# Personal information management

Several weeks ago, I began using personal wiki software [Zim Wiki](http://zim-wiki.org/) (free and cross-platform for Linux & Windows; I recommend [nvALT](http://brettterpstra.com/projects/nvalt/) on Mac OS X) to record all of my notes-to-self.  I've found it to be a nice software tool for implementing some of the effectiveness advice I've read on Less Wrong.  This post is a fairly personal overview of my usage.

I looked at a lot of personal information managers before choosing Zim.  Here are the features that caused me to choose it over the other software I looked at:

*   Probably the most important feature: Jump-to-note capability with autocomplete.  Pressing Control-J gives a text box.  Start typing in the text box and it autocompletes with the names of any of the notes in my notebook (or allows me to create a new note).  This is the proverbial 10% of the feature set that provides 90% of the benefit over scattered text files.  Opening a specific note to add another thought or idea to it is a very common operation for me and this feature makes it very quick.  Only a few tools I've found seem to have comparable functionality: [WikidPad](http://wikidpad.sourceforge.net/) (with Control-O), and the [Notational Velocity](http://www.google.com/search?q=notational+velocity) family of information managers kind of have it.  (For Notational Velocity/nvALT, I recommend coming up with some kind of namespacing scheme so note names collide with note text less frequently in your searches.  For example, I prepend reminders for future situations with "f.", journal notes with "j.", [policy notes](/lw/flr/thoughts_on_designing_policies_for_oneself/) with "p.", Less Wrong post drafts with "l.", etc.  Then command-L works as a pretty good "jump to note" shortcut.)
    
*   Pressing Control-D, then pressing return inserts a timestamp at the position of my cursor.  This has been useful for a variety of logging-type applications.  (I replicated the same thing with nvALT on OS X with [aText](https://www.trankynam.com/atext/).)
    
*   Zim is a desktop application.  This has a couple advantages:
    
    *   I configured a keyboard shortcut to open it, or bring it to the front if it was already open, using a modified version of the Linux shell script in [this forum thread](http://web.archive.org/web/20091121045303/http://ubuntuforums.org/archive/index.php/t-197207.html).  ([Alfred](http://www.alfredapp.com/) is nice for this on OS X.)
        
    *   All my notes are stored as plain text files on my hard drive.  I keep them under version control, which lets me do things like answer the question "what new ideas for becoming more effective have I had over the past week?"  (I didn't use the built-in version control plugin because I found its UI glitchy.)
        
*   There's inter-note linking capability, also with an autocompletion dialogue.  (Press Control-L to create a link.)
    
*   Moving through note browsing history can be done with Alt-Left and Alt-Right.
    
*   It starts fast.

*   Notes are saved automatically, hierarchical note organization is possible, backlinks are tracked, incremental keyword search within a note is possible, and there appear to be a variety of other features I haven't yet had a chance to abuse.

Using Zim has meant a really low level of [friction](http://wiki.lesswrong.com/wiki/Trivial_inconvenience) for writing new stuff and retrieving/reading/adding to stuff I wrote.  I've been using it about a month and I've got ~46K words in it, which seems to be around the length of a short novel. [RescueTime](http://rescuetime.com/) says I use it 4-8 hours per week.  Some stuff I'm using it for:

*   [Strategizing](/lw/2p5/humans_are_not_automatically_strategic/).  There's something kind of calming about writing my thoughts out when I'm choosing between several options or trying to figure out what to do.  I suspect that as soon as the amount of information related to a decision exceeds the capacity of my working memory, I benefit from writing stuff down.
    
*   [Logging stuff](/lw/deq/where_to_intervene_in_a_human/6yqm).
    
*   [Writing therapy](/lw/94t/meta_analysis_of_writing_therapy/).
    
*   Recording business ideas, self-experimentation ideas, essay ideas, etc.
    
*   Making plans and filing away notes related to future circumstances.
    
*   Taking notes related to software I'm developing.
    

It's hard to measure how much benefit I'm getting out of all this, though it feels pretty useful.  I'm inclined to agree with [Paul Graham](http://paulgraham.com/island.html):

> ...actually there is something druglike about \[the notebook and pen\], in the sense that their main purpose is to make me feel better. I hardly ever go back and read stuff I write down in notebooks. It's just that if I can't write things down, worrying about remembering one idea gets in the way of having the next. Pen and paper wick ideas.