure of your resources.
From resources you extract memes that are important to you.
Area of Interest
An area of interest is used for basic categorization of your resources. In comparison to focus areas, areas of interest encompass a larger area in terms of content and context. In addition, no standards are maintained or increased for areas of interest. As the name suggests, the point of areas of interest is to organize your resources according to your interests.
For example, after engaging with an area of interest for a while, you may decide to include a subset of the area of interest as an area of focus. It is therefore logical that there can be an overlap in content between an area of focus and an area of interest.
It is important that you can clearly assign each recorded resource to at least one area of interest. This relation setting must be possible within a few seconds. If this is not the case, your areas of interest are too complicated and/or too granular.
Personally, I use 15 areas of interest and I can quickly drop any resource relevant to me into them without thinking twice.
Entities for Knowledge Work
The entities for knowledge work are the most crucial entities. It is meaningless to use the Digital System — which itself focuses on knowledge work — while not creating any new knowledge.
Note (First Thoughts)
I like to compare a note to “first thoughts” (hence the name of the building block in Part One). A note arises from the instantaneous capture of a thought. Such a thought can arise from various inputs, e.g. when reading an article, listening to a podcast, when talking to colleagues or simply when thinking.
Notes are unstructured information. It is therefore important that you can take notes quickly and precisely at the moment without distraction — it is not about creating a structured document. What you create notes about, you have to know for yourself. Again, questioning the resonance of a note helps.
Notes can be associated with multiple entities. It is helpful to always give a note a relation to time. In the meta-model shown, notes are assigned to a day (entity Daily).
In addition to the chronological relation, notes are usually related to a task (and thus to a project), a document or to a resource. If a note doesn't have a direct reference to one of these entities when it was created, it will most likely have in the near future — after all, you didn't create the note for no reason.
When a note becomes more specific, it can serve as input to the document entity. That means, structured documents can be created from one or more notes.
Document
A document is a structured representation of related information. A document can be related to an area of focus, a project, a task, a note, a meme, an area of interest, or a resource. Likewise, a document can have a relation to another document. It becomes clear that a document is a central entity in the meta-model of the Digital System.
A document is therefore the first stage in the processing of information and represents a work result. This can be, for example, a project report, a task description, operating instructions or a conversation log — classic documents that have a structure and a certain degree of maturity.
Documents enable long-term preservation and effective, potential reuse of the information recorded there. Documents thereby simplify the storage and provision of information. I also recommend to keep the size, that means the content of documents and their complexity, consistent.
Meme
A meme describes a concept, context, or other object that is relevant to you. You can think of the entirety of your memes as your personal encyclopedia.
Memes are the atomic building blocks of knowledge work from which you create knowledge artefacts. This is also the difference to the document entity. A meme exists at a different level of information processing compared to documents. Documents can refer to memes.
A meme is self-made by you. That means that you always describe a meme in your own words. However, a meme is not new knowledge. It is extracted and combined from resources by you. A meme contains exactly one context, concept, or other object — and is therefore atomic. Memes mostly have relations to other memes — just as Wikipedia articles always refer to other Wikipedia articles.
A meme is related with at least one area of interest and one area of focus — and should be related to a knowledge artefact sooner or later.
Knowledge Artefact
A knowledge artefact is the final result that emerges from knowledge work. To do this, memes are combined, refined with your individual and unique knowledge and thus assembled into a truly new knowledge artefact.
New knowledge is created that did not previously exist in this form. Like your goals, a knowledge artefact must fit at least one purpose and is related to at least one area of focus.
A knowledge artefact does not have a fixed format and can basically be anything, such as an article like this one. It is a complete product of your individual cognitive performance.
After all, knowledge artefacts need to be shared with other people after creation — knowledge that only you have has no meaning. For the rest of the universe it is then as if this knowledge does not exist.
Using the Structure
In the future, each of us will be a knowledge worker. The essential question is what capabilities we humans will need for this — skills that make us unique. In the world with ChatGPT & Co. it will be of utmost importance to be able to deal productively with information and knowledge.
I am convinced that a digital system will be a fundamental building block for this world of knowledge. It enables you to generate new knowledge. Without new knowledge, ChatGPT would not continue to develop.
New AI assistants will be able to build on your knowledge base. This gives you a huge advantage.
As you read this, you probably already got a sense of how you would design your meta-model. Now is a good time to create your own meta-model.
And maybe you've also noticed that the structure (the meta-model) has nothing to do directly with the tools (the apps). This abstraction makes it easy to integrate or exchange new apps, services and future AI assistants in your digital system. That is the power of the Digital System.
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Marvin |
Think Digital