The Web 2.0 Pensieve

I have a lot of stuff to do. That is the nature of my life and if I didn’t I’d be very bored. However I found that in common with most of the people around me I have too much stuff to do. Too much, oh far too much and I have to remember it all and prioritize and keep re- prioritizing against other stuff, as circumstances change and I get even more stuff I need to do. Oh woe is me! And I think woe is large chunk of the population.

In recent years I have felt totally overwhelmed with stuff to do and sought solutions to my problem.

“You Sir are a candidate for a time management course!”

This statement rang in my ears 2 years ago and having read books, devised personal methodologies and tried every gadget known to mankind I decided religion was the only answer. I use the term flippantly because I’ve met previous converts to “Time Management” who have waved their leather bound organizers at me and proclaimed. “People ask me what my life is about. This is my life!” Still desperate times (unmanaged) called for desperate measures so I signed up to a course.

Unfortunately for me it turned out I could not convert to be a born-again Time Manager because I already practiced almost all the disciplines that particular church taught. For me there was no baptism of fire, just resignation to a feeling of time management existentialism.

So I went back to basics again and tried to figure what was important to me personally. What would make my life better? The most important thing for me about the stuff I had to do was worrying that I was going to forget to do it or do it too late- Birthday cards to far away relatives, Green Card renewals, draft papers for conferences, meeting preps. I was going nuts trying to keep them all in my head. The solution was obvious: Make a List!

Creating a list of stuff to do is really like putting your stuff to do into a Pensieve. This magic bowl is described in J. K. Rowling’s Harry Potter series as a kind backing store where you can offload thoughts you don’t want cluttering up your mind when have too much stuff whirling around it. The notion of getting stuff out of my brain to somewhere where it was reliably stored, so I didn’t have to worry about remembering it, really appealed. I knew it would de-stress me so I started making lists, lots of lists. I started my week (and I still do) making a list of stuff to do. I look at it every day and update it as my day progresses. I have lists based on locale- work, home, shopping, packing to go to another country, packing to go another state. All-in-all this sort of works for me, but for one thing: Where is the right list when I remember something I forgot to put on this list? This was my big problem. It’s easy to make time to review lists, but making them is a much more random experience: I found that even if I sat down on Friday night and thought about what I had to do at the weekend or sat down on a Monday morning and thought about what I had to do during the week I’d miss something .Well in fact I’d miss several things because my brain doesn’t work that way.

My brain has a habit of remembering things to do at the oddest of times: in the bath, at the ballgame, in a completely unrelated meeting where nothing relevant is going on, watching TV, at 3:00am in bed in a cold sweat… thoughts come to me; more stuff I haven’t put down on a list and I start to get stressed. I get stressed because I might forget them by the time I get back to my list.

I spent a long time thinking about this and concluded that this was now my biggest stress point- I had to be able to offload stuff to do into the Pensieve when it came to me and then forget about it. If I could do this, I would really be less stressed.

I spent a lot time thinking about things I could carry with me that would store my lists. As a geeky kind of guy the notion of a notebook and pen really didn’t appeal, so I sought out PDA’s phones, laptops anything cool on which I could store my lists. However I soon realized wherever I put my lists I was going to end up somewhere without that particular device and therefore without my lists- The stress started again.

It was at this point that I had the Web 2.0 epiphany and realized that the last place I wanted my lists were on a particular device. I wanted my lists everywhere and nowhere in particular in the Internet Cloud, accessible from anything with a screen and an IP connection. I certainly had plenty of those things in my life. So long as I could get to an IP connection I would be able to update my lists. In fact with modern day Web 2.0 technology like Gears I could add to my lists even when I didn’t have an IP connection and sync to the Cloud later.

After a quick trawl of the Net I found an application which fit the bill- Remember the Milk It is so simple and so easy to use: It’s just a collection of lists that you can name, add to, prioritize, schedule and even share. I fell in love with it right off the bat and started using it. There are 5 PC’s in our house running a collection of different OS and at any given point in time there is usually one near me where if I remember something I need to do I can add it to “Remember the Milk” through a web browser. I also have full web access to “Remember the Milk” from my trusty Nokia N810 Internet Tablet which I turn on Friday night, slip in my pocket and let run for the weekend. It just follows me around in my pocket and means my wife doesn’t get grumpy ‘cause I’m carting my laptop around with me and plugging it in just to try and stay in touch with the world outside.

“Remember the Milk” also has a Twitter interface that I can access from my mobile phone via txt messaging, so even if I’m in the car (wife driving of course) and I suddenly remember I need to by milk later I can add it to my list as we go along. [There are also iPhone, Blackberry and Windows Mobile applications that you can use if you sign up to the Pro version of Remember the Milk.]

Sure enough there are times when even I forget my pocket connection to the Net, as happened a couple of weeks ago… One Saturday while having lunch out with my family I suddenly remembered something really important I had to do next week and found I had left my N810 and my phone at home. I started getting stressed- would I remember to add this to my list by the time I got home? Lunch was starting going badly when the solution came to me: I excused myself, nipped next door to the Apple Store and logged onto "Remember the Milk" on a MacBook . I added the item to my list. After that lunch tasted a lot better.