💨 Margin: Breathing Room for Your Brain

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The Big Idea: You Need Margin in Your PKM System

We all have our limits.

When we get close to those limits, our systems overload and things break down.

The thing that keeps the train on the tracks?

Margin.

The Importance of Margin

Dr. Richard Swenson defines margin as the space between your limit and your load.

Margin is the space between your limit and your load.

The closer the load gets to the limit, the less margin we have (and the more quickly things go off the rails).

You feel it when you get near your limit in a particular area.

• Get near your financial limit, and you go into debt
• Get near your time limit, and you feel stress from “time pressure”
• Get near your emotional limit, and you end up snapping at someone for something small
• Get near your physical limit, and you end up getting sick or dealing with health issues

The problem? Margin isn’t the default.

“Overload just happens. Margin, in contrast, requires great effort.” – Dr. Richard Swenson

In a culture that’s convinced that progress = more, we must fight for margin.

There are lots of ways you can be overloaded, including:

• Commitment overload
• Decision overload
• Technology overload
• Information overload
• Expectation overload

BTW, if you are a business owner or performance-driven individual, you are especially susceptible to falling into the “MORE!” trap.

This was highlighted for me last week when I led a 2-day workshop with Shawn Blanc to help business owners focus on what’s most important. Almost everyone there was feeling the effects of a lack of margin (myself included!) because progress never happens fast enough (a topic I’ve covered in the newsletter previously).

The bottom line is that we are really bad at knowing where our limits are. And when we get too close to them, we get burned.

Two Ways to Get More Margin

There are only two ways to increase margin:

1. Increase your limit
2. Decrease your load

For example, you could increase time margin by saying “no” and decreasing your commitments (which would decrease your load). You could also start time-blocking your day the night before, which would allow you to get more done (increase your limit).

But the greatest gains come from doing both.

Let me give you a PKM-related example 😉

Personally, I believe information overload is one of the biggest problems creative thinkers face (it zaps our creative margin). But a lot of creators I know feel constant stress when figuring out what the next “thing” (podcast, YouTube video, etc.) is going to be.

So what do they do? They consume more information.

They feel like they need to “find” something to inspire them. But I’ve found that if you have creative margin, you can make more of the notes and ideas you’ve already collected.

When you have more creative margin to think about what you’ve already read, watched, and listened to, you find inspiration more easily (and never run out of ideas).

So, to make more creative margin, you can do 2 things:

• Make more time for deep work & thinking time
• Decrease the number of things that appear in your inboxes

So if that’s you, here’s what I want you to do…

Find one newsletter in your email inbox that you aren’t excited to open every week and unsubscribe.

(Even if it’s mine! 😉 My goal with Practical PKM is to help you make more out of the information that flows into and out of your PKM system. But if that’s not happening for you for whatever reason, I don’t want to contribute to your sense of information overload. No hard feelings 🙂)

Just search for the “unsubscribe” in your email inbox and you’ll get a list of all the things you’ve subscribed to. Pick one and click the unsubscribe link.

Congratulations! 🎉 With that simple action, you’ve taken the first step toward decreasing your load (and restoring margin) in at least one area of your life.

(Bonus points if you also schedule a thinking time block on your calendar this week. That will help increase the limit and help you build some creative momentum.)

Margin is NOT a Luxury

Margin is not a nice-to-have for the elite few. It’s something every single one of us needs.

For years, I underestimated the importance of margin — and I paid a price for it. And again recently, I realize it’s something I need to prioritize yet again.

Unfortunately, you can’t set-it-and-forget-it when it comes to margin. It’s a constant struggle, but it starts with simply identifying where it’s currently missing.

Are there any areas where you lack margin? What area of your life could benefit from a bit more breathing room?

Don’t wait until it’s too late! Take a moment and identify the things you can do today to increase your limit or decrease your load (or both).

Margin is worth fighting for.

😎 Something Cool: A System for Writing by Bob Doto​

I don’t normally pick a book here, but Bob Doto’s new book came out last week and is a great read that I believe will appeal to just about any PKM nerd. I’m over halfway through it, and I’m really enjoying it. I’ve had several “a-ha” moments so far, and I am really looking forward to interviewing him for the Focused podcast soon 😉 One of my big takeaways so far has been creating new notes both “in light of” and “in spite of” other notes that you’ve collected. While I don’t think I’ll copy Bob’s system verbatim, it’s got me thinking about how I structure notes in my Obsidian vault.

If you’re at all interested in the concept of zettelkasten, this is the most practical book I’ve read on the subject so far.

😎 Something Else Cool: Nautomate​

I was at Macstock last weekend (shoutout to newsletter subscribers Hugo & Eric, who I got to hang out with a little bit in person), and fellow Wisconsinite Jill McKinley gave a great talk about Notion. While you will have to pry Obsidian from my cold, dead hands, I know that it’s not the right app for everyone and I actually use Notion myself for collaborative projects.

But one of Notion’s shortfalls (just like Obsidian) is a lack of Shortcuts support. I’ve solved this by using the excellent Actions for Obsidian which adds additional Shortcuts hooks, but Jill taught me that there is something similar for Notion called Nautomate on the iOS App Store!

If you use Notion and wish you could do more with it in terms of automation, you’ll want to check this out.

📚 Book Notes: Margin by Dr. Richard Swenson

I mentioned Dr. Richard Swenson earlier as he’s kind of the expert when it comes to the topic of margin, and his book is (in my opinion) the definitive work on the subject. This was a very eye-opening book for me the first time I read it, and it helped me realize how important margin really is. While it’s not the most entertaining read, I do believe this book deserves a spot on just about every bookshelf.

My mind map book notes from Margin by Dr. Richard Swenson.

If you want to download my mind map notes for this book, click here.

— Mike

P.S. Done-for-you Pro vault update: I’ve still got some writing to do for the accompanying course materials to go with all of the workflows, but I’ve also decided to include a library of my personal book notes. I’ve got 50 books added so far (each with a mind map, Markdown-based outline, 3-sentence summary, and appropriate metadata), but I want to bring that total to at least 100 books. Here’s a screenshot of the current Book Ratings note:

A sneak peek at the library of book notes in LifeHQ.

This particular note is a Dataview query that shows the cover images and sorts all of the book ratings in descending order. And of course, all of the plugins and queries will be pre-configured. I’m hoping to have this available for sale soon, and I’ll be sharing a lot more about this soon. If this sounds like something you’re interested in, click here to join the waitlist and you’ll be the first to know when it’s ready 🙂