Submitted by Menachem1 on
in
Forums
Hi
Just listened to the suspense file podcast.
Have a few questions related to creating the digital suspense file.
1. Should every month/day "file" be a folder on my desktop or a file?
2. Do I create one "word" file with a list of tasks for that month? or do I create a word/pdf for every different task?
3. If I don't have a filing drawer (with 12/43 folders) where would I put my real paper and how do i have it coordinated with the digital files?
thanks!
Menachem
What I did on my attempt at digital suspense-file
I attempted a digital "tickler system" some years ago. I decided to stay fully analog, since my wife needed access and refused to access it digitally.
What worked for the digital portion for me was to mirror the analog tickler system I've used for decades.
1/ One folder on desktop, labelled "Tickler", with 43 sub-folders (the 31 days and the 12 months).
2/ Each task into its own text-file, named sensibly. Many files were empty, with the file-name serving as the task reminder.
3/ Scan (and recycle/discard) as much paper as practical into the digital tickler. Any remaining paper went into manila folders into an alphabetical file drawer labelled "Current". I noted the manila folder label in the tickler task text-file, so I could find it again quickly.
Most of what I wanted in the earlier digital tickler can be handled by my analog tickler and task-management programs (I use Things on my Mac laptop).
At software jobs where I had Unix servers, I'd cobble together a simple daily "cron" script to email me tickler reminders against a folder of text-files with datestamps in their names. I could duplicate that at home, but again, my wife won't use those, which defeats its purpose.
Hope that gives you some more ideas ....