Outliner/PIM roll call: Fall 2011

Posted by DaXiong
Sep 25, 2011 at 01:43 AM

I have several part-time jobs that all involve speaking, writing, and presenting; so the software I use is for the communicating process, not as an organizer or to-do list manager.

Rough Draft - Probably one of the tools I use the most. It’s a freeware txt/rtf editor. For basic writing, including simple formatting like bold/italics, nothing is simpler or easier.

Inspiration - Probably the only outliner I use as an outliner. I don’t use its mind-mapping features, but as an outliner for writing, it works the way I do. (Note: I don’t use mind mappers, their process doesn’t seem to work with me.)

ConnectedText - I love this program, can’t speak highly enough about it. I use it to collect things, and develop relationships between ideas and concepts. I also appreciate the fact it has two modes: an editing mode and a display mode (you can’t make changes in display mode).

Sense - Recently purchased this, not the most intuitive, but powerful in seeing the structure of my writing.

Finally, an honorable mention. Often, when I start the creative process I have no clue where I’‘m going, or what the relationships are between various ideas I have. I find PowerPoint indispensable here. I fire it up, switch to outline view, and start blasting ideas, one per slide, until I’ve got them all down. Then, I can drag them around until an outline pops out that I can go with. A quick export to Word, and I can either work there, or go on and pull it into one of the other programs.

What’s the perfect tool? I can’t imagine there is one. But a lot of programs I’d love to use are not intuitive to me. I’d put here noteliner, sqlnotes and several others. I see their power, but they don’t work the way my mind does. What I want is something that saves my work in an open format, so I can use whichever tool is best for the task. Since most of what I do is writing, I’d love to see an editor that saves as HTML with formatting in a css file. (yeah, I won’t hold my breath).