Miscellaneous Organizational Tips

This article provides a few miscellaneous tips relating to Gmail, Pocket PC Notes, and BlackBerry Use.

Gmail

Just in case you haven’t noticed it yet, Gmail now has colored-label capability, as illustrated in the screenshot to the right (from my inbox).

This is really a slick feature, and enhances Gmail’s use as a task management interface. My sense is that more and more people are turning to using Gmail and Google Calendar as their sole means of managing their activities. I do not have hard data to support this, but I hear of more and more people doing it. (For example, see RK’s comment on one of my recent posts.) It is possible I could move toward doing this myself, especially if and when I get an iPhone.

Pocket PC Notes

On a separate organizational topic: Dan emailed me a couple of days ago with a question about how best to sync his 450 Outlook Notes to his Pocket PC. Seems when he tried to do this using the normal sync method that he ran out of memory on his Pocket PC.

In doing his own research on dealing with this, he came across a forum discussion on storing Outlook Notes on a Pocket PC Storage Card. I thought some of you might be interested in this forum article, and I thank Dan for bringing it to our attention.

My initial comment back to Dan was that I thought it would be better to store programs on his storage card, leaving more room for storing Notes (and other data) on his Pocket PC. That’s what I have always tried to do: keep programs on an SD card so there is plenty of room for data in RAM (and/or ROM). There are a few programs you cannot do this with, such as Today Plugins (these need to start when the device starts and before its boot-check coding scans for programs on cards), but you can do it with most programs.

But, it occurred to me that some of you may have yet another alternative, so I (and Dan) look forward to any suggestions you have.

By the way, you may say: that’s a lot of notes. Well, yes it is, but it is not that uncommon for someone who comes from a Palm background, as Dan has and as I have. (Of course I have been using Pocket PCs for years now, but I did start with the Palm framework, but I do still tinker with my Palm TX from time to time.) Palm makes it so easy to organize Notes, because it lets you assign categories to them. Unfortunately, the Windows Mobile platform does not do this, and it just lumps all of your Notes together.

There are ways to overcome this WM deficiency, such as through the purchase of additional programs.

But, if you want to just stick with the basic apps on the Pocket PC, the method I would suggest would be to set up folders in your Pocket PC’s My Documents folder. You could use folder names such as Personal, Business, Projects, Maybe, Someday, etc … basically whatever “categories” would make the most sense for you. The Notes app will still show you a list of them all lumped together, but if you use File Manager to view the folders, you can view them by folder.

If you would like to use this folder method and don’t mind spending a little bit of money, then I would recommend Agenda Fusion, which is a nice PIM and will also let you view the notes by these “categories” (folders).

By the way, while I use the Notes in my Dell x51v and Palm Tx (mostly for reference), I pretty much side with Tim Ferriss that the best way to take notes is with good old pen and paper. I do not have an indexing system as sophisticated as his, nor do I use the variety of notebooks that he does: I pretty much use a college-ruled legal pad or Moleskine notebooks. A lot of my idea generation is done on paper, as is all of my blog brainstorming, my diary (Moleskine), and progress tracking for selected projects. Just wanted emphasize again that I strive to use the tools that work best for me, instead of trying to mold what I do to fit certain systems.

For Fellow CrackBerry Users

The following is a quote of a quote, with my quote coming from a BlackBerry Cool article:

Professor Middleton, who teaches at the Ted Rogers School of Information Technology Management, found reports of BlackBerry use in the shower, at funerals, at children’s soccer matches, school performances and on vacations. She came across one woman who caught her husband e-mailing under the table during their Valentine’s Day dinner and another whose companion checked e-mail during their first date.

If you see yourself being talked about in this quote, here’s my tip: take a breather. Get a life. Get perspective. No doubt you are thinking: Whoa Keener … you are sure sounding preachy. Well, I just don’t want anyone to make the mistakes I’ve made in my past. When my wife passed away, she knew beyond a doubt that I loved her more than anything in the world and she knew it for many years. But there was a time when she probably thought of herself as an item to be worked into my schedule. Fortunately, I came around, but, sadly, a lot of people still have some learning to do in this area. Probably a lot of us need some tweaking in this area from time to time.

The topic of the BlackBerry Cool article is “Study: BlackBerrys fail to balance work and life.” Whenever I come across an article like this I think back to the fact that Warren Buffett does not even have a cellphone. Yet, he probably gets more done in a day than most of us do in a week.

I love my BlackBerry. And, yes, they are addictive. But, they will not keep me from enjoying the time I spend with my family. Life is short and how we spend our time matters.