Help me organize myself

October 17, 2005 3:57 PM

I need help organizing my thoughts and notes - Trying to use Word, but can't quite get it to work.

So for my job I tend to have a million different conversations/thoughts about alot of different ideas and need a way to organize them that is less clumsy then my current method.

I have decided that I would like to create one massive file to keep track of these items. I would like to tag each entry with a variety of data items (date, contact name, client, etc.) and have the ability to generate reports off of that sheet. A year from know I would like to go in and say "give me the notes of every conversation I had with John Doe about Company X" and get the related info

I have tried to do this in Word and OnePage (which seems pretty useless) with no success - does anyone have any ideas?

posted by JPD to Work & Money (12 answers total)

this is something of a non-sequitur to your question, but my experience is that "one massive file" is generally a recipe for disaster - word seems to have trouble when documents get too large. i suppose that all depends on what you mean by massive, though.

I would like to tag each entry with a variety of data items (date, contact name, client, etc.) and have the ability to generate reports off of that sheet.

this sounds to me like what you want to use is a relational database. look into using Access if you're into MS Office products.
posted by sergeant sandwich at 4:05 PM on October 17, 2005

Perhaps one of the many flavors of TiddlyWiki might be suit your needs? I've had loads of luck adapting it for similar tasks.
posted by ktrey at 4:07 PM on October 17, 2005

Paper? Your retrieval/manipulation needs sound simple enough not to be worth the overhead of a computational solution.

Using perhaps the Hipster PDA? Put one idea per index card, head with person's name and date, then file according to company, or project.

Advantage of paper is that you can re-file easily, gather collections ad-hoc on your desk, and store things other than text - e.g. a brochure or photo that inspired the idea.
posted by cogat at 4:07 PM on October 17, 2005

Best answer: EverNote is popular, and works well for me. Seems it could easily do what you're asking. Basic version is free, too!
posted by Tubes at 4:08 PM on October 17, 2005

Best answer: Sorry, Hipster PDA.
posted by cogat at 4:08 PM on October 17, 2005

Response by poster: I thought about access - but is there anyway to make the data input look and feel like my whole one big file concept? That's really important to me.
posted by JPD at 4:09 PM on October 17, 2005

Response by poster: Evernote looks like exactly what I am trying to do
posted by JPD at 4:18 PM on October 17, 2005

Some form of personal wiki would be ideal for this, especially if you choose one which supports tagging. TiddlyWiki is great in that it keeps everything in one big file but, be warned - it gets slow and clunky if the file starts to get *big*.

A hosted wiki is good if you need to access the information from multiple sources. Here's a comparison table. If you're just looking for a desktop solution, try moinmoin personal edition. I suppose it could be run off a pen drive, at a push.

Or, do what I do and keep an enormous text file and grep it every time you need a piece of info.
posted by blag at 4:20 PM on October 17, 2005

TexNotes

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posted by Independent Scholarship at 5:05 PM on October 17, 2005

You could also try 37signals' obnoxiously simply Backpack.
posted by robbie01 at 5:05 PM on October 17, 2005

I use Textpad. I created a custom syntax definition file for *.todo files, so I can have bullets, and logical highlighting. I have a single .todo file for each project I'm working on. Within each project file I have multiple sections: todo, future, and complete. When I have completed a project, the whole file gets placed in a "complete" folder.
posted by tom_g at 7:14 PM on October 17, 2005

By OnePage, do you mean OneNote?
posted by Good Brain at 10:44 PM on October 17, 2005