Fundamental shifts of position

Posted by MadaboutDana
Jan 16, 2015 at 03:57 PM

I had already got into the habit of doing something some people will regard as slightly peculiar.

After saving a web page to Keep Everything, I quickly review the article view of that page and ensure that all the content has been preserved (not always the case, due to the difficulty of extracting all relevant data from highly complex web pages).

Once I’m happy all the content is in the article, I go into ‘Edit’ mode and copy all the Markdown code from the article.

Then I create a new text file and paste the Markdown code into it.

This creates an identical article to one associated with the original web page - but without the cumbersome web archive. Saving, on average, megabytes of data for each entry.

Then I delete the original entry with its web archive. I have all I need in the simple article.

I’ve written to the developer suggesting this workflow could be automated. I’m delighted to say he agrees.

It means that unlike the data I have saved in DEVONthink Pro, EagleFiler and even Notebooks, almost all the data in Keep Everything is preserved as straight Markdown text (with a few web archives for super-complex pages where the article extraction hasn’t worked properly).

This means that despite the growing volume of data in Keep Everything, it’s still very nippy, with a minimal system footprint.

So I reviewed the other things task management software does. Notably, remind you of deadlines etc.

Just how crucial is this function, really? You know what? It isn’t. It really isn’t. The thing that most frequently causes me to see red when using conventional task management software is the speed with which your entries for ‘Today’ start to fill up with stuff you haven’t done yet, meant to do a few days ago but forgot, would like to do sometime but don’t quite dare to shove into the ‘Tomorrow’ or ‘Later’ piles. That stack of guilt-inducing reminders that tell you you’re not being efficient enough.

Most task management software isn’t very flexible in this respect. Yes, GTD has improved things here, but most actual task management apps still expect and encourage you to specify ‘due dates’ for your various tasks. It’s a fundamental part of the way they’re structured.