praxistheologia.com

For the past year or so I’ve been evaluating and trying out different styles of self organization. I first worked with the venerable palm pilot, then a combination of iCal and Word for appointments and todo lists. I tried post it notes with todo items stuck together in a pad I kept in my pocket. But each of these has their own drawback. About 6 months ago I discovered a wonderful piece of software from Barebones called “Yojimbo“. It was, for me, a revelatory way of storing information. I became one of BareBoness’ famed zealot customers, introducing numerous fellow students and friends to Yojimbo. Yet as easy as it was to use, as powerful as it was to organize, and as work-free it was to add items, there was something I felt Yojimbo was missing. Namely the ability to collate and automatically sort my information. Sure I could view individual collections of information that, for all the world feel like playlists, but Yojimbo wasn’t actually aware of what my information was. To be fair Yojimbo has an extremely powerful built in search engine, and I can easily find whatever it is I’m looking for.

But I wanted more.

I started investigating other “information management” applications. Interestingly, there doesn’t seem to be a market for windows based information management. I spent a few weeks investigating various information management tools such as voodoo pad, and SOHO Notes/Organizer before stumbling upon a link to DevonThink via a 43folders link. (one should also subscribe to LifeHacker -despite the authors proclivity for windows-) It took about 2 hours of working with voodoo pad for me to dismiss it as a bad implementation of Circus Ponies NoteBook or AquaMinds NoteTaker. Not only was it badly Implemented I already use NoteBook and didn’t see any benefit in duplicating functionality. I enjoyed the beautiful interface that Soho Notes/Organizer has but I was unimpressed by the features offered by Soho. I love the fact that Yojimbo uses the built in database server and offers encryption as well as data prototypes for serial #’s passwords etc. Soho offered me none of these. I moved on to DevonThink, and it’s partner program DevonAgent. Though DevonThink doesn’t use the Mac osX database server, or offer data prototypes beyond “Rich Text”, I found that it’s feature set far eclipses any of the other competitors. What I find most compelling about DevonThink is it’s indexing and Artificial Intelligence. By linking in my documents directory DevonThink becomes aware not only of the content of those files, but also their author, and their keywords. DevonThink then cross references these files and allows me to search and identify common points between topics. For instance, I can search for Augustine and see not only my notes from church history, but also a summary of his key points as identified by my notes and the catholic encyclopedia reference I have linked in. Or I can search for Sex, and see all the times that it’s discussed by Augustine, as well as Dr. Hall and the context of it’s usage in each instance. This is phenomenal for theological research. I liked it well enough to shell out 75 bucks for it. (and I almost NEVER buy software.)

That glowing review aside, I’m keeping yojimbo around. I like the way it encrypts entries as desired and the way it provides passwords and serial number data prototypes. I highly commend DevonThink if you’re a student, and Yojimbo if you’re a at-home user. But in tandem they provide a wonderful interface for both information management as well as an excellent interface for GTD, or “Getting Things Done,” which I’ll talk about tomorrow.