Fifty Fifty

Since working in industry and teaching in institutes now I’m 50% automated and 50% paper with respect to organizing myself. On the automated flip I use the bookmarking in Outlook to mark important items. I create a inbox folder for each year and quickly move all the read items I want to keep, but don’t require action into those. Then I put action items into another folder. At the start of a project I use Evernote (www.evernote.com) and create a category for the project. All the research goes down into here and I can quickly find it. It’s just yet another click to grab web pages and emails. All pages older than 2 months go into a small box, so anything can be found. In essence the Outlook is short term memory which is needed the most, and Internet Explorer and Evernote are long term memory.

Plus I get reporting, backups, reminders, sorting, and all the other stuff one would expect with going digital. When I start a brand new day, I make a folder with current date, and use different folders for different tasks. Personal items (phone calls, dentist, shopping errands,social gatherings, etc) go in one folder, to-do list goes up in the top folder, and notes on the day get written down in yet another folder and stay there until I leave the office. My blog ideas and relative notes (which regularly pop-up during the day) goes down in yet another folder.

But in the end, to be honest with you, all the technical mumbo-jumbo often gets cumbersome and I more than often return to dear old pen and paper. Sticky notes are still the favourites.