PKM, FAIL, on the sidelines

PEEK IN MY WEEK #34

It was a rich, full week and this newsletter doesn’t even cover a quarter of it. But good writing means cutting, so I’ll keep it short.

5. PKM Summit

I was waiting for the next presentation and noticed Martijn Aslander a few seats away, deep in something on his laptop. Clearly busy. Not someone you’d interrupt.

And yet, to my surprise, he waved me over.

“Want to test my system? You can ask it anything you want.”

Uhm. I apparently can’t ask normal questions when given the chance… 😂

Turns out Martijn asked a lot of people this at the Summit. But I was one of the few coaches there. And I went straight in. Deep questions. No warming up.

Later he wrote:

“The engineers froze. They looked at the system and could not think of a question. The coaches went straight for the jugular.”

Nice!

ThetaOS is the name of Martijn’s system. His entire life in a database. People, places, books, events, all connected to each other. I don’t understand half of how it works technically. But I understood what was happening. His own information, finally in one place, started telling its own story.

Remarkable to be part of.

It also made me aware of my own growth. PKM, or personal knowledge management, was complete gibberish to me a year ago. Started with Obsidian, picked up useful tips from Martijn’s book, and recently used Claude Code to finally create order out of the chaos. Everything in one place. Everything findable. My shit together. Who would have thought. I’ve gone full nerd. 😂

And then you see what Martijn has created and think: holy…! Where are we headed? As a coach and a non-techie, I find that exciting, scary and thrilling all at once.

4. AI and coaching

Speaking of which… at the NOBCO, the Dutch professional coaching association, keynote speaker Rebecca Rutschmann was very clear.

AI already hits over 85% of the behavioral markers for a professionally certified coach. Which is pretty shocking when you consider how many hours and supervision sessions a human needs to reach that level. That was late 2024. It’s now 2026.

She said it herself: I’m done saying AI won’t replace you.

But here’s what it can’t do.

Be present. Hold the silence. Catch the moment when someone says one thing while their body does something completely different. Growth happens when you’re challenged, not when someone always agrees with you. And AI always agrees with you.

That’s comfortable. But it’s not growth.

AI has no body. No shadow. No soul that co-coaches. It’s useful for information and structure. But the inner saboteur? It doesn’t care much about a screen. It responds to a living counterforce.

Exactly those qualities a human brings to a coaching conversation are what AI cannot produce. And that’s actually the right balance: AI as a tool, the human as the coach.

Her metaphor stuck with me: the map is not the territory. You can have the most beautiful map in the world. But you only know what a rock feels like when you touch it. And the storm always arrives earlier than predicted.

And at the PKM Summit we went one layer deeper. More on that in a moment.

3. FAIL

Two years of work on my new training including card deck. A client said recently: “Are you still working on that thing?”

Yes. With ups and downs. With breaks. With pushing through again. And everything in between.

Tuesday morning my phone rang: the proof copy was ready at the printer. And I couldn’t bring myself to go pick it up.

I had just told a friend who’s been writing a book and keeps putting off finishing it: the fear that it’s not good enough after all the time and energy you’ve put in is biggest right before the finish line. That’s the moment you least want to look.

And there I was. In exactly the same spot.

My partner gave me a kick in the right direction with exactly the right principle: FAIL. First Attempt In Learning. The fact that I needed someone else to tell me this… Come on, coach! Practice what you preach. I love pain! Let’s GO! 😂

You can’t develop anything without failed prototypes. I wanted to do everything perfectly in one go. Obviously: impossible. Even for me.

I picked it up anyway, “state shifting” my way through it, and brought it to Utrecht where I tested it with a few people. Thank you to those who were willing to be guinea pigs: Sabine Harnau, David Drake, PhD, Jefta Bade and a few others whose names I’ve either forgotten or who aren’t findable on LinkedIn.

2. Surprise!

I was going to be in Utrecht while my son played his championship match (the title was already secured, but still)… He’s mega into football and wants to go pro (which I still find a hilariously random joke from the universe, given that both his parents have absolutely nothing to do with football, but anyway: let’s just say he’s very intrinsically motivated).

It meant over three hours of travel for a one-hour game and a ten-minute ceremony. I hesitated for a moment, but then I remembered my ballet lessons as a little girl. I loved it, was good at it, and at some point got the chance to train at a higher level in Arnhem. My mother didn’t want to drive me there every week, and just like that, my ballet career came to an early end.

I always found that hard.

So I called him from the train, right after we’d left the station, so he couldn’t hear I was already on my way. He said: I really hate that you’re not here.

I was the first one standing on the sideline.

That look on his face. Priceless. 💞

And his team scored nine of the thirteen goals. Against zero. #proudmama (the other team wasn’t having their best season, but it was genuinely a bit rough for them).

1. What’s holding you back?

James Clear asked a great question in his newsletter this week.

Always work on the limiting factor.

“What is holding you back right now?”

I thought about the card deck I almost didn’t dare pick up. About the connections in Martijn’s system that only become real the moment you confirm them. About three hours on the train for ten minutes of celebration.

The limiting factor was never the time. Never the mistakes in the booklet. Never the distance. Never the thinking.

It was the question: do I dare to feel it and really go for it?

What’s holding you back?

The thread

Being present is not a passive choice.

It’s an active one.

Martijn’s system only works when you confirm the connections yourself. Tom suggests them. You confirm them. That moment is when the connection truly becomes yours.

Rebecca said it at the NOBCO: growth happens when you’re challenged. Not when you’re always agreed with. For that you need someone who is truly there.

And Marieke van Vliet – van der Graaff asked a question at the PKM Summit that landed.

“Who’s intuition are you training?”

She talked about cognitive surrender. What happens when you trust AI so much that you switch off your own thinking. On her slide was something that stopped me. When AI gave a wrong answer but delivered it with high confidence, people still followed it 15% more often than when they hadn’t consulted AI at all.

High trust in AI. Low need for your own thinking.

I see this in my coaching too. More and more people don’t trust themselves anymore. They look outside themselves. I think more and more people are putting that on AI instead of checking in with themselves first.

We are not machines. AI is a tool. But not the way.

I’m the last person to deny that I write this newsletter with the help of AI. But the insights are mine. Because energy? You feel it or you don’t.

Intuition is like a muscle. Stop using it, and it weakens.

Stay open for what’s in front of you. 🙏 And keep a beginner’s mind.

May the Life Force be with you. ⚡️

Love, Syl

PPS. Is there something holding you back? You know where to find me.