What do you use for general-purpose list management?

[Ship69]

Hi

What tool(s) do you good people use for general-purpose list management?

I need to create pretty large files (containing say 10,000+ records), containing multi-level hierarchical factual information on a wide variety of subjects.

e.g. Evernote (which I have never used seriously myself - but I think it's USP is to allow the tagging of external files such as images...)
e.g. MindManager (which fairly well - but it's going to get messy presenting such huge files visually. Also renewal fees are expensive.)
e.g. MLO (MyLifeOrganised) - presumably in a different .ML file from your task & to-do lists.
e.g. MS Excel (but no quick & easy way to move things around the hierarchy, me thinks)

I am thinking about what you might call "support lists" for some of my projects. The information contained would NOT be actionable (mostly at least).
For example:
- List of areas & facts about a huge project I am involved with... and important information about the different sections of the project.
- Lists of jargon on new subjects that I am studying
- Lists of personal insights on various topics that I need to record somewhere
- Lists of people interested in particular subjects
- List of interesting general knowledge facts, that I'd like to remember...
etc etc

It would be important to be very easily be able to create tree-like hierarchical structures in the data, and to be able to whiz things up and down the hierarchy v easily (e.g. using hotkeys) too.

Ideally it would be nice to have links between branches of the tree(s) too (which I don't think MLO can do[??])

- How do you manage your non-actionable lists?

J

 

[cfoley]

I was going to ask you why you are doing this, and then I realised you need to apply the natural planning model. There are any number of solutions and your purpose will help you choose which is best for you.

 

[Oogiem]

What tool(s) do you good people use for general-purpose list management?

I need to create pretty large files (containing say 10,000+ records), containing multi-level hierarchical factual information on a wide variety of subjects.

- How do you manage your non-actionable lists?

FOr me those things are not lists per se but just support material.

I'd put them all into a DEVONThink database. The bigest ones I knwo of handle half a million items easily. Very powerful system and can be organized wither hierarchally or by tags or both so handles the data no matter how you think.

 

[Ship69]

To get clear,
A) On the face of it my question is nothing to do with planning as such nor to GTD itself, it is about where to store facts (not tasks)
B) I would like to have all the information in one place, so that I know where to put stuff and so can also readily find stuff.

I am asking the question here in a GTD environment partly to see if people use there GTD tools in this way (and partly because people in this group are likely to have put more highly informed thought than most thought into choosing their tools!).

 

[JamesT]

This is a good question with lots of possible solutions. One of the reasons we created an "info" or reference type of item in GTDNext was exactly to cover this situation. You can create outlines of unlimited items and depth in GTDNext that in no way interfere with you normal GTD lists. There are many times when I personally think it is handy to have your reference items close at hand during your GTD workflow. I'm sure not everyone agrees with this, but for me it is handy.

Other good solutions would be Workflowy. Especially if you need a hierarchy as part of your list. Evernote or OneNote are also good choices. I've use them all and they all have different advantageous depending on your needs.

 

[cfoley]

To get clear,
A) On the face of it my question is nothing to do with planning as such nor to GTD itself, it is about where to store facts (not tasks)
B) I would like to have all the information in one place, so that I know where to put stuff and so can also readily find stuff.

The file system David Allen suggests sounds very similar in structure to yours even if it is not immediately apparent. Let's consider it and see how far we get before it stops doing what you need. He suggests two filing cabinets: Support and Reference, in each an alpha-sorted set of folders, each containing papers. That's it.

Your stuff sounds like reference material so on the computer a folder called Reference is your "root node". Within that you have a set of folders. This is David Allen's alpha-sorted folders but it's also the first level of your hierarchy. Inside each folder you can have any number of files which are your lists. David Allen suggests that nesting folders deeper is unhelpful and makes things difficult to find. However, I bet most of your structure will fit within this structure and you can always break this rule when necessary.

If you want links between branches then use shortcuts to files and folders.

Syncing is as easy as putting it onto any cloud storage.

A great strength of this approach is that you can have any kind of file. I personally use a lot of image files and spreadsheets, but for the most part I recommend using plain text files where possible. This format is largely overlooked by most people but it has some important advantages. Much software chokes on 10,000 records, especially if you open several files with 10,000 records each. A good text editor will make short work of such files and let you have multiple tabs open too. I like SublimeText. It's primarily aimed at programmers but there are also plenty of great ones aimed at authors. Many of them have a folder view in a side panel so you can navigate your whole system without leaving the editor.

There are tools to search throughout the folder hierarchy. The operating system's search is a good starting point but there are more powerful ones available if you need them.

You mentioned tagging briefly. One of the great things about text files is that you can define the format. One possibility is to take a leaf out of Twitter's book and do something like hashtags. Get into the habit of including them in your notes and you can search for any #tag you want from your standard search facility.

What happens if you want a facility that folders and plain text files don't give you? There is a very good chance that someone has written a utility do do just that, or there might be a convenient workaround like in tagging. The great thing about this format is that you aren't constrained by the features included in any particular software package. This is doubly true if you are able to code yourself.

 

[Ship69]

JamesT

- GTDNext - Yes, nice to see it coming along so fast! The likes of MLO has a lot to learn about being responsive to user requests and fast cycle times. I remain a GTDNext fan and still a paying subscriber (I think).

- Evernote - has a huge following however I couldnt find a way to do a hierarchy of more than what was affectively two levels of hierarchy (NoteBook and Stack).
- OneNote - sorry I can't bring myself to pay any more money to Microsoft
- Workflowy - looks extremely promising. Thank you!

​More later...

 

[notmuch]

WorkFlowy!

I started using it 3 years ago just for reference and brainstorming. As I got more familiar with it (and they added features) I ported my GTD system from Toodledo/GCal to WorkFlowy/GCal. I have not felt the need to look for a GTD app since... a HUGE time saver for me.

I have about 9000 "items" and WorkFlowy remains lightning fast to navigate, filter, search, backup, etc. The biggest negative I see is the mobile apps are missing some features available on the desktop browser version. So if you are mobile-centric you will not get all the benefits.

I highly recommend you view all the videos (via the help menu)... they're all short. The blog has decent info as well. Here are two good ones:

http://blog.workflowy.com/2014/07/10/new-feature-select-multiple-lines-in-your-workflowy-lists/

http://blog.workflowy.com/2012/09/25/hidden-search-operators/

 

[enyonam]

Hooked on Evernote!

I have designed my own notebook stacks and tags though.
And I do look at all the new tools that come out. If eProductivity wasn't only on Lotus Notes I would be tempted to convert but nothing else really grabs my attention.

Cheers, Enyo
www.enyonam.com