Weeklies

I am always looking for better/easier ways to organize all the information that gets thrown at me each week. When I discovered Remember The Milk I was very excited, as it presented a really easy way to organize what I had to do. I even flirted with keeping long-term to-dos in the system. Unfortunately, the interface doesn’t lend itself to adding extended notes and keeping track of complicated due dates. For example, I might have an event I have to attend with has a different due date than the writing assignment on the event. RTM was not an elegant solution to such things.

I also have struggled with writing notes on little scraps of paper when people call me out of the blue. Even when I’m not caught off guard I see the notepads pile up with meeting notes and interview questions. What I wanted to be able to do was throw away these pieces of paper. My nightmare is filled with trying to organize these notes into something to which I can refer back.

Enter the wiki. I’ve decided to set up a “digital file cabinet.” It’s powered by Dokuwiki, though it could be any wiki software. The point is, I create a new page for each issues, group, person or place I have to deal with. As I gain information or think of questions to ask, I add them to the wiki. It doesn’t replace the paper, as I still like to just jot things down. But an hour or a day later I can go back to that sheet of paper, add the information it contains to the wiki and be done with it. It’s a wonderful system and I already feel the weight of clutter lifting. Now all I have to do is make sure I keep at it.