Info collection/use; authoring ideas, organization, composition - my personal approach

Posted by Cassius
Oct 20, 2007 at 10:23 PM

Back in GV days, before MS Word became ascendant, I used GV for everything, even equations (for which I added printer codes). GV had more text formatting capabilities than Zoot has, apparently even now. And, I believe that GV’s Category-Assignment capabilities were a fair analog of Zoot’s. (If I’m wrong, please disabuse me.) I own Zoot, but its lack of basic test formatting has kept me from using it.

1. Info storage/use:
When I worked on projects that had background information available, I would save relevant documents as separate files in a program-specific folder. Sometimes there would be hundreds, mostly with redundant information. I had neither the time nor energy to read/sift through these for relevant info. Besides which, as a project progressed, what was relevant often changed. I occasionally would use a search program to sift for relevant info, but not too often. It was much better, when possible, to speak directly with people with “hands-on” info. (Management seldom had a clue as to reality.)

In sum, for the work I did, most document/info collection proved to be a waste of time. For research-oriented work, I had an extensive library of technical books and access to a research library. When appropriate, I would put relevant reference info (title, page, author, etc.) into GV or another PIM, but these instances usually were relatively few because of the subjects of my work/projects

For truly personal info such as medical, business address, hobbies, etc. info, I used GV, but now either Jot+ or MyBase. (I’m thinking about Ultra Recall.) For contacts and appointments I use Ecco, and I carry a shirt-pocket, paper planner..

2. Authoring:

My ideas or inspirations have either been self-generated or have come from something I’ve read or heard that generated a…“That’s it!!”

For organization, I used GV until it became moribund, then Inspiration (which is “clunky” to use), and currently NoteMap (even if it will never be updated). These single-pane outliners make it very easy to move topics around and build a document into virtually finished form. I also use these to save ideas, references, etc. Finally, I “rtf” export to Word, where I do a final cleanup/format.

For creating diagrams for my potential readers, I use Inspiration.

3. A question:

Has anyone actually had a new idea or inspiration solely as a result of a link among entries that was generated by software such as Connected Text?

-c