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Awesome article re: organization and notetaking

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Paul Keith:
Thanks J-Mac and 40hz. I guess because I've been using Compendium and listening to stuff like David Allen's GTD, I just thought alot of what was written there were conventional advises for notetaking if not flawed in that they really didn't give you any idea how to test it.

For example, Compendium uses the IBIS methodology which lives and dies by putting any kind of notetaking problem into a structure of pros, cons, decisions, questions and answers. It didn't really matter what's bad about a certain system. It just fitted itself into a system that tells what's bad about those other systems by explaining why it doesn't fit into the IBIS paradigm as opposed to creating a bad example of a system they want to look bad to explain the flaws of said system.

http://www.touchstone.com/wp/IBIS.html

40hz, I think David Allen did a better job of explaining the core differences of file cabinets and computers but this is just me assuming they both had the same idea in mind.

I think what the author of that link was saying was that computers are not file cabinets in the sense of you put stuff into it. They are brains in the sense that they're supposed to process what you put in there. Sounds similar but that's why I think Allen explains it better by not demonizing the file cabinet but explaining how to improve the file cabinet which is basically set it up like a physical real world e-mail of your notes rather than something you put stuff in and put stuff in and put stuff in.

Basically he suggests such slight modifications as:

1) Put a cabinet within short distances of where you often take your notes so that you don't need to stand to get something out or put something in.

2) Keep a hierarchy in your file cabinet. One drawer always has blank folders where you go to when wanting to start composing something. One area for every stuff that needs to go in. One area to segment. One area to get out.

Note that this isn't a word by word explanation of what he did and I hardly know what he's talking about (especially when he's referring to no hanging folders) but it does a much better job at explaining the differences between a computer and a file cabinet.

In that same sense, a computer's advantage is that it is possible to collect something and organize it rather than a file cabinet where you are forced to organize it to collect lots of things and find them easily. Ideally this is how it's supposed to work at least that's from what I gathered with that quote.

In essence the goal is to have 1 software that is easy to put stuff into and then easy to view these stuff and then start organizing them and then easy to put all these stuff in different sections of that one program so that it's easy to find them once you structured them.

...hence computer = brain, is actually computer = better at processing lots of information than relying on our own brain's memory and capacity. Psychic Ram as Allen puts it.

J-Mac:
True - computers were basically designed to... compute! Which could be looked at as "a brain".

My single biggest issue with all information collection systems that I have any experience in using: the ability to quickly locate specific and general information that I have stored away. The information I have is not all wrapped up in one application, since I have not found one app that does it all for me. Oh sure - I have several different tree-based apps, I use categories where available, tags where available. But using several systems/software packages makes it virtually impossible to index it all adequately AND assign some sort of importance factor to the information. I spent some time (actually a lot of time) looking for a systemwide tagging system but there simply is not one that can do what I need.

So I continue to stumble along managing what I have as well as I can.

Jim

Target:
I spent some time (actually a lot of time) looking for a systemwide tagging system but there simply is not one that can do what I need.
-J-Mac (January 21, 2009, 10:39 PM)
--- End quote ---

this one might be of interest to you

It's popped up in a few places that I watch over the last week or so - <a href="http://lunarfrog.com/taggedfrog/">Tagged Frog</a>

somewhat like a wiki, it uses Tags to 'organise' your files.  tags are visible within the app as a cloud, and can be searched,filtered, etc

you can apply multiple tags to a file, so there's plenty of scope to cover all manner of classifications and/or organisational methodologies

Paul Keith:
J-Mac, agreed. Although I believe one day people would be arguing more about how all notetaking apps can't do one thing good but does all things well.

One software also has a problem with needing to keep that software protected. Just one mistake be it messing the entire thing up or finding a more suitable external app for managing your things could set you back ages.

Edit:

Target, nice find! Unfortunately the program appears to be an indexer no more different than drag and dropping a file in Compendium and tagging it.

The problem with these kinds of programs is that you are almost afraid to be reliant on them for fear of messing up your cloud and then you're screwed. (especially since these will just say file missing if you move the files)

Target:
Target, nice find! Unfortunately the program appears to be an indexer no more different than drag and dropping a file in Compendium and tagging it.

The problem with these kinds of programs is that you are almost afraid to be reliant on them for fear of messing up your cloud and then you're screwed. (especially since these will just say file missing if you move the files)
-Paul Keith (January 21, 2009, 10:54 PM)
--- End quote ---

thanks, I'm a bit surprised no one else has mentioned it.  I'm notoriously bad at organising, but I really like the concept and it's almost enough to make me want to find a reason to use it  8)

Of course this is probably also true of any tagging or indexing tool (or system, for that matter).

On the upside, even if you do move a file, you still have the file name as a search field, though if you routinely rename files then nothing's going to help you.

Maybe I've misunderstood the operation of this thing, but I'm not really sure how you could mess up the cloud.  As I understand it, if you just keep adding tags (key words) the cloud will just keep getting bigger.  It shouldn't matter if you're tagging 'style' changes over time (as it invariably does) as your just adding to the cloud

(apologies to all for veering off topic...)

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