Good tip. What I do with these lists is compose an email in Gmail and either save as a draft or send it to myself. Then I simply search for those keywords and access it.

Whenever I drink a bottle of wine, I take a photo of it, add it to iPhoto and the keyword “wine”, and give the photo a star-rating, according to how good the drop was. I have a smart album of all photos tagged with wine. This helps me remember which bottles I should seek out again and which are duds. Every time I add a new photo, I review the old ones. I invented this system because when I’m at the liquor store, I can usually remember what I’ve drunk before, but not whether it was any good… if I had an iPod photo, the system would work even better.

The list of quotes is an old and venerable idea.

Since I’m trying to research a pretty multidisplinary field, I like to use DevonThink for pretty much this purpose. I wonder if spotlight will prove as useful?

One weakness of your apparently all-electronic approach to this is that you thumb drive isn’t going to be very helpful when you’re standing in the store trying to remember what kind of vacuum cleaner bag you need. I like the idea of capturing this stuff on your computer, but it’s equally important to be able to recall these things regardless of where you are and what kind of gadgets you have available. And I agree with piers that DEVONthink works well for this… I just need to remember to print it out periodically and haul it with me.

cheers, nickel

@nickel: Yep, it’s absolutely the place where a PDA excels. It’s so nice to have all that right with you wherever you go.

For myself, I keep most of the “vacuum cleaner bag” stuff in a program called “Splash Shopper” (which is made to sync with a Palm as luck would have it). I use the desktop version to store, maintain, and generate all my shopping list stuff on paper, then take it with me. Not the same, but it works fine for my brain and habits.

Your point’s well taken though. The thumbdrive is great for portability but not mobile access. All the more reason those godless heathens at Palm should send me a Treo (11 months on the review “waiting list” and counting). :)

I second the PDA route. I use notes in my Pocket PC for these categories. I especially need a list of Music CDs I want to own because when I get into a music store, I can NEVER remember what they were!

Have you considered getting on a review list for a Pocket PC ?

Have you considered getting on a review list for a Pocket PC ?

Sure, if it’s free and syncs seamlessly with a Mac.

Quotes - “Cool Quotes - where I can jot down quotations I come across that I like.??? (Joel Millican)

I put these in a page-a-day-type bound calendar book, on the day that I encounter the quotation - and then I reuse the same book every year! I’ve been accumulating “quotes of the day” for years now, and on most days I have at least one quotation to reflect on and remember. (The modern incarnation is putting these in my calendar software, repeating every year on the same day.)

I absolutely love this idea. I am a huge fan of the good old fashioned .txt file. I always have bits and pieces of crap I want to save, URLs, quotes, article texts, stories, whatever. This would be a great way to keep track of this - sort of a running history file.

This also fits into another neat idea, the idea that someone else can retrieve your stuff if you’re killed in a horrible Bird Flu epidemic.

I’m going to start one of these tonight and I’m never going to stop using it.

For a text editor, I think I like Notetab Pro the best. It handle’s HUGE text files, it has a nice spell checker, some good text statistics, its cheap (Light is free), and its super fast.

One problem I will have to figure out is a way to run this remotely. Either I’ll have to do the thumb drive idea (although my POS laptop only has one USB jack) or I’ll have to find a good way to keep it remotely. I’ll think of something =)

Great idea, I love it. Thanks for posting!!

Mike Shea mike@mikeshea.net

Cleaning out a closet, I happened to find an old card game (RACK-O). Inside the box I found four plastic card racks designed to hold the playing cards in a vertical position for easy viewing.

Then the thunderbolt struck!

I realized that I could stand these card racks on my desk, insert my various GTD index cards into the slots and have them “in my line of sight” while I am working. Having them in my field of vision, I have constant reminders about what I am waiting for … priorities … call backs … whatever. Granted, this impacts the portatbility of the GTD cards, but when you know you’re going to be chained to the desk for a period of time, this could be a good accessory!

Handy Lists to Maintain

Handy lists to maintain

Decomplicating Future

A personal diary and todo-lists are ways of backing up history and future. I remember what has happened. That is my personal history. I try to plan what will happen. That is my personal future. In this way both history and future have a certain (and…

Back in September

The summer is in full swing now and with three days left before holidays, I am determined to at get some sort of tan this summer. On that note, I will be cutting back all internet use to the bare-bones until after labour day. I will only be using the…