The Revenge of the File System

Once upon a time—back in the days of Windows 95—a young reference librarian organized his electronic files in folders on the file system. Well labelled, well organized folders. Then one day, full-text desktop search tools came along and made this unncecessary. With a simple keyword search, he could find his files, regardless of where they were located. He was, after all, a search professional. Then better search became available with e-mail. First with Outlook and then with GMail, where Google encouraged him to use search, not folders, to find that e-mail he was looking for.  And so it was that he stopped putting his files in neat little folders.  And the files accumulated, year after year, job after job, and computer after computer.   

Fast forward to 2011. Multiple moves, including a change of operating system (hello Macintosh!) have left me with a disorganized mess of duplicate files and scattered folders. My files have become so numerous and some of them so big (work files) that keyword searches have started failing me.  One consequence of ignoring my file system is that I had forgotten about old files and their contents.

This became clear to me when I started to tackle my file duplication problem.  As I waded through old directories to remove duplicates and restore some semblance of order, I noticed files I had long forgotten about: letters and plans, reports and articles, funny stuff and packing lists from old trips. In the process of creating new folders and collapsing old ones I got reacquainted with my digital archives, what I have and how it is (and should be) organized.  While some of this stuff will never serve me again, some of it will and my awareness of what I can put to use has greatly improved.  

At the same time, I have become aware of how my photos and music files have been absorbed wholesale by the iPhoto and iTunes applications on my Macintosh, both of which encourage me to forget about the file system and manage everything from within the applications. The problem with this is that all of the organization and labelling and captioning work that I lavish on these files lives solely within these applications and will be lost if I decide to stop using these tools. Or, in the best case, extractable at great effort.

Thus, I have concluded I must pay more attention to how my files and file folders are organized.  This organization scheme, while primitive, is durable and lives independently of any software application that makes use of the files within. This makes it portable. I can switch computers or operating systems or tools without ever losing it. And the very time that I spend managing my folder scheme makes me better aware of the information that lies within. This ensures that I am more likely to use information I might otherwise ignore. 

 This is part of a series of posts summarizing my PIM activities in 2011.

A new password management system gives me some peace, sort of

Last year I wrote about getting my password management problem under control using a Mac-based password management product called 1Password.  Now that I've used it for a while, this is what I've found.

The Pros

This software has delivered on its key promise: all my passwords are in one secure location and accessible to me via a single master password. I have used it to store all kinds of account information, from financial accounts to reward programs to the access keys for my wireless router. It has allowed me to create long, difficult to crack passwords for my sensitive accounts, because I am freed from having to remember them.  When it comes time to retrieve a password for an infrequently used account, I can get it quickly.

The Cons

The problem with the software is that the web browser extensions, which allow you to easily save and submit passwords on the web, haven't always worked. They don't always "remember" enough to ensure that I can automatically sign-in to a password protected site later. At times it works beautifully. At times it falls on its face, whereupon I have to open up the 1Password software, retrieve the user information and login manually to the site in question. Not fatal, but enough to diminish the sense of smug, self-satisfaction that accompanied my possession of such an awesome tool (when I thought it would work seamlessly).

The mobile iPhone companion app has also been problematic.  Entering my long master password (with numbers and letters) proved so difficult on the iPhone that I had to switch the master password to a long compound word with no numbers in it so that I could actually type it in without botching it. The built in dropbox sync to my iPhone is not working for some reason, so the new passwords I'm saving on my other machines are not propagating to the iPhone. When I have some time I'll see if I can get it working again.  The basic iPhone app that I paid extra for lacks the ability for me to copy and paste passwords on the iPhone.  This capability is only available if I buy a more expensive version of the app, something which really annoys me.  I wasn't aware of how important this would be when I bought the cheaper version of the app.  Now I'm just angry because they withheld essential functionality from the mobile app that I did buy. Last, I am prompted to update the base 1Password software with annoying regularity, which interrupts whatever I am doing at the time. 

On balance, this has been a useful tool that hasn't delivered on all of its promises.  The peace of mind that accompanies better and more secure control of my passwords is mine, but at the cost of aggravations that make me, well, less peaceful.

This is part of a series of posts summarizing my PIM activities in 2011.

Web-based mindmaps become my primary PIM and PKM tool

I have written about Mindmeister before, a web-based mindmapping service that I am fond of.  During this past year I have used a single mindmap to manage my day-to-day to-dos as well as my longer term goals.  I use this mindmap as an all-purpose dashboard, linking to other documents as needed--such as a google docs spreadsheet I use to track my project work hours and my personal journal, also a google document.  I also use it to store and manage what I refer to as my "directional" information, including my mission, my goals, my key research questions. My daily routine involves consulting this mindmap first. During the day I check tasks off as I do them, and add notes and new to-dos as they come up. 

 

I also use Mindmeister to capture book notes and thoughts on certain topics, in some cases attempting to capture and outline my current thinking on a topic.  Sometimes I return to these mindmaps and review them so I can increase my retention and memory of the topic.  Sometimes I add to them.  In this fashion, I use this tool for personal knowledge management (PKM).

Although this service is powerful and continues to be improved I have run into two issues.  As a cloud-based service I am dependent on my network connection to use it.  Occasionally this connection falters and the tool is not available when I need it.  Second, I am concerned about the lack of portability of these mindmaps.  So long as I stick with this service, I am OK.  But should it go out of business or change its terms so as to make it unattractive,  I will be forced to save/migrate each file one at a time to get the information out of the service.   Bulk backups are available, but only to large scale business users with a much more expensive subscription.  I will speak more about this in a follow-up post about cloud-based services. 

This is part of a series of posts summarizing my PIM activities in 2011.

Personal Information Management: 2012 Update

My personal information management activities in the past year can be characterized by the following headlines:

• Web-based mindmaps become my primary PIM / PKM tool
• Cloud-based information travel runs into some turbulence
• A password manager gives me some peace, sort of
• Note-taking continues to be something of a conundrum
• The revenge of the file system
• Au revoir, Delicious
• Knowledge-base nirvana eludes me still.

In the days that follow, I will write the brief stories behind these headlines.

A new student perk: personal digital archive for life

Incoming students at UNC's School of Information and Library Science are being given a personal digital archive for life. The LifeTime Library, as it is called, provides a personal storage area and back-up service. Support for file versioning and other enhancements are envisaged, such as "drop box" type synchronization across devices and support for archiving content from social networks.

This experimental program seems to have two goals: 1) Get the students thinking about what it means to "manage their digital life" over the long haul and 2) Give them an alumni service that connects them to the school.

It makes sense that students of information science should grapple with issues of personal information management and that such a service could help them do that.  And with any luck, the service would evolve and become better as the result of the attention that students and faculty give to it.

The question of personal archiving is important.  I have written before on the need for cloud-based services to support this  (Yes, Virginia, you can take it with you).  It will be interesting to see if this service will keep pace with developments in commercial services and whether it can serve as a model for similar offerings elsewhere. 

On the costs of tooling up

The next phase in my plan to build out my personal information managememt (PIM) system is on hold. My plan is to buy a ScanSnap scanner from Fujitsu to allow me to scan and OCR all my printed documents and thus make my personal document archives more searchable, saveable, and portable.  I even freed some cash specifically for this task, by allocating the proceeds of my recently sold comic book collection. Yet some months later it still hasn't happened. 

There are predictable reasons for this: procrastination and other stuff needed to be done, and the fading of that initial enthusiam that comes with being seduced by a new possibility.  The key reason, though, is that I didn't have an immediate project I was going to use it for.  And my recent experience has shown me that it is easier to buy a new tool or technology than it is to effectively integrate it into your life.  Kevin Kelly speaks nicely to these issues in a recent post titled Techno Life Skills: 

"Anything you buy, you must maintain. Each tool you use requires time to learn how to use, to install, to upgrade, or to fix. A purchase is just the beginning. You can expect to devote as much energy/money/time in maintaining a technology as you did in acquiring it."

"What do you give up? This one has taken me a long time to learn. The only way to take up a new technology is to reduce an old one in my life already. Twitter must come at the expense of something else I was doing -- even if it is just daydreaming."

"Technologies improve so fast you should postpone getting anything until 5 minutes before you need it. Get comfortable with the fact that anything you buy is already obsolete. Therefore acquire at the last possible moment."

 I think it will eventually happen, just not today.

 

Getting the password management problem under control and then some

For 10 years my password management system has been a piece of paper in my desk drawer where I wrote down all the passwords to my different accounts.  Well, almost.  It seemed I never had them all in one place and was always having to reset one or another password because I had forgotten it.  Or I was at work or someplace else and didn't have access to my piece of paper.

Not anymore.  A couple of weeks ago I installed a software package called 1Password that allows me to keep all my passwords and related identity and account information in one file, protected with a single master password.  Forget or lose this password and the system fails, but in every other respect it seems a good solution. Not only does it let me store all my passwords and login information, but it lets me store all my account numbers, frequent flier numbers, software license keys, and even secure notes, so that I can remember what my "secret questions" and answers are that some sites require.  It is integrated with my browser so that I can capture and store logins whenever I access a system, and then it provides an easy way to generate strong passwords so that I can start using different passwords and strong passwords for every system I have access to, something that wasn't the case before.  

I had been thinking of getting such a tool for a while and was finally spurred on by a fascinating article about how a security firm was brutally hacked because the CEO was careless in the way he managed his passwords (among other things).  Like me he used the same password for multiple systems and in some cases used passwords that were weak and easily cracked.  With a tool like 1Password, there is no excuse for doing such a thing.  

The encrypted file sits in my Dropbox folder, which means it is synchronized across all my devices.  There is also an iPhone app that has access to this information.  So whether I need to remember the password to my wireless router or whether I need to get my frequent flier number, it's available from any of my devices.  I just need to remember the one password.  To me this is a key piece of my personal information management (PIM) puzzle and I'm glad I've got it under control.

   One password to rule them all

In search of the right notebook and notetaking system

In my last post, I wondered about whether the commonplace book is a good model for personal knowledge management or,  to put it more plainly, whether it is a good tool for capturing and remembering key ideas and concepts.  This has increased my interest in good examples of notebooks in use. This past week the VizThink blog posted an interesting 7 minute video of a designer discussing his notebooks, mostly filled with sketches and how they figure in his creative process.  I have also come across the blog Taking Note, "a blog on the nature of note-taking" which discusses notetaking tools and systems.  The most recent post discusses the diary entries of an Austrian writer concerning his system of notetaking:

Musil tried to make the vast material accessible to himself by assigning to entries a sequence of numerals and letters. Apparently, there are 100,000 of them. This system of reference is, however, very opaque to outsiders. In any case, his approach is not too dissimilar from the way in which other authors and thinkers tried to master the results of their note-taking and thinking. Whether Musil's system was more effective than that of others may be doubted.

I doubt my system needs to be terribly complex but it does need to be electronic. When I used a Windows machine I used Microsoft OneNote  and liked it, but now that I am using a Mac I am looking at tools like Devonnote, Scrivener, and OmniOutliner.  The solution has to have the ability to quickly organize and reorganize my notes and to create links between them which show the relationship of one idea or note to the other.  Thus, outlining capabilities are important as are linking capabilities. Otherwise I would like to keep it simple. One possibility: Mindmanager has the ability to switch between mindmap and outline view modes.  If each topic in a mindmap linked to a file containing a document or note that might work.

 Charles Darwin's first diagram of an evolutionary tree from his First Notebook on Transmutation of Species (1837)

Yes, Virginia, you can take your data with you

As more and more of my digital life takes place in the cloud I have much to be happy about.  I can access my information through services like Google Docs, Flickr, and Facebook from any computer and even from my iPhone.  I can easily share this information and collaborate with others secure in the knowledge that my information is backed up in professionally managed data centers.  Yet I wonder—will all this information be around in 5, 10, or 20 years?  Will Google and Flickr still exist?  Or will they pursue new business models that don't leave room for my data?  As new data formats come on the scene, will my stuff make the leap?  Or will it fall into the chasm of rotting data, and lie withering alongside the 8-track tapes and Betamax videocassettes.  In yet another scenario, what if I run afoul of Google's "terms of use" agreement and they delete my Gmail account?  You know, those pages of tiny print that we agree to and rarely read and which can change at any time?  If I didn't have a local copy of my emails, I would be out of luck.

These questions have prompted me to consider the question: can I take my data with me?  If not into the next life, at least into the next decade.  Thus I have looked at how the popular cloud-based services let me do this. Those of you who are Facebook users may be aware that they have recently announced a bulk download capability that lets you save your Facebook data offline.  I have tried it and it works quite well, providing a directory containing all the posts, messages, and photos that I had uploaded to Facebook as of that day. There is an HTML index file that lets me browse this content using my web browser.  So now, regardless of what Facebook does in the future—whether they go out of business or shutoff my account—I have a copy of this data. 

Google Docs has also done a good job with this, providing you the option of bulk downloading your documents (up to 2 GB at a time) and even giving you the opportunity of converting your files to a different format.  If you are using the Google Docs formats you have the option of converting your files to MS-Office, Open Office, Adobe PDF, plain text, and RTF formats.  Bravo Google!

Google Docs Export Screen

My chosen photo-sharing service, Flickr, on the other hand, is not as helpful.  I have a "Pro" account and have uploaded thousands of pictures, yet Flickr provides no bulk download option. I can download one photo at a time and even then, I won't get the captions, tags, or other metadata that I have added to my pictures.  Luckily, there are third party applications that have been created to do this. The most promising one is called Bulkr.  

I never thought about this issue when I signed up for these services but now see that the question of data portability is an important one.  Is the vendor locking up your data?  Do they let you easily export your files in industry standard formats that increase its likelihood of surviving into the next decade? But the responsibility isn't just theirs.  If the services offer these features you should use them, and periodically export your data and back it up using your own back-up system.  That is if you want to take it with you...

Mindmapping software: how far down this rabbit hole do you want to go?

In a previous post I discussed why mindmapping software is worth using.  Here, I want to talk about the software itself.

This category of software is best referred to as visual mapping software, because it includes functionality that goes beyond what mindmaps were originally designed for.  I think of it as visual information management software because I don't just use it to create and present information. I use it to manage information too: to-do lists, projects, and my research and learning work over time.

What follows is not a comprehensive review of available software, but rather recommendations based on my personal experience and research. I will start with the two products I am using: Mindjet's Mindmanager and Mindmeister, a web-based service.

Mindmanager

Mindmanager was the first package I used and is probably the best known commercial mindmapping software package.  Targeted primarily at business users, it is an excellent tool:  easy-to-use, loaded with useful functionality, and available for both Windows and Mac users.  Here are a few things I like about it:

•    Its core mindmapping capabilities are as strong as any I have seen
•    It is good for creating and sharing presentation quality mindmaps
•    It is good for creating interactive maps that you can load on websites

It’s also well integrated with Microsoft productivity tools; so if you use MS-Office, Outlook, MS-Project, and even SharePoint, there are interesting opportunities to use the applications together. More recently, Mindmanager has beefed up its project management capabilities.  It's a Cadillac product, but with a Cadillac price: $350 for Windows users (version 9) and $250 for Mac users (version 8).  Luckily I got mine while I was still working at a university, and got a reduced educational price. 

Mindmeister

I began using the second tool, Mindmeister, when I wanted to share my maps on the Web and collaborate.  I was drawn to the convenience of a web application that I could access from any browser on any machine, at home or at work.  What I found was a simpler tool than Mindmanager.  It had less functionality, but was easy to use, and for what I needed it was sufficient.  It has subscription pricing of $59 per year ($18/year for educational users).  In addition, there are mobile versions available for the iPhone and iPad.  The company is constantly releasing new features, and because it's a web application I get the new features when I login; no software upgrades required. 

I do have complaints though. The maps are not as polished as what I can produce with Mindmanager.  For presentation purposes I prefer Mindmanager.  Also, I occasionally get network hiccups while editing a mindmap, which means I have to wait a few seconds and hit reload on my browser. (Update: the latest release adddresses this lag issue.) Nonetheless, Mindmeister is the tool I use the most.  Right now, I only use Mindmanager for presentation quality mindmaps and for creating mindmaps to embed on webpages.  Although Mindmanager has come out with an online collaboration service, it's more complicated and costly to use than Mindmeister.

Thinking about which solution is best for you

When considering what software or service to use, think about the following questions:

1. How do you intend to share your mindmaps?

   Do you want people to be able to access them via the Web?  If so, do you want them to be able to have access to an interactive version that lets them open and close branches of the map, or is a static image sufficient?  If you will be printing them out, then look for good print formatting capabilities. Also look at the import and export capabilities.  If you will be presenting them in meetings then look at the presentation features.

2. How important is the visual look of these maps?

   Is it important for you to make them visually distinctive?  Do you want an "organic" look to your maps?  Do you wish to make extensive use of icons and images?   If so, look for how well a package delivers on this.

3. Do you intend to collaboratively create mindmaps with others?

   For collaborative creation of maps, I recommend a web-based service (i.e., Mindmeister).  Otherwise, your collaborators will need to get the same software package.  Also, web-based services can support simultaneous editing.

4. Do you use want to use it for task or project management?

   Then look for calendar integration and the ability to set due dates and easily add icons to designate task status or priority.

5. Do you want to create big mindmaps or manage lots of information with your mindmaps?

   If so, then look for filters and the ability to easily look at only 1, 2, 3...N levels of the map.  Look into the features for linking different maps together and managing collections of maps.

6. Do you want to edit or view your mindmaps using your mobile device?

   Then look at applications for your mobile device or the ability to add topics using email or SMS messages.

Other packages to consider

There are lots of options out there and reviews of new and upgraded offerings that are regularly published. Among the many others, these are definitely worth considering (available for both Windows PCs and Macs):

• Novamind – This is a polished, full-featured offering that is directly comparable to Mindmanager but costs less.  Its current version has been strongly reviewed and its new layout engine and visual formatting capabilities are reputed to be the best out there. The sense I get is that this tool is stronger visually than Mindmanager, but doesn’t have as many bells and whistles.

• The Brain - This is mindmapping on steroids. I haven’t yet tried it, but I am intrigued by its 3-D interface, its ability to express different kinds of relationships between concepts, and the way it is positioned as a tool for managing large personal knowledge-bases or “brains.”  Check out the short video on their web site, and maybe you’ll be intrigued enough to create a “brain” for yourself.

Lower cost options

• XMind – This is a capable, free, open-source offering that is a good choice for anybody wishing to get started in mindmapping but who doesn’t want to shell out any money. An upgraded version, XMind Pro, is available for a subscription price of $49 per year.

• Freemind -  This is the best known open source mindmapping package.  Though not as polished as Mindmanager or even XMind, it's quite capable.  Compared with XMind, it uses less memory, and is reported to be quicker and more responsive. See also Freeplane, which is a splinter offering, based on the original Freemind source code. 

• Inspiration - This software is targeted exclusively at the education market, which may account for its reasonable price: $69.  It doesn't contain much in the way of productivity features (task management, etc.) but lets you create more than just mindmaps. This includes concept maps, outlines, affinity diagrams and more. Kidspiration is a K-5 version.

My recommendation:  get started

The best way to see if mindmapping software is for you is to try it. Decide whether you want to use a client software package (loaded on your PC) or whether you want to use a web application. If you want client software, and money for a full-featured package isn't likely to be in the budget anytime soon, then start by using an open source or low cost package. Otherwise, test drive one of the full-featured packages like Novamind or Mindmanager. They pretty much all offer 30-day free trials.  If available, take advantage of video tutorials which are often helpful. My choice for a web application is Mindmeister, though if you want to look at other options, look at the list provided here.

A personal knowledge management system?

I'm always interested to see how people cobble together solutions for doing research and writing using the tools and services available.  The screencast below shows what online community pioneer Howard Rheingold is currently using:

Mindmaps as personal information managers

Need a better way to organize your thoughts, or better yet, a way to remember those thoughts you had yesterday?  For me, the mindmap is a good answer; or more specifically, mindmapping software.  In previous posts, I have shared links to mindmaps I created to get my head around the topics of personal information management (PIM) and personal knowledge management (PKM).  Here, I used them to visually organize my answers to key questions about the topic.  Likewise, I use them to diagram information in books I am reading, so as to better remember them. (One example is here. Here is a different one.).  It’s no surprise then, that students can be found using mindmaps to organize their notes and classwork.  For an example, see this 23 minute video showing in detail how one student uses Mindjet’s Mindmanager software to manage his schoolwork.  Here is a good definition from Wikipedia of what a mindmap is:

A mindmap is a diagram used to represent words, ideas, tasks, or other items linked to and arranged around a central key word or idea. Mindmaps are used to generate, visualize, structure, and classify ideas, and as an aid to studying and organizing information, solving problems, making decisions, and writing.

While these maps can be created with pens or pencils, it was the advent of mindmapping software that allowed mindmaps to be used for personal information management.  With software you can link concepts on a map to electronic resources:  web sites, files, images, and notes.  With software you can create maps that are easily shared and reused.  You can also expand or collapse sections of a map with a click of your mouse and control the detail that is visible, especially useful if you have a big or complex map.  This interactivity and the ability to visualize a topic and the relationships between items is what makes the tool compelling to me.

Also, mindmapping software has another key attribute that I rarely see mentioned: you don’t have to draw the mindmaps!  Unlike conventional drawing programs, mindmapping software lets you concentrate on entering the information and it creates the diagram for you.  Yes, you can manipulate the maps and format them to enhance their presentation, but you don’t have to spent lots of time sizing, placing, and connecting individual elements.  This frees you to focus on the topic at hand.

I first learned about mindmapping through my work as an information architect. Someone on a listserv recommended Mindjet’s Mindmanager software as a tool for prototyping taxonomies and creating Web sitemaps (which I now use it for).  But it was in organizing my work where I came to love it.  I used it to manage my task lists and diagram big, complicated projects. Not only did it help me to better understand those projects, but when I shared them with others, it helped them understand those projects as well.  And as a presentation tool it was more fun to use than PowerPoint. 

 Here are other uses I have made of mindmapping software:

• Task management / lightweight project management – Mindmapping software often includes the ability to manage tasks, with to-do dates and resources.  Icons that show task status and priority can be added to provide easy-to-read, interactive, project dashboards.
• Outlining writing projects – A mindmap can help you quickly capture and organize all the ideas you have for a document you are writing.  Here, it’s part brainstorming tool and part visual outliner.  
• Brainstorming – This is one of the original uses of mindmaps.  Some packages include timers to support this.   Used in combination with an overhead projector, an online mindmap can be used to rapidly capture and display the results of a group brainstorming session.
• Personal information dashboards – Because they can link to other objects mindmaps can be used to create a visual dashboard to tasks and reminders, goals, key bookmarks, documents in progress, and other key files.   These can be organized visually using any labels, images, or colors you desire.  In this scenario, a mindmap becomes your personal productivity home page.

Next Post:  Mindmapping software: how far down this rabbit hole do you want to go?

Personal Knowledge Management: Getting to know what you know (and don't)

A recent article in the journal First Monday has got me thinking about personal knowledge management (PKM).   The author, William Jones, describes PKM as a subset of personal information management (PIM) and states that while knowledge cannot be managed directly, information about knowledge can be and that this is worth doing.   I think I agree.

Roughly speaking this information can be broken into two categories: what we know and what we need to know but don’t.   Information about what we know is useful personally and professionally, especially if we can share it with others and put it to good use.  Capturing this information can be useful because sometimes we forget what we know or what we’ve done in the past.  Reviewing it can help us prevent “knowledge decay.”  

Thus I want tools to help me do this:  tools to capture, archive, and share what I know and what I have done, but also tools that help me remember these things. This can include everything from a basic text editor to sophisticated knowledge-base software for capturing and indexing all the information that I touch or create (stay tuned – I don’t have one yet!).

One tool I use to do this is mindmapping software, which I use to capture course and book notes and to diagram my understanding of different topics. So naturally I have created a mindmap to diagram my first take on what personal knowledge management is or could be, and the activities and tools I associate with it.  Click on the image below to load an interactive flash version of this map.  (If you have a problem viewing that, try an interactive PDF version.)  I will write more about mindmaps in an upcoming post.

The other side of the coin, information about what we need to know but don’t, is also worth capturing.  But before doing this, I think we need to know where we are headed.  This means being clear about our personal mission, and the possibility we are trying to live towards: what our goals are, our values, and our guiding principles.  Thus, I choose to write these things down and refer to them, changing them as needed but keeping them foremost in my mind, so that I can use them to guide my decisions and my quest for knowledge.  This is perhaps the most important “knowledge” that needs to be managed. 

On putting together an uber e-mail archive: or why saving my e-mail has paid off

I’ve been using e-mail for a long time and since about the mid-90s have been trying to save or archive my e-mail so it would be available later.  After using Microsoft Outlook for years I switched to a Macintosh, and am now using Thunderbird as my email software.  After a little fancy footwork, I managed to get my Outlook archive files converted and moved over. The process wasn’t pretty, but it’s all there, e-mail from 4 different employers and personal e-mail stretching back 15 years.

As I flip back through old e-mail folders I remember much that has been forgotten, including how much I used to depend on folders to organize my e-mail!   There were times when I doubted the value of saving this stuff, but not anymore.  So much of my life both personal and professional is archived in these messages: so many details, so many particulars that would otherwise be gone, lost in the fog.  In the mail that I sent is a journal of what I was working on, thinking about and saying, nicely time-stamped complete with names, dates, and places.  In the file attachments is a portfolio of my work: projects, reports, plans, diagrams and more—handy stuff when you are updating your resume or preparing for a new project.

This archive is also a scrapbook of things shared between me, my family, and my friends: photos, jokes, cartoons, articles, requests, rants, compliments given and received, and “hard e-mails” written in times of pain and crisis.  

I’m happy to have this information at my fingertips, rather than locked up in some inaccessible archive files on my back-up drive.  It means I can put this information to work for me whenever I want.   Looking forward I need to make sure I can take it with me.   So whenever I move machines or e-mail clients I won’t do it without answering that question.  Do you have any intention of “taking it with you” and archiving your e-mail for life?  Do you know how you’re going to do it?



When does Personal Information Management (PIM) become important?

Learning to appreciate the value of managing your digital stuff doesn’t happen overnight.  What happens is that slowly, over time, you accumulate more and more stuff on your computers—photos, email, contacts, documents, music files, etc.—and then one day you realize that 1) it is a tangled mess, and 2) it has become valuable, irreplaceable even.

A new project has come up and you vaguely remember having done something like this years ago.  Can you quickly put your hands on the documents from that earlier project, and thus save yourself from starting from scratch?   A good friend has died and you want to share some good pictures with loved ones.   Can you find them quickly using a name search, or will you need to browse through thousands of pictures with labels like IMG_939.jpg, IMG_940.jpg?  In which case it’s probably not going to happen. 

In these and many other cases, I have come to realize that managing my digital assets for the long haul has become important.  Like an adjunct to my personal memory, like an “off-line” data store, my digital stuff will be an invaluable companion in the years to come, making me smarter and more productive.   At the end of my life, I envision myself sitting in the nursing home with all of it at my fingertips.  But that’s another story…

It has to survive the many transitions in life: leaving jobs, changing computers, changing software, moving into and out of the “cloud.”  At each juncture there is the danger of losing information—this beyond the obvious dangers of system failure and security breaches.  But more importantly, my information needs to be quickly accessible, for if I can’t put my hands on it quickly I probably won’t use it.

And because nobody cares about my information like I do, it’s up to me to figure out how to not only protect my digital stuff but how to manage it so it stays usable over time and grows in value as it grows in size.   What I need is a process for doing this, a set of guidelines that I can follow, independent of whatever software, device, or online service I am using, as these will change over time.  This, I think, is the challenge of personal information management.