This confusion of concepts can lead to disaster, and I’ll tell you why.
People generally confuse hierarchy with structure in their PKM systems.
We’re right now into a “movement” to kill hierarchical systems.
Everything has to be flat.
If you create a folder, you’re almost a murderer.
Hierarchy Is Not Bad
First off, hierarchy is not bad in itself.
Hierarchy tends to isolate ideas because you create a tree full of non-connected branches.
Every time you create a new branch, ideas tend to separate one from each other.
I’d like to say that separating things and preventing them from being connected is not murder. You’re not killing those elements.
There are some situations in which, in fact, it’s even better.
For example, when I think as a librarian, I just want to find an item quickly.
Hierarchy and non-connected items make that possible for me because everything’s always where I expect it to be.
I don’t waste a millisecond finding that info.
Structure Is Not Hierarchy
When you just think flat, flat, and flat, you start entering a “dark place”.
This “all-flat” tendency usually ends up in a mess of “flat ideas” where people get lost, no matter how many connections and links they’ve created between them.
Their PKM turns out to be a mess of links, everything at the same level, without knowing how to draw any conclusion. They start getting lost.
That’s why I defend structure, something perfectly compatible with a flat system in which you don’t isolate any idea from the other, a system in which everything is at the same level, so nothing gets isolated.
Because structure doesn’t mean hierarchy at all.
An Example of Structure
Let’s take an example to understand why structure is needed in life.
Imagine a car.
A car is based on giving structure to flat things.
You can look at a wheel, an engine, a brake at the same level.
It’s by giving them structure how you build a car.
Is a wheel more essential than the engine? Aren’t they at the same level?
I’m pretty sure you didn’t fall in love with a brake, but you fell in love with a car just remembering all those great moments you lived in it (especially late at night…).
Structure leads you to success. Ideas “per se” don’t. They’re just “the beginning of something”.
Thinking and Understanding
You need 2 processes to grow by using your PKM:
- Thinking.
- Understanding.
Thinking is the power of brainstorming, connecting ideas easily, fast, as your physical brain does. Flat ideas work at that stage.
Understanding is building up something on top of those ideas. That’s structure (not hierarchy).
You cannot create something without structure.
An anarchic set of ideas on a table is meaningless.
You need to move them, order them, think sequentially to conclude something that makes sense.
Something logical that gives an explanation or leads you towards a conclusion to keep growing.
Why Structure Works
When you have to explain something to someone, you need an outline, a process to help the other understand what you mean.
Without structure, everything is meaningless, nonsense. Even for you.
If you don’t give structure to your knowledge, you cannot understand it.
It’s just a mess of (maybe) good ideas, but that’s all.
Structure doesn’t mean to categorize by topic. Structure doesn’t mean folders, not even tags.
You can keep a flat structure giving structure to it.
Takeaways
Structuring your knowledge is how you understand, learn, explain things to others, become a good communicator.
When you understand something, you explain it simply because it’s common sense for you. It’s just a logical and obvious process.
Sharing your thoughts within yourself and others is how you grow, evolve, and become the future self you’re aiming to.