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?"
Re: How do you manage the information in your life (Score:5, Insightful)
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Did you come to me because you have a brain?
Re: How do you manage the information in your life (Score:4, Funny)
Anyone knows where I can get memtest for my brain?
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I think it's on the GRUB menu somewhere, but I can't remember the key to access the menu when I boot up my mind in the morning.
easy... (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't
Remember to forget (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Remember to forget (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Remember to forget (Score:5, Insightful)
Sounds similar to one of my favorite sayings:
"The more you own, the more you are owned."
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Ha, reminds me of a corollary...
"Borrow a million bucks, and the bank owns you; borrow a few billion bucks, and you own the bank."
Used in reference to US foreign policy with China, for better for for worse :P
Re:Remember to forget (Score:4, Interesting)
Ian M. Banks in The Algebraist [wikipedia.org] describes a 'slow' species, the Dwellers, who live so long that their personal houses evolve into museums of antiquity. Some well kept sections housing historical records hard to find elsewhere. Other wings being decayed to the point of hazard, a serious problem when your house is floating in the air of a gas giant.
Like all fictional species, they may be more a comment on humanity and an important insight into us. How different would be we after enough time, enough diaries started and abandoned, and enough partial collections left unfinished?
Good thing we have trash cans. And archeologist's willing to dumpster dive those city dumps.
Re:Remember to forget (Score:5, Interesting)
Best of all, apart from massively less stress and time spent keeping on top of it all, actually letting it go has been cathartic. Going through hundreds of VHS tapes I kept 'just in case this was the last copy anywhere' turned into 'can I be arsed to stick this on a DVDR? No'. All those HDs on the shelf and CD/DVD backups that I never look at from one year to the next have been heaved out.
I remember reading once an interview with someone who'd lost everything in a fire. They said it was a disaster, they thought they'd never cope with the loss and then suddenly they felt the weight of years of worrying about losing all their crap, lifting off their shoulders. From then on they lived life lean and much happier.
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Stuff like pushing your kid on the swing or having a glass of wine with your wife after you've read the kids bedtime stories and tucked them in. So your OCD database of your comic book collection is out of date, and your DVDs aren't alphabetical. So what? If you choose to have a family you'll discover that stuff was just a waste of your life...
subjective opinion backed by...
Just ask your parents or your grandparents...
argumentum ad populum
There are other things to do with life than reproduce. I'm tired of the superiority complex so many people project after they've gone this route. This makes me wonder if what I'm actually hearing is delusion brought on by post-choice regrets. After all, it's a lot harder getting out of now unwanted familial-legal obligations than it is quitting a simple hobby. Talk about waste...
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etc. Their work may not be world-changing or Great Art, but it will be important to them.
Of course, alternatively, you can create one or a couple of kids and add to the next generation of billions upon billions of people.
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This also applies to simple things. I used to keep everything in a massive, strung-out online todo list. Toodledoo [toodledoo.com] was the last one, if anyone cares. But it quickly blossomed out to hundreds of entries, none of which were going to get done.
I do still keep a toodledo list for certain important things. But generally speaking, everything I intend to do in a day gets written down on a paper notebook in my pocket. One paper = one day. If something doesn't get done in a day, the following morning I'll sit d
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I am 55 - and have gone thru a divorce - yet I do not share your advice. Archives and things are only a burden if the later steal your time or are used against you.
Since 1980 I have a digital diary (originally on a CP/M system) and since 1994 I have archived all my emails. In 1999 I switched to digital fotos and also took fotos of all my important documents. Every year has its own folder to organize my data. My entire digital archive is about 200GB and exists on 3 disks - one off-site. Storage cost is trivi
txt file (Score:2)
It helps that I can type really fast.
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Same here. Organized text files. There is nothing more portable and easier to back up.
For example, on my file server I have a folder called Projects. Within it is a text file with potential ideas, as well as folders for each project I'm working on or have worked on, each of those containing their own text file. I use a good tabbed editor (notepad++ or kate) so I don't have to constantly re-open all the active documents on each reboot.
The only disadvantage I've found is that if you want a nice pretty interfa
Re:txt file (Score:5, Informative)
Org-Mode [orgmode.org] gives you pretty interface for plain text. All the features of your setup, with a good interface on top.
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Yes, org-mode is definetly the best solution for organizing information that I have found. It's extremely simple and flexible. It makes it possible for me to do almost everything in Emacs. I use vm for email, ledger for accounting, I write most of my documents in org-mode and export to pdf through latex.
Of course org-mode and the other text and emacs related solutions doesn't take care of all my information processing needs, but almost. For photos, videos and music I use the old fashioned descriptive file n
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Me too. Pictures were hard at first, but I got good at ASCII art.
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Store it all in various git repos.
Then make a project in git, which is a simple shell script that looks for your git repos, and if found, pulls from the "hub", and tests to see if there is new stuff that needs to be committed / pushed and if so alerts you. Of course, it updates itself each time it runs...
Start session, run clustersync. Do your thing. Run clustersync before you stop working, to make sure you committed everything you planned to.
Splitting git projects is a pain and making sense of gitweb co
Medium term memory (Score:3, Interesting)
Between long and short-term memory is intermediate-term memory. I let my brain manage it, unless it's something that I won't use frequently enough and might forget, in which case I toss it in a text file I call 'chaos' and surround it with keywords I can search for. I've been doing the 'chaos' thing for years now, kind of a catch-all database.
Whatever works for you (Score:2)
For me, it's PostIts. Different colors for different categories of things. I also have a composition notebook (from the back-to-school sale a few years back) in which I place PostIts with more durable information...and it's also where I keep all my various usernames and passwords. Change a password? Rip out the old PostIt, put in a new one.
Some PostIts go on my monitor, thinks I need to remember RIGHT NOW. I'll also put up working note phrases for projects, like IP addresses, port numbers, APIs, and im
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For passwords I use a combination of Dropbox and Keepass. With that I can access my passwords from any computer that I have internet access to, and you could keep it on a flash drive as well, you would just need to update your password database file manually.
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I use a single very large password, which gets concatenated to the site's domain and passed to a SHA-1 algorithm.
This way, I never have to worry about syncing stuff, I can recreate all passwords from memory with a sha1 filter.
I keep a few original passwords for some specific sites (eg. bank), which I can keep in memory, even though it's weak.
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I do pretty much the exact same thing. Google/Android Calendar keeps my upcoming appointments/events in order.
If I'm out and want to do something when I get home, I put a postit in my pocket. When I get home I remove and handle any notes in there.
Sometimes I'll e-mail myself if it's something I don't need to do asap once I'm home.
I'm also a fan of whiteboards. I have one at home and one at the office.
As far as hard drives go. I'm oldschool and have categorized partitions/directories as I'm sure many of us h
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Oh, there's also a wonderful Android app that lets you put postits on your home screens. They're great for todo/shopping lists and things of that sort.
May be Flamebait, but it's true. (Score:2, Insightful)
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Honestly? (Score:3, Informative)
Virtual sticky notes on my desktop, and pinned tabs in my Chrome window.
I'd basically forget my whole life if I lost these things.
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.
E-mail myself (Score:4, Informative)
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A Couple of Things (Score:2, Informative)
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You can adopt a few things at a time from GTD without revamping your life at once. At least that's what I've heard, I don't have enough tasks to need any org system.
Phone & Notes (Score:4, Insightful)
Like most people on /. I carry a phone that has a handy-dandy built-in notes app and a calendar.
I use those tools, and with the aid of categorizing things as (not)?urgent|important (thanks 7 habits!), I do a great job of staying on top of my life -- from learning to play the guitar to today's work deliverables.
Things that are *important* get stuck into my Notes for the day, and added to my to-do-list when I get to a computer. Urgent or time-sensitive things get calendared for a specific time with notes attached immediately.
Another huge thing I do is /routine/. If I water the lawn every morning at 7:00am, I don't ever wonder what I'm doing at that time of day: I'm watering the lawn. Same goes for checking my email -- I do that on a very set schedule so that I can focus on whatever else in the meantime.
I think it was in Memento where it was said that Habits and routine make life livable. Throw in some discipline and you should never forget to buy your girl flowers ever again :D
Post-Its (Score:2, Interesting)
On my monitor at work, or on the fridge at home.
Other than that I figure, if I don't remember it it probably wasn't that important..
OrgMode (Score:4, Insightful)
http://orgmode.org/ [orgmode.org]
It's very powerful once you get the concept.
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Two org-mode posts at the exact same minute :). The uses of org-mode are too numerous to mention in one post, but just to give a little more context... Org is essentially an outliner, event planner, calendar, PDF and HTML authoring system, multi-language code-authoring environment (babel), time tracker, shopping list maintainer, contact database, ...
All this and it's Free Software, too. The mailing list and community is one of the most responsive out there. I've heard many people say that learning emacs i
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And you can view these files on your purdy iP(hone|(ao)d)
http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/mobileorg/ [apple.com]
Re:OrgMode (Score:4, Funny)
Emacs org-mode (Score:4, Interesting)
Emacs org-mode (http://orgmode.org). Your life in plain text. Nothing else compares.
CVS or SVN (Score:2)
$ cvs co geo
$ cvs co foo2zjs
$ svn co gnome-manual-duplex
etc.
Photos: organize by year
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Right basic idea, but not CVS or SVN. Use a distributed version control system like git. Create subdirectories for everything. Put every file that's important to you in there. Make the directory tree the organizational structure. Move stuff around as you see fit if the structure isn't working for you.
That's how I've gotten every important bit of information I've ever collected in my life all in one place. And every copy I check out, on every computer I own, is yet another backup. I'd never trust a si
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There may be some trivial cases where doing a Dropbox sync would be easier, sure. As I don't trust maintenance, or even possession, of my important information to a third party, doing so just for a small improvement in ease of use isn't a good trade in my opinion.
As for more effective, the minute you have a merge conflict where you happened to modify the same file on more than one computer, any small advantage Dropbox has in the simple case is gone.
If someone doesn't have a programming background, and ther
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.
How do you manage the information in your life? (Score:2)
Find what's important (Score:5, Insightful)
I think you have to determine what is important to *you*. I've whittled down the books, photos and music, movies, notes, etc that are important to me first and foremost. It makes organizing, cataloging and backing up the information easier. I'm not suggesting if you have 2000 photos of your kid to get rid of them. But shurely, there's some information junk lying around that you don't need anymore. It might also mean reading books just lying around and deciding if they are keepers or just make some notes of what you read and then recycle (or better yet) donate the book to the library or a friend.
The fact is, if you think you have a little OCD, chances are your life is disorganized. I'm there somewhat too. But, in the last few weeks, I've done a lot of the above. I have to say, its made my life easier, less weight on my shoulders and I've been able to accomplish more. I don't have OCD, but I can tell you that this is certainly rewarding to accomplish.
I haven't found the best way to organize it yet. I'm struggling a bit with backups and debating wether keeping digital or "analog" (paper, print) copies of my information is the best.
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At my work we have gone through a lot of stuff related to 5S for organizing and making workplaces efficient. A lot of that applies to being at home too. The biggest part is having the discipline to keep "everything in it's place", to leave your desk empty every single night before going home. It's harder to do at home with kids and such but it can be done (I saw it on the internet!)
Redmine (Score:2)
I have an install of Redmine [redmine.org] that I use to keep track of all my personal projects and todo lists and such. It's great because it's a single place where I can put stuff I'm working on, future ideas, break larger projects into tasks etc. That's useful for putting down tasks that I'm not going to get to immediately, as well as future projects. I have a few ideas for Android apps that I won't have the time to work on anytime soon, but whenever I have an idea I can go mark it down so when I do decide to go wo
wall calendar & legal pad (Score:2)
Minimalist approach (Score:5, Interesting)
My first line of defense is that I try to keep things to a minimum. If I have more than 3 things going on, I will delay most of them and do a mediocre job on the others because I'm not focused.
However, to answer your question, the best strategy I've ever used was a single notebook to track everything. Every item gets a bullet and every day gets a new page. If something didn't get done, it gets rewritten on the page for the next day. That means everything is in one place and having to rewrite the items every day is annoying, so items I don't really care about will be dropped from the list. If necessary, the bullets can reference outside information like, "Implement request in John's email 'Need a favor' received on 10/24/2010."
If you decide to resurrect an old project, you can flip through the notebook to find the bullet items regarding that project to help get yourself back up to speed.
You don't, in the end (Score:5, Insightful)
Now, I'm sure this thread will get many suggestions how to improve your "information management", many might prove helpful in finding and refining you own ways - but ultimately, it all fails at some point; there's just too much of it all.
Learning to let things go will be crucial. I can't know what might work for you - maybe always listening (to the point of a habit), without exceptions or excuses, to that nagging voice telling you something is a waste of time? (say goodbye to those many certainly interesting things you won't ever finish reading) Maybe regular breaks (force yourself to them, an alarm clock on the other side of an apartment for example), thinking idly about the singular tasks at hand? Maybe separating stuff to work PC/area and thrash PC/area? Or maybe something completely different.
In the end, while technical solutions are helpful - your main effort will be at not circumventing them, not wasting any gains.
"Learning to let things go will be crucial. " (Score:2)
On topic: I have different machines for different tasks - if I can't keep up with what happens on them, so be it. As long as you can decide on what is really important, you'll be fine, even if you "miss" stuff.
Index cards (Score:2)
I carry a stack of index cards everywhere. Write down every single damn thing that I need to ever think about.
I get home, throw them all in a pile.
Either late that evening, or early in the morning, I go through and make a list on a fresh index card of the things I need to take care of that day. Things that relate to a certain topic, say, musical endeavors, get put into a stack of similar cards. When I can, I pin these to the wall in columns by topic. Things that would only re
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
Have you tried the "Not giving a fuck" method?
Fair, and we could probably all do with a little less stress on ourselves.
Really the main thing I think for the OP is just to make sure you're not trying to juggle remembering all the things you need to do.
For me, documenting what needed to be done freed my mind up from wondering frequently if I was remembering to do things. Saves you from that constant "Oh yeah, I was supposed to ______ today/tomorrow/yesterday" feeling.
That's really the main takeaway for me from GTD, not all the methods and co
So how do I do it? (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
tiddlywiki and freemind (Score:3, Informative)
Freemind for organising and planning things.
tiddlywiki for random useful information I've come across.
As to remembering. I don't, I have delegated that process to other people.
Oh right, I forgot. Kanban your life. (Score:3, Interesting)
Write the things you need to do down on postits. Put into a "todo" area on a door or something. Then take two[1] out, stick them into in-progress and do them[2].
Each one completed gets a sweetie.
[1] Limit the number, and do the important ones first. The more you have going on, the longer it takes and the less you actually get done.
[2] keep it real, and short. A week or two at most. Y'know, break things down into stuff that can actually be done.
Evernote and Remember the Milk (Score:2, Informative)
I use the Evernote web site, Mac application and iPhone app to capture information from the web, from images, from PDFs and assorted notes. The apps sync to the Evernote site and any image or PDF is OCRed so I can search on any text in them. I use multiple tags on each record so, combined with the ability to search any text contained in the item, I can easily locate anything in my data store. A day-to-day example is, I take a picture of any prescription label I get with my phone and send it to Evernote. The
Adding to the saying... (Score:4, Insightful)
For my situation as an information technologist I:
- am not OCD or driven in other "special" ways.
- pour everything I can into my job
- follow very formalized process at work. versioning, policies etc.
At home, I am the opposite. My excuse is there is nothing left after work. My music is scattered far and wide, I own the same CD twice, I have downloaded albums more than once, my finances are in disarray - I do pay bills in good faith, but I loose them. I dont track services on my car and it is frequently very overdue in road tax, maintenance etc.
I do use formalized process for coding at home (hobby stuff) but do so little these days. The one constant is insurance. I make sure that is up to par.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
I just remember it all. (Score:4, Insightful)
Except for the stuff I forget, which must not have mattered anyway or I would have remembered it. And if I really should have remembered it my wife reminds me in such a way as to make certain that I never forget it again.
Works for me.
Evernote (Score:5, Informative)
I use Evernote (http://www.evernote.com) for just about everything. It allows me to easily combine text (vast majority of my notes are plaintext, obviously) with images, files, voice notes, etc. It's a great tool that stores everything in the cloud and syncs to clients on Mac, PC, and most mobile platforms. I've been really happy with the solution.
For task management, I bounced back and forth between OmniFocus on the Mac and Outlook on the PC... haven't really found a solution I'm happy with. As a result, I pretty much use an old-school paper to-do list that gets regenerated daily in a Moleskine-style notebook.
The important stuff, I remember (Score:2)
OneNote (Score:2)
What is actually the problem? (Score:2)
For photographs, I throw out all but the best, and store them in my pictures folder, with a date and descriptive name.
For languages, I keep a small notebook that fits in my pocket and every time I hear a word that jumps out at me, I write it in the notebook. Eventually all of it has to go into the brain, so that is a temporary storage (for Ch
Simple life here (Score:2)
The number two is to have a solid back-up system including off site.
My photo's are so manifold that most are on a couple of TB drives, the most recent several 100GB also on the laptop.
The trick is a logic nesting of the folders, in this case first the name of the camera, then the year, next the month and possibly a subject.
When a specific subject is worth marking I append it to the number of the file, a quick CTRL+F in the f
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These numbers are in a ledger (dead tree) with the client, date and subject, all mails and documents have the number in their title.
The jobs are kept in a root folder with that same number.
Use the Cloud (Score:3, Informative)
I've found that I only use organization solutions which I can have access to at any time. For example, a todo list is of little use to me if it can only be found on a single desktop computer. Because of this, I've found that solutions which allow access via my smartphone work best for me. That being said, it sucks entering information in via a tiny touchscreen or keypad. The obvious compromise, it seems, is to use web-based services that can sync with smartphone apps; cloud computing in other words. There are a lot of services that offer this, but I've only found a few that fit my last criteria that the apps be functional during times with no or limited internet access. These are as follows:
Total cost is $10.00, not including the USB stick. And it seems to cover all the various forms of personal data.
-Grym
There's a pill for that... (Score:2)
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?
I have a prescription. Works like a charm, aside from some tenseness in the jaw and occasional vertigo.
hiveminder (Score:2)
I've got three words for you: Low Information Diet (Score:4, Interesting)
You are on the highway headed strait to Nervous Breakdown City if you think that keeping track of all those devices and methods you've mentioned is going to be possible throughout your life. I recommend you take a timeout and get into Zen Buddism or Stoicism. A very good example of the basic principles of those applied to modern life you can find here [fourhourworkweek.com], an article on low information diet by author Tim Ferriss.
I've been into computers and modern information technology since 24 years and have come back to reducing the material goods I own and the stuff I worry about to the amount that I had when I started studying. 99% of the people I meet in everyday life continously bite off more than they can chew, raking away upwards of 11 hours per day with studies, work, yoga, jogging, carousing with buddies every odd night, gym, mingling with dozens of art and media projects at a time, networking, family and tending to their S.O., etc. ... and you my friend sound a bit like one of the lot.
Mind you, I do keep notes of everyday things - in one single book that I carry around with me. All goes in there, aside from some notes I take on my blackberry and less than a handfull of textfiles on Google Apps and my PC when I haven't got the book on me. I spread my to-do lists that way too, which keeps the items on them below 20 at all times - a strategy I highly recommend to *anyone*, as long 2-do lists don't get done. I've had that blank spiralbind artscetch notebook for 6 years now and I expect it to fill up within the next two years or so. Then all get a new one. Makes maybe a dozen notebooks for my entire life, which actually is a reasonable amount if you ask me. They also serve as a sort of diary, which I've come to like.
Digital Life wise I use google apps for a few online notes and Git to version and sync my Workfiles, Music and Fotos across my MacMini and my Ubuntu Laptop. I do have a delicious account, but if I'm honest, I hardly revisit more than 5 Links of more than 200 any more than twice a year - and even then it's only out of curiosity about what was so important back then. I too have upwards of 60 software projekts that I started throughout the last decade and have never finished, most of which I archived away last year. I still have 10 or so lying around in my 'Work' folder and i've dragged around more webdomains than I will ever be able to handle ever since the first dot-com bubble. I expect to get two or three of my personal projects on the road within the next 2 years if I'm lucky, and by now I'm smart enough to know that they'll only gain critical mass if I stick with those from there on out. ... Or do you think the Kernel or the Blender 3D Toolkit would've come this far if Linus Torwalds or Ton Roosendahl would be switching projects every odd month and caring about every fart on their facebook network?
No Sir. There is a lot of productivity advice out there and a bucket load of Lifehacks you can use to trick your life and yourself into getting things done, but the first move is to reduce the things you want to handle to that handfull that you really care about to see them through even if things get rough or you lose your job or switch careers. If you don't do that, no amount of tooling, portable computers and scheduling strategies will be able to get you on track because you yourself are the bottleneck.
My 2 cents.
Don't trust MS search to find anything (Score:3, Insightful)
Sansa Mp3 player and large calendar on the wall (Score:2)
Wiki (Score:2)
A very simple, offline wiki is well-suited to recording all sorts of information.
Since all I need is text with tags and the occasional equation in LaTeX, I found that Tiddlywiki [tiddlywiki.com] works great. It's an amazing self contained wiki using only HTML and Javascript. The main idea is to be able to very quickly develop lists, outlines, etc. in a browser I have open anyway.
search (Score:2)
I remember using google desktop search once. It was awesome. However, in order to work it had to phone home, which is a deal breaker. Something that wil
How Do You Manage the Information In Your Life? (Score:2)
Q: How Do You Manage the Information In Your Life?
A: I tell other people on basis of impulse. Garbage in, but seldom garbage out.
Don't memorize APIs (Score:2)
Don't remember stuff you don't need to. Most of my technical memory is in books and websites I have bookmarked. Can't remember some obscure API in the javax namespace? Who cares? I have a book for that. Can't remember that particular syntax in PHP? Who cares? Google it.
But the stuff I can't look up online, like what's going on with my friends, who's dating who, etc. That info is the important info in my life, and it's the info I commit to wetware.
Simplicity (+backup) (Score:2)
I try to keep stuff simple and make it a natural part of my routine (that way its gets done). Plus I try and have a backup system, just in case.
- Gmail for notes to myself and digital emphemera
- delicious for bookmarks, internet links, recipes, articles (the feed of my links is backed up via email to my gmail)
- 2x hard drives for photos & music (don 't worry about movies, since I only watch them once). Flickr also for photos.
- Dropbox for all recent documents (the type of stuff you would find in PC's "
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If evernote goes down I'll just go open the app on my Mac and see everything stored there. It copies and syncs with the cloud, but all my data is stored locally too.
Tried a lot of stuff (Score:2)
I tried PIMs, Outliners, Wikis, HTML servers, etc, etc, etc. Dozens of things. I finally wrote a Python script that does what I need pretty well. Has a list of tasks ordered by date. One click date updating, an associated text box that I can cut and paste into, and a launch pad for computer operations related to the task. Functionally much like the Windows 3.1 Cardfile program, but more capable and doesn't need 16 bit OLE that hasn't worked in any OS since Windows 98 in order to launch operations.
No substitute. (Score:2)
You may get a lot of advice on different tools to use, but ultimately there's no substitute for actually being organized. That really great note-taking application or task list manager or photo manager might help you simplify some part of your process, but if you're not organized, an organizational tool won't make you organized.
But maybe your question is, how do I actually get organized? Well, there's no single way. It depends on what kind of information you're trying to keep track of and for what purpo
Ziploc bags for paper (Score:3, Interesting)
I juggle multiple projects, grants, articles in progress, conference presentations, you name it. For the ones that have any kind of paper attached to them (receipts, notes, annotated printouts, whatever) I put all the paper in a single large ziploc bag. At the very front goes a single sheet with the name of the project and the last date I changed the contents.
Throw all the ziplocs in a box. When you need to work on project x, rummage through the box and grab that ziploc & it's all there.. If the project generates too much paper for a single ziploc, then it's probably big and complicated enough to need a file drawer, and you're unlikely to forget that it's in progress..
Once a month or so have a complete rummage through the box - stuff you've abandoned can be pulled out and tossed or archived in some way, and you'll be reminded about other things you have in progress that have been off your mind for a while..
OneNote, A Modern OS, and a Smartphone... (Score:3, Informative)
Althought this won't sit well on Slashdot...
1) Microsoft OneNote - best note gathering tool, also online coordination/sync if you want/trust. (Thus viewable on my phone as well)
2) Smartphone - Android
3) Windows7 and the built in Search indexing system, it keeps track of everything I have done for the past 20 years. With selective online Syncing of current documents and projects available to any PC I sign into with Live Essentials, or via a browser. (Millions and Millions of documents, notes, meeting recordings, ink drawings, development projects, etc. - all available instantly, something that made OS X choke when trying to index even a small portion of the TBs of data.) Add in 'previous versions' and the backup system and you have a very mature system of tracking the data of your life, and even seeing it at various time points.
OneNote and Vista/Win7's Search features are something that has keep me off of Linux as a primary desktop for a few years now. Gone are the days of 'find' and cobbled indexing solutions.
It is just too handy to type a partial line of code and get the project, or a few words from an email back in 1992 and have it at my finger tips.
Lifehacker (Score:3, Informative)
OK, Gawker Media has a whole site dedicated to exactly this kind of thing, surprised no one mentioned it yet: http://lifehacker.com/ [lifehacker.com]
Worth perusing to find interesting ways to simplify things.
For myself, I've found:
Re:Pseudoproblem. (Score:5, Insightful)
organization gives your brain time for other things!
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Omni Outliner Pro (Score:5, Interesting)
This is an OS X based outlining system that supports images, sounds, text, pretty much whatever. I use several outlines. One contains general information, from password and login data for every web site I use to ideas for t-shirts and guitar tabs; the other is an organized timeline, a diary of sorts, that has every year since I was born in it, and all the events I have been able to remember from before I started using it, and all the significant events since (much more dense there, of course.)
The collapsible outline format is ideal for a timeline; All decades but the current one are closed; all years in the current decade but the current one are closed; all months but the current one are closed; so the display is very compact, yet I have almost instant access to anything, any time, organized and coherent. Just as an aside, once written, I was able to recall a lot more by reading it to myself as if it were a story... concurrent events floated up to the surface almost unbidden... highly recommended if you're into journaling.
For everything else, it works very well, though a lot depends on the initial format you pick. Mine ended up with six root headings.
Under each of those are many more headings and megabytes of textual content I've generated over the years. Also images, musical performances (of mine), poetry, etc. Some of it came from text files I maintained prior to obtaining this software; I'm glad those days are gone. I'm sure other's organizations would be different, mine grew somewhat organically, and I might do it differently today, but it works extremely well as is, so then again, maybe not.
I'm not affiliated with the program developers at all; I'm just a really satisfied customer. For the money, the organizational chops I gained were hugely worth it.
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At work I use a similar thing to keep track of things I'm asked to do. I date the pages with items asked to do and throw them away when all the items are complete. My company uses a ticket tracking system, so once all the information is copied from the notebook and emails into the ticket the rest is junk. When the notebook runs out of new pages I copy the handful of remaining items to a new book, decide if they're useful or completed and move on.
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Is that why you post as an AC, so we don't find your creditcard number too easily?
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So what do you do if they should be in 3 or 4 different folders?
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Tagsistant - A reasoning semantic filesystem for Linux and BSD [tagsistant.net]
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KeePass, or any password organizer, is great for any kind of key/value information: credit card numbers, software license keys, driver's license number, combination lock passwords, etc.
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