ACE - An exciting framework for PKM

ACE is the new brainchild of Nick Milo - and it is promising

For a few days, I have been meditating on

Nick Milo

new prescriptive framework for managing knowledge in @obsdmd. He calls it ACE. I am excited about it.

Yes meditating. What do I mean by that:

• Watching his videos

• Working with his free vault and learning how to use it

• and long sessions of thinking about what this means for me in the future.

You can get it from here (It is free - he should charge for it; it is valuable): https://start.linkingyourthinking.com/ideaverse-for-obsidian

E is for Effort

The part I am most mentally hung up on is the E in ACE, which stands for Efforts—hung up in a good way!

This is a new take on handling projects or commitments in life. It really reminds me of the value of kanban. Kanban's value isn't in that it's a visual representation of commitments into columns but rather "the Toyota way" of pulling, not pushing work.

Efforts are about dealing with that, pulling work into the present, and managing a backlog. Nick recommends using the following effort categories:

• On

• Ongoing

• Simmering

• Sleeping

My take on each of these:

• On is the present - now

• Ongoing is also the present, but now, past, and future until done

• Simmering - Ideas brewing reminds me of the GTD Someday/Maybe list

• Sleeping - Archive

PARA competitor? NO!

Some might think this is a competitor to PARA. But I think they complement each other and promote helping users set up easy but effective management structures early in their TFT experience. ACE feels especially suitable for creative types and free spirits who need structure but don't want to be bogged down by structure.

There is no perfect system, but ACE and PARA represent tribal wisdom captured over the last few years for PKM, and they are good starting points for people, just as GTD was a good starting point for personal time management.

Nick is doing more videos on this, and I look forward to it!

I will likely write more on this in the future. I believe having ACE and PARA as two frameworks that can serve as starting points for new users is very needed.