The 10 Best PKM Tools of 2024 💭

Feeling overwhelmed by information everywhere all the time all at once? You’re not alone. Perhaps a little dramatic, but lately the internet feels as though it’s threatening to drown our cognitive faculties.

Our desktops and browser tabs are becoming overwhelmed with ideas, articles, random sticky notes, bookmarks, reminders and spontaneous brain child combustions. It makes sense, then, that PKM (Personal Knowledge Management) tools seem to be coming out of left field.

The urge to organize and synthesize this chaos has never been stronger. PKM tools—once the domain of only productivity and tech enthusiasts—are now in relative high demand due to the growing cognitive burden of the information era being felt around the world.

Cognitive Load Theory considers how our brains process and learn information — it suggests that our working memory has a limited capacity. When our brain is overloaded, our ability to learn and retain information goes bye-byes and suddenly literally nothing makes sense and we’re staring at a wall wondering what year it is.

This theory suggests the consequences of the information era on our cognitive load as:

• Cognitive overload: A point of cognitive ‘shutdown’ leading to an inability to process pretty much anything at all.
• Attention span decline: Too many of us are finding it difficult to sit through a movie these days… ‘nuff said.
• Decision fatigue: Decision making becomes impaired as a result of the increased frequency and quantity of micro decisions made on a daily basis.
• Decreased creativity: Resulting from the allocating of more cognitive resources to manage excess data, hindering the ability to form creative or innovative connections between ideas.

A PKM tool is a somewhat recent idea. ‘Personal Knowledge Management’ is of course not, but in 2024 technologies have started to emerge that have a much clearer understanding of how, where and why we need to manage and organize masses of data—our bookmark folders just ain’t it anymore.

We’ve picked some of the best and most innovative PKMs of 2024, so you can Marie Kondo your internet.