You don’t have a creativity problem. You have a portfolio problem. The solution? Start becoming an investor in ideas.

I estimate that 90% of what I capture never makes it into Obsidian. That's not a problem, that’s just part of the process. The trick is to capture enough to have quality candidates to pick from.

Your Caps Lock key is doing nothing right now. But with a free utility called Hyperkey, you can use it to create custom hotkeys that won’t conflict with anything else on your system. The most useless key on your keyboard might become your most useful one. Grab the utility here → hyperkey.app/

Hyperkey

The extra macOS modifier key

hyperkey.app

Not every card on an Obsidian Canvas has to link to a note. Some of mine are just a code blocks that I lay out to create custom dashboards. The canvas doesn't care what's "atomic." It just renders what you give it.

Not every idea has to completely original. Adding an idea to your system doesn't mean you invented it. It just means you think it deserves more of your attention than it's gotten so far.

Broken links aren’t necessarily bad. In Obsidian, an unresolved link is usually an intention, not a mistake. Think of it as dropping a thought marker for future-you to stumble onto. Just make sure you actually go back and revisit it.

You can't beat a physical book if you actually want to read more. Try it! Grab a book and bring it with you everywhere. See if you don’t start reaching for that when you’re bored instead of your phone.

If you've spent years building a PKM system, you've been practicing the exact skill AI needs from you: sensemaking.

When I read a book, I don't take notes on what the author says is important. I take notes on what piques my interest. Sounds simple, but it completely changed how much value I get out of the books that I read.

When it comes to ideas, be an investor, not an inventor. Nobody expects an investor to write the code or build the product. They simply recognize something is worth backing before it's obvious, then do what they can to help it reach it’s full potential. That’s also the whole point of PKM.

Waiting to feel certain before you start developing an idea is why most drafts never get written. But the only way to really get that clarity is to put it out into the world. Conviction comes from doing the work, not before it.

One of the best things I ever did for my productivity was to start using Daily Questions for journaling where I rate my effort from 1 to 10 instead of the output. Daily Questions don't ask what I got done. They ask if I did my best. And that difference is huge if you’re trying to build momentum.

I built a free tool that scores your Obsidian vault's health. It can help you spot orphan notes, stale notes, broken links, average links, and more. Takes about two minutes. Check it out here → vaulthealth.practicalpkm.com

An abandoned plugin used to mean waiting for someone else to fix it. This has happened to me many times over the last 5+ years of using Obsidian. But with AI tools, now I can fix things myself when they break. The key is you still need to know what you want and be able to describe it clearly.

You don't need to be a developer to build your own tools. AI has gotten so good that the bottleneck is now knowing what you want and be able to describe it clearly. If you want to make the most of the tools that are available, you have to shift your thinking from developer → director.

The barrier to building your own tools is being removed in real-time. A plugin breaks, colors go dark, and instead of filing a bug report and waiting — you can open Claude Code, fix what's broken, and publish a usable version in minutes. The era of personalized productivity software is here.

One of the things I love about Claude Code is that it explains what it’s doing as it builds. As a non-developer, that gives me a peek inside the logic so I can make better requests the next time. A small thing that makes it easy to embrace the role of director when building the tools you need.

The world's most productive process still needs an input to work with. Capture, organize, distill — none of these steps yield anything if your vault is empty. You still need notes & ideas to work with. The system just makes it easier to clarify your thinking once you've given it the raw material.

The most useful notes are the ones that show up when you need them. That's what links are for. They help you find that needle in the haystack when you're not even sure you're looking for it.

You don't need to be a developer anymore if you want to build a software solution to the problem that has you stuck. But you need to know what you want and be able to describe the solution clearly. The ability to communicate is the real skill I'd be building right now.

I don't know how to write DataviewJS code. But that didn’t stop me from building my dream journaling workflow in Obsidian 😍 I asked Claude to write it for me instead, and it built me custom dashboards that I always wanted but had previously only dreamed of.

Your task manager shouldn't be a taskmaster. Treat your task list as a recommendation engine, not a list of required actions. You still need to decide what's worth paying attention to today.

Taking the time to reflect is never urgent, but it is important. Miss it for a week, and nothing breaks. But continue to skip this step and before long you're overwhelmed.

AI will change the way we creators work, but it won’t replace the actual work. The labor of writing was never the part that was ours. People used to cling in fear to their typewriters because they didn’t want computers to be involved in the sacred creative process.

Point AI at a blank page and you’ll get something very average (”AI slop”). But point intentionally it at your own notes & ideas and it amplifies voice & taste into great creative work that only you could have made.

Stale notes can make creative thinking difficult. But a note you haven't opened in six months may not necessarily be a note that’s neglected. It might just be finished. If you want to see which metrics are worth paying attention to, run my free vault health check → vaulthealth.practicalpkm.com

A tidy vault is not a signal of strength. Often, it's a warning sign. A pristine vault usually means you're maintaining it instead of using it.

Orphan notes. Stale notes. Broken links. You may see these and feel like your PKM system is falling apart. It's not. Each one tells a different story, and you have to know the story before you know if it's actually broken. Find out how healthy your vault is → vaulthealth.practicalpkm.com

Taste is having the conviction to say something the LLM wouldn't.