kewms;58295 said:
Get a Mac. Install DevonThink Pro on it, and use DTP to index your reference files. Problem solved.
DTP is a freeform database with powerful AI and fuzzy search features. You can group similar files together (including putting a file in more than one group), or you can ask the AI to find things "like this." Unlike many such programs, it's also scalable to millions of words and hundreds or thousands of files. It's the best thing that every happened to e-packrats.
To the best of my knowledge, there's nothing like it for Windows. Everything close costs orders of magnitude more. It (and Scrivener) goes a long way to justifying the switch all by itself.
Katherine
Wow, thanks katherine. However, Either I communicated poorly or maybe you just erroneously assumed I was windows user, but I've been using macs for 22 years. Do people just automatically assume what operating system people are on? It's really strange how the details of people's advice are totally irrelevant because of false assumptions they make. Anyways, In fact (kinda joking) being perceived as a non-mac user is something I consider an insult! haha! So there's no switch necessary. I'm already on a mac and have been for years, since I was two... In fact, now that i think about it, almost all of this "odd clutter" arose for the one year in 2007 when I experimented with a windows machine (of course I had a mac going all the time, too). I ditched the windows after realizing how terrible of an OS it was.
Thanks for your DTP rec. But again, my problem is not lacking an "indexing search" program. I looked into DTP and it does look pretty cool, but I've been doing pretty well with iWork and apple's sofware and want to try to stick to that. PLus, but I can do some pretty advanced searches just fine with apple's bult-in, strong search capacities. Additionally, I steer clear from most 3rd party non-apple software. I just need a solid, simple filing system for e-files. There could be entire books written on that, but I think DA's GTD only touched on e-reference organizaiton for what? 2 pages?
But you touched on the exact gist of my thread here. It's needing a complete "hole-less" e-gtd system. I don't WANT to be an e-packrat, but also don't want to discard files of value. I'm trying find a healthy medium between that. I've saved school files from elementary school and highschool. Those are highly organized in a chronological semester-year based system, but there's a lot of clutter, like I couldn't find a play so I had to scan in a large portion of a library screenplay, I've done a lot of personal "curiosity research" on everything from electronics to botany to investing, so I have those notes, some of which has gone towards blog. I have over ten documents of different types of self-limitations I'm trying to work through (reference clutter being one, haha). On and on..."stuff". It's ALL e stuff, though. DAs book targets primarily babyboomers who have the majority of their clutter in desk drawers and in non e-spaces". Basically I need to find a 100% e-GTD book of sorts.
Also, in another thread (I think bout finishing tasks -- I should just keep this all one thread, it's inter-related, no point butchering the topic) you mentioned importance of planning. I think you're right. More planning would benefit me.
Like another project I'm working on is archiving all my 15 websites. Some of them were for corporations some of them for a school class -- the range of the purpose of the websites is extremely broad, but they're all unique. the organization of all of them is a bit sloppy. I needed an image on the "contact page" so I through in a link to an image outside of hte image folder, etc. I just need some uniformity and consistency of how the pages, code, and images are organized for each site (and labeling each site as YEAR_sitename, so 2001_calculus for one sort, for example). The whole goal of doing that (a project which will involve a lot of tedious hyerlink debugging after I rearrange folders and manage broken links) will be to get scope on my web work (all of which I've done for free), to transform that into a tangible sequence of accomplishments and remove webwork from my psychological clutter.
One thing that I have DOWN is how photographs are organized. I have scanned in or digitally take close to a thousand photos and I use practicaly zero folders. The organization system (as well as for film, documentary projects, and home videos) for film and photos is chronological YEAR_MONTH_LOCATION_notesname so for example, 2002_05_IL_graduationparty or somethign would be a photo or footage. That works AWESOME because it's extensible. new photos and film easily gets added to the system, incredibly searchable (i can search spotlight for notes, name) or just instantly jump to the relative year and then month to zero in on the media. The best part is it's just ONE folder of 800-1100 properly chronologically labeled media files.
If I could get my documents (typed word files) inclluding emails, research, school notes, papers, articles, books, etc. in a similar format there would be over 4000 such files, but that would be the way to go. It's having hundreds of poorly labeled nested folders, basically that kills me.
The proper chronological labeling of film and photos is invaluable and although there's a massively high volume of media, the labelling system creates zero psychological clutter.
The entire end result of ALL of this "simplification" is
1)Increased time away from computer
2)Increased utility for career, success, and fulfillment of all the 1000s and 1000s of computer writing, web design, research, etc stuff that I've done.
3)Overall good ol' fashioned "electronic tidying up".
Just doing #1 wouldn't be worthwhile because that would be discarding things of tremendous sentimental, career, memorable, and/or informational value, so gettinga crisp org. system so my mind can leave the e-reference files beside themselves (as my mind can do with the properly organized photos and film media archives), and then siphon out the essentials for career.
Right now my computer basically feels like a brain!! It doesn't feel like a neat system of organized folders I can just flip open and get the material I need. I've done hundreds of brainstomring, notes, and projects on the computer, so that's all jumbled in with the reference files. I'm fortunate I have hard crisp defined, and properly categorized files with photos and film, but I must do the same with mainly written files or (web-related) code. Websites are tricky because moving around folders and files, obviously, is impossible unless you want to rewrite links, so it's important to keep those separate from distinct files, reports, notes, brainstroming files, that won't "disassemble or break" if you separate them from something else.
I just have a lot of tedious computer, web, printing, html updating, resume tweaking, research typing, blog consolidation, tasks and I need to plan larger goals tied to career, to income, and to success. I guess mind-mapping? is a great way to plan?
I think trying otu paper-based GTD methods for awhile will massively increase productivity because it would break the pattern of going into e-packrat mode.
