Organizing vs. searching

Posted by Dominik Holenstein
Nov 22, 2006 at 08:01 AM

Chris,

You are raising the right issue:
I always think that I should remove all the Outliner/PIM/Organizer software from my PC and just use a simple text editor and save all information, snippets, URLs etc. in one folder (or only a few folder, but not in a hierarchy (folder in folder)). on my USB stick. Then I just need a very simple and fast text search engine to retrieve the needed information in these text files. Most text editors have such a search engine included. Best is, when you can save your search queries for late reuse.

I think it is worth to test such a basic approach. If you don’t want to use a text editor your can implement this approach in Ultra Recall, ADM or Zoot (or any other application).

These are my main issues with hierarchical organisation of data:
- I don’t know anymore in in which folder I have put my note three days ago
- The created hierarchy today is logical and helpful. But in two weeks I think ‘why have I created this stupid hierarchy?’
- To find an information where I don’t know exactly where it is I am using the search engine

Dominik