Organizational Smackdown Update

nobody@vox.com(Paul) — Wed, 13 Feb 2008 13:44:36 -0600

Back in December I started to evaluate the way I collect and store information. Some of it frustrated me, some of it worked fine but all in all I felt I needed a better system.

It's been a couple of months now, so I thought I'd provide an update for the 6 of you reading this.

RSS

RSS wasn't a big problem for me, or so I thought. Vienna and Google Reader initially teamed up to cover my needs but didn't sync in any way - a small problem that I ignored. I then switched to Google Reader exclusively and liked it, but still missed the convenience of a desktop reader.

Then NetNewsWire 3 came out for free and kinda smooshed Google Reader. I always liked NNW but didn't want to pay for it (cheap!) and Vienna was a strong, free alternative. But NNW 3 had everything I wanted plus - plus! - FTP-based syncing. Thus I was able to solve my syncing problem and enjoy the benefits of a desktop newsreader. Great great solution. Too bad that FTP syncing is going to be deprecated with the next release, dammit.

WSFL

Will Save For Later is what I tag any links from anywhere that I can't read right now, but will need to look at or want to look at in the future. Until a couple of weeks ago I was using the tag in delicious and subscribing to it in NNW. Kinda weird. Then Instapaper came along and solved everything! It's WSFL all the way, and is perfect. A JavaScript bookmarklet lets me save things to Instapaper, and it's always there when I need it. Instapaper is awesome, just awesome.

Calendars

I had decided that it'd be nice to sync up online and offline calendars. Truth of the matter is that I don't use offline calendars hardly at all. Ryan had said once, "I bet you don't need offline calendaring." He was right. Google Calendar marches on solo.

Quick Reminders

Sandy wins pure and simple. I still love the functionality I'd touched on earlier, and the Jott integration is beautiful. I noticed that I haven't set any reminders for myself in the past week or so. Hm.

Undated To Dos

As mentioned in the Quick Reminders post, there's a lot of To Do stuff I need to track. I've divided them up into dated and undated. Undated to dos are akin to "someday" tasks - things which may or may not take a lot of time, but should/could be done at some point and are not time sensitive. Obviously.

My initial plan was to put these into Yojimbo, but I stopped using Yojimbo altogether as it felt like a dead-end to me. Then there was Remember the Milk which was going to house both my dated and undated to dos... and yet, I went cold on RTM quickly. I just stopped using it. I didn't find it to be compelling enough to warrant my time. Feature-wise, it's got everything but something left me feeling weird about it. (Maybe the UI?)

That brought me back to Backpack, of all places. I'm still on the free plan - and will await the next version to decide on paying for it - but I simply popped in a new list on my home page. This is a regular ol' checkbox list. I find it's getting pretty long but it's also a great dumping ground for little things that pop into my head. It's very very useful. Yes, it's online only, but I can deal.

Dated To Dos

So far, no solution. I could use Backpack without any real time sensitivity built-in. I could use Things, which is powerful for me at the day job. But I use neither. I suspect that for this stuff I'll end up using a combo of Backpack and Sandy, or maybe just Sandy. This will take a bit of a leap of faith; I'll need to think of Sandy as a REAL TO DO LIST PROGRAM versus just a handy reminder thing.

Junk Drawer

Yojimbo was acting as my junk drawer. But, again, I wasn't thrilled with it. No solution here either - I'm using a scattering of Stickies and text documents again. Blah.

And there you have it.

For what it's worth, I'm thinking of giving VoodooPad a spin (maybe in place of Backpack?) I've never heard of anyone using it, though.

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Organizational Smackdown Update