Hi Justice.
Although your exact work flows and styles are likely different from mine, I have thought off an on about this stuff.
Some conceptual thoughts:
This area falls into the category of "Get Things Done" to use the now famous phrase. The subtle trick to watch for is that "the solution isn't worse than the problem". So if you don't need to-the-suggestion level reporting, consider a little bit of "low level" paper/manual support around the edges to keep the "power software" in this concept thread leaner. A couple of the tricks I have used at various points:
1. Paper Pre-Filters:
A. (Paper) 4x4 inch lined Stickies. I just took a certification test to prepare for an upcoming new job as a tax preparer this season. For the test I had to do a bunch of medical expense calculations. They're not exactly hard, but there's no way anyone but an arithmetic savant could do them in his head. So I used a lined 4x4 inch sticky for each problem, five in all.
But those test examples were based on 2012 tax law! It so happens that for tax return year 2013 / Winter 2014, the IRS changed the rule that had been there for 20 some years! (Now less favorable to the taxpayer!) So I'll never need those practice test problems ever again, and except for Amended returns, I won't really need to have examples of the older way to do the calculation. (Tax law is an example where knowledge "becomes dead".)
Finally the other use for the stickies is for quick tasks that no one really cares about that are short term and volatile. For example I had to feed my brother's cats for a week while he was on vacation. Sure. 3 min to set up a quick 1 week 3 column chart on that lined sticky. Cats Fed. After that week, no one cares about the now "decaying" factoid of the cat feeding details.
B. Paper Spreadsheet", I found that sometimes if I already have too much work/"tasks" going on with my comp in front of me, and someone wants a recurring but irrelevant factoid, to have a (carefully curated) piece of paper just on my desk with the "greatest hits". That way I don't have to stop what I am doing, open up yet another thing on my screen, and waste mine and maybe someone else's phone-call time. Examples are my parents' three addresses, the number for the AT&T phone plan refill customer line, my Boss's cell phone number, and the two sets of trains it takes to get to the new job (because they are different in each direction.) (FYI I now live in Queens NYC, after having lived in small towns all my life, this stuff isn't natural for me.)
All that stuff is random, but keeps being useful. So the trick I found is a simple Staples desk calendar "magically" has 30+ blocks of lined boxes, almost like 30 "permanent stickies". Just take a big black marker and wipe out the dates.
That calendar then keeps those pages organized, so then you make a couple of the sheets the "factoids". Then you just flip the page and make the next three "quick ideas and suggestions". That's room for some 100 suggestions and ideas! These pages are removable, so you just keep the "factoid" pages safe, but slowly work on and chop at the ideas and suggestions.
After about a month, 50 of those suggestions migrate their way into some existing big project, and 30 more just die off either being solved or not useful. You just take a pencil and cross off the boxes of the done/useless ideas. The last final 20 actually go into your "Suggestions" area of the power program as being long term, but not able to be done for a chunk of time but too important to forget.
2. So what filters through and goes into the note program is any big, evolving study project. A main section simply has ever evolving accumulating knowledge. Your ideas/received suggestions go into the big note program *at the next level of processing*! So your quick idea was captured on the desk paper spreadsheet. Then you do something at it, with some chunk of processing, and then the *result* goes into your note program!
Whew! That's a lot of words. But the overall idea is it keeps the big note system focused on durable, important work. If "Stickies" are too "scattered" and "look bad" then do it as a box of flash cards that can all stay nice on the box. It's not perfect, but I've been bitten a couple times to "manage everything in note software" only for it to spiral out of control when I stopped knowing where to look! Do you organize it by topic? By priority? Both? Then you waste time tagging stuff "to do" and "done"! I have a hobby of collecting fortune cookie messages. So the paper slips themselves ARE the task. I just line them up in a corner of my desk. When I get about 20 of them, I type them all up, then throw them away. I don't need "20 to-do's" to create "tasks" to type them up!
Does all of that help at all?
Cheers,
--Tao
