I would very much like to see a good system. Right now I have text documents and bookmarks (shortcut files) scattered all through the Dropbox folder. It's very high level at first, e.g. Write (for writing ideas and also tips and comments I intend to post or follow up on), Web (anything web; ideas, small projects, technologies, tutorials, etc), Listen (for talks and other things I can listen to later), Workout, Travel, Ideas, Experiments, etc. Then use hierarchical categorization from there with more important details, contacts, helpful sites, what I've done, various stats in text form, things I need to be reminded about, and so on. It's really about having all the right information coupled together. Not necessarily by year, but by purpose. Yeah, it's kind of hacky. But after years of doing it and re-organizing, I don't have to search very often. (Though I'm sure I miss something here and there.) It's kind of like a desk that looks messy to everyone else. One man's mess is another man's finely-tuned organized heap of stuff. So it's just good enough. For now. At least until life provides a 'J' key.

I can't seem to find good software out there to help out. I think the problem is everybody organizes their information differently. And a good program has to be flexible to accommodate this without becoming too overwhelming to use. It's a very hard balancing act indeed. I think eventually something amazing will emerge. After lots and lots of research. After seeing how many others do it and finding the commonalities. It could save others the years of hassle trying figuring out how to organize such things and building those tracking habits. I'd be very interested in something that works for many. I'd also be very interested in seeing how others do it.

I guess I didn't answer many questions. I'ts only because my own system is rather hacky. I've been wondering for a long time how to improve this. And still haven't thought up anything useful enough without it being too limiting. Perhaps with enough other comments on this post, something a just little better for everybody can emerge.

Hey Sebastian,

I'm committed to solve this problem. I'm already working on an iphone app (90% done) that deals with the first part of the problem. If you want to talk, and I'd like your input, you should still have my skype account, call at anytime.

P.S. The smallworld link is not working ;)

Hey Sebastian,

I think this problem will _inevitably_ be solved, and I don't think it will be too far in the future. However, I don't think it will be solved properly until we have better input and display devices than the current screen/keyboard/touch/mouse metaphors. Better displays (e.g. projected on your glasses or directly on your retina) are already feasible, but the final nut to crack is the input device. We need some way to interact with such a system that's discreet, fast, accurate, high-bandwidth, and easy for people to learn the basics of (though advanced functions may remain the province of techies). I suspect some sort of wearable motion tracking which interprets gestures as subtle as a flick of the finger, but I could be wrong. Who knows, maybe it will be one of those mythical brain interfaces...

Anyway, until those are available, such tools are not, in my opinion, all that much more useful than a good old notebook and pen. When they are, they will make a huge change to the way people like you and me live our lives. Until then, a Moleskine notebook does the job remarkably well, considering its technology level is not very far from those 15th century RPG worlds...

(in other words, what you need is discipline, not technologies. A CRM won't help you if you don't put the data in. And a notebook will do that job almost as well, but be more ubiquitous and less maintenance)

It sounds like a decent first pass at this would be a generic, bucket o' documents search index. If you just indexed your various sources of information (twitter, facebook, email, rss-feeds, etc) you'd get a fair way towards discoverability - search by keywords, source and dates for example. Think gmail's approach to email.

Although I might just think this because I work on search engines all day - when all you have is a hammer...

I desperately need a system like this. I'm already in the habit of writing everything down, but I never manage to do anything about it, because it is all in giant unorganized lists. Google bookmarks does a great job of saving pages that I want to look at again. I love the labels features. If a similar system was made for notes, I would just write everything in a notebook and then update the notes at the end of the day. I would code it myself, but my programming skills aren't up to par.

Rusty

What about something like NotationalVelocity, or Evernote? They have slightly different approaches, but they seem designed to solve exactly this problem.

Hey Sebastian. I second the Evernote suggestion. Due to it's prevalence on most digital devices, you can use it pretty much on the go from an iphone / Android / web access.

I use to make do with paper notes, notes to self on mobiles & computers scattered everywhere. Since I begin using Evernote, it's my one source go to place to jot down all kinds of info.

And what's more, it's free for those uploading 45mb or less per month (only text & image files are supported). Premium at $45USD /year will get you 1GB of month data and support for all file types.

Happy journaling :)

I'm testing out this one.

http://springpadit.com/home

It looks like it has massive potential to be what we are looking for.

Chrome extension: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/fabhmllhnkeblofibdkhnoemhibigmfn

Also it has android, iphone, and ipad apps.

Rusty