Information Overload Awareness Day

Today, October 19, is Information Overload Awareness Day 2021. These days, we have more information flowing into our lives than at any former time in history. The Internet has accelerated the flow of information exponentially.

“Information overload has become a well-known problem: pieces of knowledge pile up too fast for people to sort and make sense of them.” ~ K. Eric Drexler

Getting Started Using Personal Knowbase for Miscellaneous Notes

A common purpose for starting to use Personal Knowbase is to take control of all the miscellaneous information that passes through our lives. Collected observations and ideas. Captured thoughts and conversations. They accumulate on bits of paper on our desk, in our drawers, or in boxes of 3x5 index cards. Or they may be scattered around your hard drive in emails and small text files in multiple software formats.

Many notes are not associated with a person or a date, so storing them in contact management software doesn't make sense. But we know they may be useful later, if only we can find them when we need them.

Using Personal Knowbase for Contact Management

A common use for Personal Knowbase is to store contact and address information. Create a Personal Knowbase "index card" file for your contacts.

In Personal Knowbase's terminology, we refer to each "index card" as an "article". Make an article for each contact containing all information and notes about that person, company, or organization. You can easily sort, print, search, index, and filter the list of entries.

Personal Knowbase Stay-at-Home Project Ideas

Many of us are finding unstructured time on our hands while on lockdown, quarantine, or shelter in place. Our last post outlined general productivity tips to help cope during "Shelter in Place".

If you decide to use your self-isolation time to start a project (or make progress on a previously languishing project), create a Personal Knowbase data file for it and collect all its notes in one place. Personal Knowbase's freeform note management system can help with organizing the related notes, research, and records. Use it to keep track of related website accounts and online resources. Attach related files to the corresponding PK articles.

Using Personal Knowbase to Organize Recipes

Whether you're an ardent chef, you're gathering together all your extended family's recipes, you're studying mixology, or you just bake occasionally for holidays, Personal Knowbase provides a natural and flexible way to organize your recipes. Collect all your recipes in one place where you can access them on your computer, print them, or export them to text files.

Here are some ideas for setting up a PK data file for your recipes.

Cleaning off Your Desk with Personal Knowbase

Today is National Clean Off Your Desk Day, which falls on the second Monday of January every year. Personal Knowbase can't help you get rid of old pens, half-used batteries, and that broken coffee mug. But it can help you tidy up all those scattered bits of paper.

As part of your efforts, try this:

PK Tip: Quick Email Address Book

If you use Personal Knowbase to keep track of contacts, try inserting each person's email addresses in the Attachments field to create a quick email address book.

Using Personal Knowbase as Index Card Software

Since the 1980's, we've been using personal computers to replace tasks that we used to do with pen and paper. We used paper index cards for many purposes from research to recipes. Now we put that information on our computer.

Although we now enter most information directly into our computers, the structure of the data often still resembles how index card systems used to work. We have digitized our index card projects.

PK Tip: Creating Template Articles

If you frequently need to create Personal Knowbase articles with similar text fields, forms, or subheadings, you can save time and typing by creating "template" articles.

Productivity Tips: 5 Tips for Your Email Inbox

Every year, our email inboxes get fuller and fuller. For many people, email is the preferred method of communication due to the ease of sending emails. Unlike with phone calls, both parties don't have to be available at the same time, you can send the same message to multiple recipients, and you can copy and paste blocks of text without rewriting. Here are tips for getting the deluge under control: