Knowledge Base as an Across-Time Thinking Tool
The Argument for Why Developing a Knowledge Base Might Be Worth the Effort.
A few weeks ago, I wrote an article introducing the Personal Knowledge Base (here). I described the three core benefits that come from having that system:
Knowledge Synthesis Becomes (Almost) Effortless
Learning Transforms from Passive to Active
Mental Load Lightens Through External Structure
While those benefits are all true, it still bothered me that the value proposition of writing and developing a personal knowledge base wasn't crystal clear. Moreover, I didn't feel that those three points fully represented the value I've gained from the system. Thankfully, two recent conversations1 inspired me to hypothesize what this value proposition might be:
A Personal Knowledge Base is an ideal tool for Across-Time Thinking.
Let me explain in detail.
🕰️ What is Across-Time Thinking?
From a session-based perspective on cognitive processes, I distinguish between two types of thinking: One-Time Thinking and Across-Time Thinking2.
One-Time Thinking - A thinking process that occurs within a single, continuous session where information is processed, analyzed, and conclusions are reached without significant temporal breaks. This approach relies primarily on immediately accessible knowledge and reasoning capabilities, with outcomes determined by the constraints of working memory and continuous attention.
Great examples range from simple decisions, like choosing what to eat for breakfast, to more complex ones, such as solving coding challenges.
Across-Time Thinking - A distributed thinking process that spans multiple discrete sessions, where each builds upon insights from previous ones. This approach allows for unconscious processing during intervals between sessions, integration of new information over time, and progressive refinement of understanding. The dependencies between sessions enable more complex, layered comprehension than what could be achieved in a single continuous effort.
What are the examples? Actually, many “problems” could benefit from across-time thinking.
🧐 Problems for Across-Time Thinking
At first, I thought across-time thinking was only valuable on a personal level — helping me learn new things or gain deeper insights into myself. However, as I reflected on my work-related activities, I realized its significance in that context as well. In fact, it may have been one of the key skills that allowed me to excel in my role(s).
But first things first…
🫶 From a Personal Perspective
Across-time thinking applies to:
Anything related to self-knowledge such as life mission, life vision, life guidelines, values, or internal motivators.
Anything related to knowledge about oneself on a day-to-day basis, like time management, energy management, stress management, and others.
Anything related to knowledge about the world around me, like computer science, data science, economics, products, start-ups, and others.
All of those topics represent ongoing processes of learning and reflection — constantly adding, refining, and discarding knowledge and ideas to organize them into a coherent understanding of both the internal and external world.
🧑💼 From a Professional Perspective
I haven't mentioned this part of my professional experience on the blog yet. For six years, I have been observing, supporting, and ultimately leading real-world enterprise implementations of analytical systems.
While enterprise IT projects have many distinct characteristics, one crucial aspect is the iterative discovery of customer requirements. You rarely receive a complete set of customer needs in a single meeting that allows you to immediately implement the system. Instead, requirements continuously emerge and evolve throughout the project, sometimes significantly changing the implementation's direction. Moreover, these requirements are typically complex, and the entire process spans at least several months.
So by definition, we’ve got a need for across-time thinking — a distributed thinking process that spans multiple discrete sessions, where each builds upon previous insights, leading to progressive refinement of understanding.
To summarize, at a high level, the challenges that across-time thinking can address are “complex” problem solving, “complex” decision making, and “complex” learning.
At this point, I hope you understand the difference between one-time thinking and across-time thinking, and I trust you're beginning to see the value of developing the latter as a useful skill. A natural question follows…
What is required to make across-time thinking happen?
✍️ Writing
A habit of writing is the first essential step toward enhancing thinking skills.
Why?
Thoughts in our heads aren't as clearly formulated as in writing.
Our minds often hold thoughts in a fluid, implicit form — clear to us in our heads, almost as if we've already found the perfect way to express them. When it comes time for writing, the clarity slips away. The challenge lies in translating our inner thoughts into precise words, revealing that we might not have fully grasped the exact expression of what we intended. Writing forces us to make our thoughts explicit, often in ways we hadn’t anticipated.
There's even a saying that goes:
I completely agree with that.
The second benefit of writing, especially crucial for across-time thinking, is…
Writing transforms abstract thoughts into tangible form — whether as handwritten text on paper or characters in a digital file. By capturing your ideas this way, you create a permanent reference point that you can not only revisit anytime but also build upon, allowing your thoughts to evolve and grow over time.
Writing is the very first step — now comes the essence: the process.
🏛️ Across-Time Thinking Process
The whole process is straightforward and consists of four repeatable steps.
Collect. Whether intentional or spontaneous - it's all about capturing ideas or thoughts in tangible form. Throughout the day, you might collect diverse notes—insights on building startup teams, an interesting cooking recipe, or ideas for a new workout routine — all initially stored in a working area (such as Daily Notes).
Organize. This step involves systematically placing information where it belongs within a knowledge structure. The goal is to thoughtfully relocate notes from the working area into their relevant categories (Startups, Cooking, Physical Health, etc.). Regular organization is essential, as notes can quickly accumulate and become overwhelming. I use my Weekly Review process to ensure this organizing happens consistently, preventing information buildup and maintaining the system's usefulness.
Refine. This step typically occurs when there's a need for deeper exploration of a specific topic. The refinement process begins with reviewing previously organized notes, identifying patterns, and establishing relationships between ideas. From there, I might create sub-categories, define the broader knowledge structure, and polish individual components. During this phase, it's also beneficial to prune outdated or redundant information.
Move Forward. During refinement, gaps in knowledge naturally become apparent. This is when you identify missing pieces, formulate new questions, and plan your next steps. The clarity with which you can see what's missing varies by project, and sometimes this step might be optional. These newly identified knowledge needs typically become the focus of intentional data collection in the next cycle, beginning the process anew.
A good example of this process in a simplified way is presented in my writing on Life Guidelines (previous post on Life Guidelines).
The process must exist somewhere - a few words about tools.
🍱 Knowledge Base as an Across-Time Thinking Tool
In the end, what we need is a system that enables writing notes and connecting them to each other. This is a key requirement that allows one to perform across-time thinking with most tools. To me, this constitutes a (Personal) Knowledge Base, which can be implemented in virtually any platform. Here are examples of tools with their applications in my life:
Obsidian - serves as my main personal knowledge base (read more here);
Notion - functions as my collaborative knowledge base; two main examples are a relationship knowledge base with my partner and a Ph.D.-oriented knowledge base with ongoing projects, statuses, and similar information;
Google Slides - in my professional career, serves as a collaborative tool for organizing implementation details; while not flawless, it has enabled me to design a wide range of analytical solutions effectively;
Miro - the most notable example was my exploration of visual taste. I collected images from Instagram, transferred them to Miro, and organized them into similar categories. Over several weeks, I continuously added new images until I gained a clear understanding of my visual preferences;
Physical Notepad - though I use this less frequently for across-time thinking, it proved invaluable for the purpose of writing this post. The freedom of physical writing is sometimes irreplaceable.
As this diverse toolkit demonstrates, the specific platform is secondary to the process itself. While certain tools may offer advantages for particular contexts, the essential capability is simply being able to create, connect, and revisit notes over time. With this fundamental functionality in place, across-time thinking becomes possible, enhancing your problem-solving abilities, decision-making processes, and learning capacity.
💭 Final Reflection
As I've developed the idea of Across-Time Thinking, an interesting question has emerged - Does Across-Time Thinking naturally lead me to creating Personal Knowledge Bases, or does maintaining such systems inherently cultivate thinking across time?
Currently, the relationship appears symbiotic, with each practice strengthening the other. This relationship becomes even more intriguing when we consider that Across-Time Thinking seems to be a relatively uncommon way of processing information, despite its potential significant impact on how we learn and retain knowledge.
I hope the concepts shared here offer practical approaches to transform your note-taking, knowledge management, and ultimately, your thinking process itself.
As with any evolving framework, my understanding of these systems continues to develop with each conversation and iteration. Your insights, whether shared in comments or direct messages, may well shape the next evolution of these ideas.
How has your experience with knowledge systems influenced your thinking across time?
Thank you, M. and O., for discussing thinking patterns and overthinking.
I couldn’t find an existing categorization; thus, for the purpose of this post, I defined those two terms: One-Time Thinking and Across-Time Thinking. If anyone knows the existing categorization, please let me know.
From Perplexity: The phrase “Writing is thinking” is attributed to several individuals, but it is most famously associated with David McCullough, who added, “To write well is to think clearly. That's why it's so hard.” However, similar sentiments have been expressed by others, such as William Zinsser, who said, “Writing is thinking on paper.” The concept is also explored in the work of Verlyn Klinkenborg and Toril Moi, who emphasize the importance of sentences in clarifying thought. Additionally, John Warner and Steven Sinofsky have discussed the idea that writing is both the expression and exploration of thought.