DO YOU COLLECT PEARLS?
Are you are Pearl Diver? Do you Know Where to LOOK?
Do You Have Your Beach of Pearls?
You may look at this photo and think, yeah, so what? And I would tell you to look again.
Imagine a beach and the ocean beyond. And on the beach are a couple of Christmas tree balls. What can you see? What is behind those decorations? Is there something hiding there?
Admission: I’m a Pearl Diver.
I love to look for pearls.
When I discover a Pearl it is a wonderful moment. It is something to be savored and experienced. Pearls only come every so often. It is NOT that you found one. It is what you do with it once you’ve found it.
Where can you find Pearls? Almost anywhere. Look anywhere. Look everywhere. Listen to everything. A pearl could be in the wind or rain. It could be part of something that someone says to you. It could be something you read. Don’t forget IT. WRITE IT DOWN.
For example, I save many articles I encounter across a myriad of topics. Here is a sample of a directory of some of the topics I saved.
Look at these lists. Could you find a pearl here? Is there anything that catches your eye? Or mind? Is there anything that makes you want to explore further? What could be in each of these folders? Are you curious?
All of this is from only one small part of the directories that I keep. I update them every day. I create new folders often. Each subdirectory can be a field of sand. And on that sand will be the pearls.
Discoveries are waiting to be made.
My directories are a place where I get my pearls from. Ideas come from pearls. One pearl may be the genesis of another pearl. It is an endless cycle if you are aware and open to it.
When I write, I come up with ideas (more pearls). If I am not careful, I might lose those pearls.
As a software professional, one of the greatest risks is loss. Loss of folders and files. Loss of the contents of both. If our technology is not reliable and consistent this can be a disaster for writers and other people that create. Our technology is so fragile and quite frankly we should not trust those that create software the software we use. Software is an integral part of our lives. Would you use a pencil in which the point continually broke off. We have corporate and government sanctioned theft and many of the the perpetrators are limiting anything that might impose control over ongoing crimes (crimes = plagiarism).
Furthermore, anytime we put our precious pearls in the hands of any corporate entity (business) we run the risk of becoming a crime victim.
The choice is to do the job (software development) correctly or do it so the developers can make the most financial gain.
At the present time I am forced on migrating from a platform that has become inferior. The downside of doing this is losing potential pearls. Hopefully that will not be the case.
Do you keep directories that contain items awaiting discovery? The ability to discover pearls among the files you keep is a matter of organization. Organization is a matter for knowledge management.
Without robust and effective tools for knowledge management pearl diving becomes a formidable task. Unfortunately the meaning of knowledge management has been lost because the heyday for knowledge management has come and gone and worse yet it is believed that LLMs supplant knowledge management. The truth of the matter is data science based AI does not yield any kind of understanding and understanding is what is needed for knowledge management.
As individuals, for the time being we can pursue personal knowledge management (PKM).
Doing this enables a person to carry out KM for managing their own knowledge.
This requires an individual to be more creative in their approach to choice, use, and possible creation of tools used for PKM.
Until the market for PKM improves, this approach will have to sustain any PKM the we do.
Just why are Pearls so Important?
(or what distinguishes a pearl from a non-pearl?)
In my vernacular, a pearl, like a real pearl, will be valuable for a person.
It will be easier to understand the concept of a pearl if we might present an example. Consider for a moment that I am a writer (I am) and the pearl I am looking for is relevant to writing a new story. The basis of any new story is an idea. Therefore the pearl that I want to find is an idea for a story.
Pearls are discoveries. Pearls are “AHAS.” Pearls come from out of nowhere. You must be AWARE. You must stay alert. You never know when or where a pearl might come from.
I can make this question more specific by fleshing out what a writing pearl might look like.
I can actually use this article as an example.
Every once in a while I have an idea about something to write about. Some time ago I thought I should write about this idea of the role a pearl plays in my creative writing process
What might a pearl in this example? An article about pearls? Do other writers work with a concept like this in order to write? A potential pearl may be called many different things. From my conceptual viewpoint, a pearl is an embryonic idea. A place from where a story may evolve. The importance of recognizing embryos in the process of writing cannot be understated. Although the process may be different for different writers, if a person was to dissect their process for writing they may identify the starting point of anything they write. No embryos or seeds or whatever means that writing may not begin. There is a name for this, “writers block.” My own conceptualization of this process allows me great freedom to not get stuck. There are always more pearls.
There are many places where pearls can be found. This is where personal knowledge management enters the picture.
My purpose in this article was to tell you about the concept of pearls. I hope that you might find this idea useful in your process and introduce personal knowledge management into your process.
When I edit, I never know what new pearls will show up on the beach !!
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Closing Comments
I hope you enjoyed reading this article. I enjoyed writing it. If you did like it please leave a comment. If you can clap for it, please do so. Even better, please subscribe to this newsletter. I am now publishing on Vocal and Substack. I am in the process of moving all of my articles to these platforms. If you have friends, please pass this article on to them. Have a wonderful day, and thanks again for reading.
You can reach me at therenguy@gmail.com.