Personal Knowledge Mastery — Top Tools, Resources & Practices

What do your modern professional learner and designer’s toolkit, resources, activities, and communities look like? From time to time, I find it worthwhile to update and turn it into resources to use and iterate while experimenting and doing projects. To me, resources can vary from:

• Actionable insights and contents
• Communities – online and offline
• Interesting networks/people
• Tools – digital and analogue

Of course, they complement the context and what needs to be done.

You may find interesting to dive into the yearly top tools for learning brought by Jane Hart.

Below, here are the latest tools and resources I use.

WordPress

A reliable tool to clarify and share my learning and work in the flow of life. Deep thoughts. Achievements. Work in progress. Research. Owning my data. I have also added lately my archive page of all the posts I published, produced and curated. I also use a Creative Commons license on my website and blog to share my craft.

Clickup

It is a responsive and easy tool to be productive and keep track of my learning flows/workflows. Also, to stay focused and manage projects. It is also my go-to tool for writing and researching Clickup documents/ links/emails that can easily be searchable, archivable, downloadable, shareable and retrievable.

Books & Kindle

I manage my bookshelf through reads, laters, and readings, and I use highlights for upcoming book annotated readings I share in blog posts. I manage my library per topic. I also use Goodreads to share my bookshelf.

I still read paperbacks.

Social networks

Learning and engaging one conversation at a time, asynced, over tweets, content people shared, and events they host or participate in. Follow-up. Caring about the conversation and energy with people and getting to know weak ties and strong ties.

I have retrieved bookmarks and used search to use Linkedin/Mastodon posts to turn into tasks or curated blog posts.

Google Workspace

Google Docs, Sheet, Slides, Jamboard, Sites, Keep to produce, search, manage, review and refine content productions. To get feedback from trusted people in my network and visualise and analyse data for better decision-making. Creating customised personal brand assets with Google Slides tailored templates.

I’ve been using Jamboard to share feedback on business model canvas produced by cohorts of apprentices one workshop’s session at a time. As the tool won’t be able from October 2024 I intend to use more Figma to do so.

Whimsical

Produce flowcharts and mindmaps that I can share with my network and embed in blog posts.

Microsoft 365

I have also used Microsoft 365 intensively with my clients: Outlook, Word, Excel, Powerpoint, SharePoint, OneDrive, Stream.

Microsoft Teams is also easy to search and retrieve anything. However, I have not yet learned how to export curated and created content.

Managing documents I made or uploaded through One Drive and the Office Apps is handy. It is also the tool I learned for personal productivity, collaboration in projects with clients. I have used it to have exploration calls or catch-up calls with people in my network and to get things done with clients and partners.

Zoom

Reliable to use for community calls, meetings, and live events such as meetups, conferences or webinars. I am using the recording for replay and checking out the saved text chat to dig links, thoughts, questions and answers, and notes the host and participants shared after the conversation.

In addition, I used OBS studio as a virtual camera to manage my digital live presence and create transmedia content with pressie, audio, and video for talks I give, the presentations I’ve done, and web meetings I join or host.

Google Meet is also a third video conference tool I find handy with Google Chat.

Moodle

Integrate content and activities for courses and workshops I host remotely, in person or both ways with my cohort of apprentices. I also evaluate faster with a grid the deliverables they produce individually and collectively.

Last but not least, it is also a go-to resource. I enrich one session at a time to feed the learning-hungry minds of my cohorts. With a fellow learning designer and teacher, we do use it to co-host and evaluate common cohorts on topics going from digital marketing to innovation, project management and e-commerce.

Canva

I am creating bingos, posters, covers, infographics, social posts, collages, presentations, and visual synthesis.

OneTab

Chrome extension to manage and access quickly to daily bookmarks I use. Pocket is also my go-to read laters app, whether it is for articles or videos I have bookmarked. The extraction of quotes and highlights then go to Slack per channel/topic so that I can retrieve them later with references and hyperlinks in a future conversation or blog posts I’ll write.

Analogue

I use paper books, printed newspapers, posters, radio, exhibits, paintings, pen and Moleskine, biking and walking to nurture my creativity, reflection and serendipity.

Slack

I use Slack to capture insights and thoughts on what I seek for my personal knowledge mastery quest. It is also an online community valuable platform for networking, environmental scanning and learning with an online community I belong to: PBCC.

Another usage I had with clients: collaborating with my team and clients.

Feedly

I read blogs, newsletters and news from my favourite and diverse sources and people. New themes emerged: personal mastery, Asia, writing, self-publishing, automation. In addition, I have paid attention to workplace learning, management, and futures thinking, cities futures.

When I read, hear or view content, I often extract the insights or resources to archive in a Slack channel to retrieve when timely in a project, conversation or blog post.

Sports

I am staying fit and healthy through three activities: walking, biking and swimming.

Courses, Workshops & Communities

To go deep in disciplines through online courses and workshops such as the Personal Knowledge Mastery guided by Harold Jarche.

Another significant way to go deep and at large is through global communities.

Podcasts

I am listening to podcasts on the go to share actionable insights from deep conversations. I hear downloads of episodes when I am offline and on the go.

Youtube

Building my playlists to dive deep into topics from subject matter experts. Catching with replays from webinars, talks, meetups, and live Q&As, I could not attend in communities I engage. Digging craft from creatives from around the world in arts. Learning from how-tos.

DeepL

Translating any content using machine learning and my human skills. Especially in English-French. Sometimes, my network members share in their own local language. So I use the tool to translate documents or extracts from blog posts to understand and mull over them.

Update: exploring DeepL Write, too, to improve my writings in English.

Rotana Ty’s Top Tools for Learning & Working

	2016	2017	2018	2019	2020	2021	2022	2023 / 2024
1	Google Sites	Blogger	WordPress	WordPress	WordPress	WordPress	WordPress	WordPress
2	Skype	Skype	Meet	Meet	Zoom	Zoom	Zoom	Zoom
3	Twitter	Twitter	Twitter	Twitter	Twitter	Twitter	Twitter	LinkedIn Mastodon
4	Podio	Podio	Clickup	Trello Google Sheet	Clickup	Clickup	Clickup	Clickup
5	Google Reader	Google Reader	Feedly	Feedly	Feedly	Feedly	Feedly Google Alerts	Feedly Google Alerts & Sites
6	Instapaper	Instapaper	Instapaper	Pocket	Pocket	Wakelet	Google Keep	Word
7	Slideshare	Slideshare	Google Slides CamScanner Sketchnoting	Google Slides	Google Slides	Google Slides Doodling CamScanner	Whimsical Drawing on paper	PowerPoint Google Workspace DeepL
8	Flickr	Flickr	Flickr	Flickr	Google Photos	Google Photos	Google Photos	None
9	Slack	Slack	Slack	WhatsApp	Mighty Networks	WhatsApp	Slack	Outlook Slack / Google Chat Moodle
10	Delicious	Diigo	Diigo	Pinboard	OneTab	OneTab	OneTab	OneTab

Personal Knowledge Mastery’s Practices

“I suggest that all professionals look at their seeking knowledge, sense-making, and sharing practices and see what they can improve. This is the focus of the PKM in 40 Days online workshop.” — Harold Jarche

Here is what came up after I examined mine.

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