This repository was created for the framework to be tried and to collect feedbacks to improve the model, in order for me to create a whole world around it (website, ressources, articles, more methods, etc). I want to offer the best methodology for everyone to leverage their curiosity, knowledge and work. And also to present PKM possibilities to the students I teach. Hi stud.
You are very welcome to send me your thoughts about it and your experience with it ❤️
A philosophy of everyday life infused in a structure for Obsidian, to support curiosity, thinking, projects, relationships and introspection.
- 🤔 What is this?
- 🫵 Is it for you?
- 🌱 Intention
- 🧑🔧 Installation
- 👩💻 Usage (standard)
- 🛣️ Roadmap
- 😊 Contributors
The SAPIENS framework a simple model of a normal human every-day life — especially occidental one, since mine looks like that—, a structure for Personal Life Management (The tryptic : Information + Experience + Action)
The model is a virtualisation of the main areas of mundane life that aims to help:
- Interpret events and reflect on ourselves thanks to the shape of the framework
- Diffract all the inputs thrown at us into the various areas of the framework structure
- Produce new ideas or links and process thoughts and emotions
- Create outputs and maintain a knowledge around what counts for us
"S.A.P.I.E.N.S" stands for:
- Self-care
- Activities
- Provisioning
- Involvement
- Emergence
- Nexus
- Standards
➡️ This underlying structure and the whole approach's intent is what I call the Foundation
➡️ Each letter of SAPIENS represents a Space in the Foundation, each Space is an area of life and will have personal Dimensions and Embodiments
➡️ Everything is Indexed with an agnostic numbering system.
👉 To understand more about what all that mean, how the framework works and all the philosophy behind it, jump to the section 👩💻 Usage (standard)
👉 To understand more about my intention and the aims of the framework, read the section 🌱 Intention below.
- Are you starting in PKM?
- Do you want to discover new ways of organizing?
- Do you look for an Obsidian boiler plate?
- Zettelkasten does not feel enough?
- You like the idea ofPARA by Tiago Forte but strangely you can't wrap your mind around it?
- ACCESS by Nick Milo is efficient, but you wonder about similar, though different, systems?
Then there is a chance you might like SAPIENS! 🥰
My intention with this construct, is to help people self-reflect on what their life is made of, what are the different spaces and dimensions they can invest themselves into.
It can be impressive at first, but in the use I wanted it to be very simple, with an initial top-down structure that gives a lot of liberty inside it, that I then invite you to customise and make yours, in your own way.
👉 I don't want it to be an overwhelming structure, but a fluid one. If it feels like so, do not hesitate to give me some feedbacks!
I want the SAPIENS Framework to be a global file/information taxonomy and philosophy to spark and support your curiosity, your thinking, your projects and responsibilities, and your introspections.
👉 It looks in a lot of ways to ACCESS from Nick Milo and PARA from Tiago. During my PKM journey I've built a personal system to meet my need, and it converged toward what I will later discover as the ACCESS framework.
Obviously, with so much quality in these frameworks (and people), I was deeply inspired, but I tried to go beyond them with some help from system theory, Wilber's approach and my own views on life (more about that in the 👩💻 Usage (standard) section).
There is room for improvement, check roadmap an the end 👇
- (to get updates, ⭐ Star this repository)
- Code -> Download ZIP -> Unzip
- Open Obsidian
- "Open Folder as Vault"
- Chose the unzipped folder "SAPIENS-Framework"
- Read the explanation below
- Start exploring from the • Home • page
👉 If you are familiar with github, instead of the first step you can fork this repository and git clone the fork to have a versioned vault. This is what I do, it is extremely useful for backups.
👉 This repository is like the LYT-Kit from Nick Milo, it is a proposition, based on personal experience and reflection, so you can nurture your own reflection about your current system, or just use it as a boiler-plate/template for your new system.
👉 Play around, explore, and don't hesitate a second to send me DM to talk about it or anything else, I'll be glad to chit-chat (twitter link at the bottom)
There are three main particularities to this system : the Foundation —which is the structure of the framework and its underlying particularities—, the SAPIENS taxonomy, and the Indexing system — supported by a dewey-like numbering.
In the Foundation, a folder or note (except for extras) can be of three types:
- Space
- Dimension (of a space) and sub-dimension
- Embodiment (of a space or dimension)
Each of this type is what I am going to call a "Place".
➡️ A Space in an empty area, a possibility, it's made to be yours and filled by you.
The 7 current spaces reflect (see below for more) the big areas of the actions of our everyday life, from acquisition to production, with consideration to structuring actions like being involved in relationships, cultivating habits standards, and taking care of ourselves.
Each Space has a particular aim, and a unique functioning!
You won't spend as much time is the 100s than in the 700s, your notes inside them won't have the same periodicity (eg. daily notes in jour journal or a note about somebody), or even the same lifespan (eg. projects notes vs knowledge notes).
➡️ A Dimension is a way of moving in a Space.
It's completely up to you to know what dimensions there will be in the different spaces; they will be sub folders to organize your notes/diffract information according to your needs.
All Dimensions of a Space follow a same intention and aim (support understanding of the world, help you introspect, etc) but will have its own set of rules concerning periodicity, nature, subjects, lifespan, etc.
It gives granularity to the big areas of your life, a granularity you completely chose. The important is always to be intentional and aware of the guiding rules of you actions.
In this repository you will find some examples of dimensions to inspire you and get you started.
➡️ An Embodiment is the manifestation of a construct (Spaces or Dimensions) in our life, a place of active thinking and work.
An Embodiment can be a note or a folder (collection of notes) at any level (Space, Dimension, Sub-Dimension).
An embodiment is a fluid object, made to incarnate a particular intention and objective, use it at will! You can even have Dimensions or Sub-Dimensions as embodiments, like what I did with projects in Activities. At the same time a "Sub-Dimension" and an embodiment of the dimension.
These are guidelines and intents, now use them and break them as you wish!
The current Spaces are inspired from:
- Nick Milo's ACCESS and Tiago Forte's PARA
- Wilber's quadrants
- System Theory (input -> process -> output)
- My view on Personal Life Management (PLM = Information + Experience + Action)
Each Space descend from a particularity of personal life.
Their order follow a logical evolution. Let's see why.
In Wilber's matrix in his integral approach, there are 4 quadrants :
- Individual Subjective : individual experiences of reality, emotions, intentions and mindsets, representations
- Individual Objective : individual skills and actions, personal structures
- Collective Objective : collective events and behaviours, social organisation
- Collective Subjective : collective emotions and values, culture and group moral
This is our the starting point.
Here it goes:
- • Pocket Space •
- Space guidelines
- Similar to Extras from ACCESS by Nick
- Excluded files (in settings)
- Contains vault stuff like attachements and templates
- Place for archived stuff we don't want to see in graph and file search
- Dimensions could be:
- Archives
- Templates
- Attachements
- PDFs
- Space guidelines
- 100 Self-care
- Theory/Intent
- Wilber: supporting and representing the first quadrant: Individual Subjective
- System theory: "Process" and "Feedback" oriented area in the system lifecycle
- PLM: Experience oriented
- Space guidelines
- Focus on self reflection and personal experience
- All stuff concerning YOU and your growth, your spirituality
- It can support:
- Self awareness
- Experience of the world
- Emotion processing
- Intentions and north stars
- Reminders about life
- Meditation journaling
- Gratitude
- Dimensions could be:
- Journal
- Feedbacks
- Moodtracker
- Theory/Intent
- 200 Activities
- Theory/Intent
- Wilber: supporting and representing the second quadrant: Individual Objective
- System theory: "Output" oriented area in the system lifecycle
- PLM: Action oriented
- Space guidelines
- Similar to Spaces from ACCESS by Nick and to Areas+Projects from PARA by Tiago
- Everything directly helping you in your day-to-day actions
- Maintain areas of responsabilities (work, health, finance, citizenship, etc) and hats (coder, writer, artist, celebrity, parent, etc)
- Can be project oriented with a the goal of outputs and deliverability
- It can support:
- Life roles and Responsibilities
- Actions taken or Projects
- Application of skills
- Notes to directly support our actions
- Dimensions could be:
- Responsibilities and hats
- Projects
- Theory/Intent
- 300 Provisionning
- Theory/Intent
- Wilber: supports and represents the third quadrant: Collective Objective
- System theory: "Input" oriented area in the system lifecycle
- PLM: Information oriented
- Space guidelines
- Similar to the Ressources folder of PARA and Sources from ACCESS
- All you need to store from the outside word
- It can support:
- Your readings
- Note Taking
- Collecting quotes and the words of others
- Collection of articles and books your read
- Readwise automatic imports
- Ressources
- School Notes
- Dimensions could be:
- Readwise
- Books/Articles/Movies/Quotes
- Knowledge taxonomy: Philosophy/Science/Spirituality
- Theory/Intent
- 400 Involvement
- Theory/Intent
- Wilber: Supports and represents the fourth quadrant: Collective Subjective
- System theory: "Input" oriented area in the system lifecycle
- PLM: Information oriented
- Space guidelines
- The place to enhance your relationships
- Leverage storage to never forget important details about people around you
- Create a note per person and fill it over time
- It can support:
- Community Nurturing
- Social memories collection
- Dimensions could be:
- Humans
- Organisations
- Relationships to deepen
- Built communities
- Theory/Intent
- 500 Emergence
- Theory/Intent
- Supports the 4 previous quadrants
- Wonderful mix of input/process/outputs oriented area in the system lifecycle
- PLM: Information oriented, ready for Actionability
- Space guidelines
- The place for you atomic/zettel/evergreen notes and similar to Cards from ACCESS
- Note making in your own words/understanding of things
- Concept oriented and laser focus
- Long term notes from ideas/inputs/thoughts
- Very high linkable capacity
- It can support:
- Idea emergence
- Information from the world (in our own words of course)
- Information about people
- Concepts and tiny frameworks
- Note Making over Note Taking
- Dimensions could be:
- —none—
- Status oriented : In nurturing and Advanced
- Theory/Intent
- 600 Nexus
- Theory/Intent
- Wilber: Supports linking between every Space
- System theory: It's a "process" oriented area in the system theory
- PLM: Information oriented
- Space guidelines
- Similar to Atlas from ACCESS
- A place to go regularly to nurture linking
- Linking concepts as well as everything from your life
- It can support:
- Linking your thinking
- Indexing notes
- Navigation by links
- Dimensions can be:
- MOCs
- Indexes (if you want to have them in one place)
- Logs
- Summaries and other colliding notes
- Theory/Intent
- 700 Standards
- Theory/Intent
- Wilber: Supports the learning from actions (one of my favorites tbh)
- System theory: "Process" very close to "outputs" in the system theory, then totally "Feedback" oriented area
- PLM: Action and Information oriented
- Space guidelines
- It is inspired from Lean Standards, it is your personal frameworks for life
- A note as a standard for recurring "gesture", to prevent errors
- Clear self-made guidelines allowing for better efficiency
- Written guidelines on a matter that can be shared, to improve community as a whole from your personal experience
- It can support:
- Self-reflexion and introspection
- Feedback Loops
- Daily efficiency
- Remembering how to do something for a future action
- Dimensions can be:
- The same as Activities
- Nature of gesture supported: tech/social/art
- Theory/Intent
👉 You can learn more about each Space and Dimension in the examples of index notes I've created in the vault, where their nature of the content and aims are described.
The method of Indexing simply involves creating one note per folder of a Place (Space/Dimension/Embodiment), whose name is the same as the folder. Moreover, each Place's index has its own unique number according to the location it has in the Foundation (see below).
There are some advantages to that:
- Having a nice obsidian graph ❤️
- Navigation between Places by links
- Easy referencing of a place in your Foundation (from inside or outside your vault)
- Facilitated file search/moving with the Quick Switcher : firstly typing the number will filter the whole vault on no other thing than the "Place" wanted (including Archives)
It can feel a bit annoying to create an index for each Place, but with templates it is made very easy, and the more you use the framework, the less you have to do it, as all Spaces and Dimensions are already in place —hopefully, these will move and change along your life, but you see what I mean.
The numbering is inspired by:
- The Dewey system
- Johnny Decimal
The indexing and ordering of the Foundation is helped by the following numbering system:
- 000 Space
- 010 . Dimension
- 011 : Sub-Dimension
- Just another degree of precision for a dimension, can be useful to multiply our taxonomy and gain granularity
- XXX • Embodiment
- • folder/file •
- Just notes and folders you want to stand out for whatever reason, without being its own place or embodiment
- I personally use it for miscellaneous files and support notes
- No numbers
- Just notes and folders of a place
What I like about it, is that it is an incentive to avoid too much folder nesting by limiting the numbers to three levels. It allows nesting, but your structure will look better and work nicer if you don't go much deeper than a sub-dimension, it's guidelines by design.
The index notes are a place of information and work like any other. They should help you jump right into the Place your are entering. They should inform you about what the Place is about — the why — and what it contains.
Index can be used to:
- link people to a project
- store meta data (deadlines, start date, themes and tags)
- store todo's
- remind yourself your intentions, the importance of the Place you created
The Indexing is not mandatory for SAPIENS/The Foundation to work, nor is the numbering system to the Indexing, but they help making indexes, retrieving data, and referencing vault's place in other systems (calendars app, other note taking apps, tasks lists, post-its, emails, etc).
But remember, things move in a vault. So don't think too much about having the perfect system, the perfect cozy place for a note. Put it where it feels good and not absurd, there is rarely only ONE good place for a note.
- Create more templates
- Enhance onboarding
- Create a better walkthrough than a big README file
- Is the whole thing to complex?
- Improve explanation about indexing
- Enhance english
- Reinforce the narrative and storytelling around the framework
- Detail PLM method with my Venn diagram of reality (what is he talking about 🤔)
- Add informations about recommended methods to use inside the framework (gtd, zettel, etc)
- Add more examples across the repository
- Add synonyms to my neologisms and taxonomy to improve understanding
- Propose a tag system
- Add nice shortcuts
- Implement a deeper use of MOCs
- Add cool plugins 😎 to support the ideology
- Find feedbacks to enhance the framework
- Quentin Maillard, find me here 👉 https://twitter.com/KentinMaiar
Special thanks to the inspiring thinkers and makers who nurtured my reflection, and helped me all along my PKM journey:
- Nick Milo
- Bianca Pereira
- Tiago Forte
- Eliott Meunier
- Nemo Fazakerley
- Vicky Zhao — BEEAMP