Where Should I Keep My Stuff? - DBR 054

Do Busy Right - The Task and Attention Management Podcast

I talk about the tool set for the kind of information and attention management that Attention Compass provides. I get a lot of questions about: I use tool X. What about tool Y? What tools should I use? Most of this revolves around “where should I keep my stuff?” And we'll talk about that today. When I say tool, I mean online service, system, database, to keep my stuff. Google Keep, Apple Notes, Clickup, etc. The information storage tool is a core part of the Attention Compass system. Our information is a primary consumer of our attention in two ways: comprehending it and finding it when we need it. The storage tool is primarily about ‘finding’. It is vitally important that you have a tool, a place. We'll talk about why that is. And we’ll talk about the purpose and properties of a good tool. So here we'll lay out what the purpose of a tool is, some of the properties that a tool should have. It's not exhaustive, and that way, you'll have a better picture of what's going on. In general, the tool here is the container and storehouse for our information

• We're talking about a tool for personal information management – a storehouse for information. Our storehouses have “containers”.
• A library (information storehouse) has books (information containers).
• Is having a container the ideal? I really can't envision another way to do it.

Container

• The container defines what our information can do, and more importantly, defines what we can do with our information.
• Container is not a rigorously defined term,
• Challenge: medialessness = ‘container’ as a metaphorical term it's all just electronic, and we can mimic containers – OneNote = electronic paper
• (Almost) everything about OneNote to me looked like a piece of paper.
• OneNote – an astonishing difference
• Back to the container – metaphor from the physical
• Now containers are really just metaphorical
• The app developer creates the container and creates the metaphor for how you use the container
• And that’s how information is stored in computer apps

The ‘right’container

• The ‘right’ container is pretty murky - we don't know what a fundamental unit of information is (it ain’t the bit)
• So we have to create our own containerized units of information – examples: a note, a text field in an app, a snippet of audio
• The kind of container matters in how we're able to use the tool, and what the tool is able to do.

Another example of container: a calendar appointment

• Certain kinds of information goes in there very well.
• Other kinds of information doesn't fit well
• Can I mangle the container in such a way that it supports storing a chapter of your book?
• a Google Calendar calendar event may have different fields than an Outlook calendar calendar event.
• Are they both calendar events? Or is one different enough that we need to come up with a different name for it?

Container names don’t convey much information

• Back in the day, it was easier because the medium defined the properties of the information.
• A note in evernote and a note in onenote are different critters, because they have different ways they can interact.

What kinds of containers are best?

• The PIM folks give a list of kinds of information that our systems should support. Does a tool have containers that support these four kinds of information well?
• You can say, Okay, well, here's why it would be a good Personal Information Management tool, and here's where it would be weak.
• People get enamored of a container type and devote themselves to that container type without much thought about Well, is it an effective container? “my tool is the best tool, and it works for me…”
• From a pure informational standpoint, there is very little difference between the bits that are stored in a contact record versus the bits that are stored in a calendar container.
• I counsel people to not get so married to one app, but really think about what the app does

Also, a system has properties – these are more about the library (storehouse) than the book(s) (containers)

• Property is something that applies to all the different container categories equally
• Properties that a personal information system needs to have
• Security
• Data availability
• Information management - archiving, backups, etc.

I've discovered some good properties of information that are just now being embodied in tools,

• The storage metaphor
• The retrieval mechanism
• It's fine to store it, but if you can't retrieve it, it's useless
• Global Search has its place, but it is not a panacea.

List of four

• The personal information management people have four kinds of content that a system needs to handle.
• They're not perfect categories. Classification systems – Mendeleev’s Table of the Elements
• Contact management is about the people in our lives
• Calendar information is all about managing our time
• Communication management is about interactions with people
• Records management = historical data management. This is the blurriest of the categories.
• In attention compass we talk about actionable information versus reference information. Maybe a fifth kind?

How to determine if a tool stacks up?

• A framework for evaluating tools based on the 10 properties
• Compare tools based on how well they support each property.
• The challenges of using multiple "best-of-breed" solutions
• Be open minded about the tools - don't get "married" to one

Recap