Is 'frictionless' organization actually possible?
So, I need to be more organized. This has ALWAYS been the case, as far back as I can remember.
All these years later, I've finally been able to start putting in to words the problem with all the methods I've tried to try to help. (Other than: They don't help.)
They're all too hard to keep, well, organized, and there's NOTHING that works for me as a true universal capture device.
I have a 1st Gen iPhone, and a Nokia E71.
On each, it takes too long to get the phone out, unlock it, find and launch the note-taking app, and actually enter the note.
If I'm _driving_, when half of the things I've forgotten to do come to me, it's impossible.
If I have a voice recorder of some form, I never remember to transcribe it... I've discovered the notes months or years later, having forgotten about them by the time I finally get to a point where I could transcribe them.
My chosen platform is a mac, my work desktop is windows, my work is done on Linux. I drive my web-browsers hard enough that it can be slow to pull up (website of the day) to get something entered... and I'm not always carrying a machine with me. Go back to the problem with my phones.
If I write it down longhand - which I actually prefer for quick note taking, as trying I've let to find something that smoothly (and on all platforms) lets me put a blob of text here, another one there, and a 3rd alongside the 1st 2, easily.
I did a major diagramming project at my last job in dot (graphviz) because I knew if I got involved in laying out where the arrows and boxes went, I'd NEVER get data in to them.
If I don't get a note taken down quickly, it won't get taken down, and as I read someplace today, "If it's not written down, it doesn't exist."
Of course, once too much of it is written down, there's too much to deal with.
And how the FUCK do you pick out your 'next actions', anyway? (Ref: David Allen, Getting Things Done)
Being organized is not simply 'hard', it's pretty fucking near 'impossible', and this is getting to me.
How do you do it?
(Classic example: I was trying for a while to do a daily wrap-up and pre-org the next day's tasks... but it nearly always happened that I was busy at the wrap-up time, or suddenly it would be time to leave - with a deadline at the other end - and I'd have to not do it. Gah.)
All these years later, I've finally been able to start putting in to words the problem with all the methods I've tried to try to help. (Other than: They don't help.)
They're all too hard to keep, well, organized, and there's NOTHING that works for me as a true universal capture device.
I have a 1st Gen iPhone, and a Nokia E71.
On each, it takes too long to get the phone out, unlock it, find and launch the note-taking app, and actually enter the note.
If I'm _driving_, when half of the things I've forgotten to do come to me, it's impossible.
If I have a voice recorder of some form, I never remember to transcribe it... I've discovered the notes months or years later, having forgotten about them by the time I finally get to a point where I could transcribe them.
My chosen platform is a mac, my work desktop is windows, my work is done on Linux. I drive my web-browsers hard enough that it can be slow to pull up (website of the day) to get something entered... and I'm not always carrying a machine with me. Go back to the problem with my phones.
If I write it down longhand - which I actually prefer for quick note taking, as trying I've let to find something that smoothly (and on all platforms) lets me put a blob of text here, another one there, and a 3rd alongside the 1st 2, easily.
I did a major diagramming project at my last job in dot (graphviz) because I knew if I got involved in laying out where the arrows and boxes went, I'd NEVER get data in to them.
If I don't get a note taken down quickly, it won't get taken down, and as I read someplace today, "If it's not written down, it doesn't exist."
Of course, once too much of it is written down, there's too much to deal with.
And how the FUCK do you pick out your 'next actions', anyway? (Ref: David Allen, Getting Things Done)
Being organized is not simply 'hard', it's pretty fucking near 'impossible', and this is getting to me.
How do you do it?
(Classic example: I was trying for a while to do a daily wrap-up and pre-org the next day's tasks... but it nearly always happened that I was busy at the wrap-up time, or suddenly it would be time to leave - with a deadline at the other end - and I'd have to not do it. Gah.)