How Do You Manage the Information In Your Life? 366
An anonymous reader writes "How do you manage the multitude of information sources in your lives? How do you keep track of the electronics or programming projects you're working on, or the collection of photos you took from your last holiday, or the notes and reading you're doing to learn a new language? Do you have a personal wiki, a blog, or maybe a series of tablet based notes, or voice recordings? Or is it pen and paper, and a blank book for each different hobby? I'm a student, and like most of you, have a few different interests to keep track of (as well as work). But I realise I also have a little OCD, and struggle a bit to keep on top of information (whether hobbies or personal life) in a way that I feel I have complete control over. So how do you all do it?"
Privacy (Score:1, Funny)
this is a redundant story (Score:4, Funny)
Obviously real men post all of their life information onto the web and let the others back it up and then use Google to look up what the heck happened to them in their lives.
It's mostly a sad picture.
I've been using Filemaker for the past 15 years (Score:4, Funny)
For example, when I started surfing the net in 1996, I set up a Filemaker database for all the interesting web sites I might want to come back to that includes the URL and a text description of the database. Over the years I have about 7,000 entries in the database. What is interesting is to go back and see what sorts of sites I was visiting say in 1998.
Whenever I see an interesting article with information that I may want to access again, I just copy all the text into another database along with the URL of the information. That database now has about 40,000 entries since I started keeping it in 1999.
I have another database that I started keeping in 1992 with all the phone calls that I make and receive and another database. That was very useful to me when I was a project manager and had to keep track of about twenty subcontractors and my agreements with them on what deliverables I would get from them and when they were due.
I have another database that I just call text where I edit text files for emails I send, or slashdot posts like this one before I post them. That one has about 30,000 entries so far.
I even have a database that I keep of slashdot stories that I have submitted and which ones have been accepted. Periodically I do a dump of that database to my web site [hughpickens.com].
I like to write non-fiction, and if I'm working on an article, then I have a web site set up where I can use a personal Wikipedia to keep track of references and footnotes like this one I have been working on for a while of Stanley Ann Dunham, the mother of President Obama, who grew up in my hometown of Ponca City [researchandideas.com] or this one on the Pioneer Woman Models [researchandideas.com] that I recently had accepted for publication in Oklahoma Magazine.
I don't recommend this methodology for everyone, but it works for me.
Re: How do you manage the information in your life (Score:4, Funny)
Anyone knows where I can get memtest for my brain?
Re:Honestly? (Score:5, Funny)
Virtual sticky notes? That's not nearly robust enough. What if the virtual adhesive fails, and you lose your notes? I use a nail gun to attach wood carvings of my notes to my monitor. Far more secure.
Re:txt file (Score:3, Funny)
Me too. Pictures were hard at first, but I got good at ASCII art.
Re:OrgMode (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Folders (Score:2, Funny)
Reduce the categories to an orthogonal basis set and reorganize everything!