Lately I have been more busy than I expected I would, to the point that it really was getting out of hand, until I started changing my organizing habits.

And yet there's so many things to do: keep an eye on events, finances, pyhisical objects (room, desk, ...)

That did however make me take a closer look at some of the Open Source "PIM" tools and I found that there were a lot of really good programs for that on my OpenSUSE DVD.

Notice that many of you probably already know all of this, but up to now I have been using my computer especially as an entertainment/creativity device, not so much an "information storage" device.

For finance, I took a look at KMyMoney, but it was still too immature and crash-prone. GnuCash was better, but a bit TOO feature-complete (complicated, features I do not need). I did take a second look at Money Manager Ex though, and it is just what I was looking for: intuitive, simple, quick and giving a good overview and "follow-up" on your finances. SQLite database also allows for easy file transfer... gotta love SQLite no?

What I do is use Basket (another pricelss productivity app) to quickly store notes about purchases etc. and then when I have more time, I input this into Money Manager Ex

I also have over 5 different e-mail accounts, most of them accessible through POP3. I still have to set up an e-mail client, which will be either Kmail, Evolution or Thunderbird. Kmail seems most plausible though since I'm already using KDE and much of the Kontact suite. That should save some time over checking all of them seperately.

For calendaring I started to use Kontact, which is pretty nice although it does feel a little strange at times. Like when first I wanted to select a date but it appeared I was a week off.

One of my biggest remaining problems though, is what to do when I do not have access to these programs? It would be great if I e.g. could jot down notes and times through an online interface, then later import it in their respective applications. For calendaring, I looked into Gmail Calendar and a shared iCal calendar, but could not find anything really satisfying.

So how do you try to save time by organizing your stuff, do you use (open source or other) software for that and if so, which?

Cheers,

Darkelve


[moved from Talk-Talk by spinynorman]

real geeks are never organized.

Thanks for the great advice, oh Übergeek

ok, so that may not be completely true (the whole geeks are never organized thing...I am, however, an Übergeek, at least some people tell me that).

I've personally started using Thunderbird as my e-mail client on all platforms. I only have one e-mail address that I check with a client, and it's IMAP capable, so I use that and all my computers are synced for e-mail since they just grab it from the server each time (same with my phone).

I need to take a look at Money Manager EX, since you mentioned it, I could use a good finance program. As far as Calendar, I just use my phone, and I don't really sync it with anything - it's Windows Mobile, and I don't see a need to fuss with syncing it to the software I use (I don't use MS products for that stuff so it's a bit more complicated).

Yes, I love SQLite, too. I'm trying to develop some thoughts now on making more use of it with the builtin interfaces in php5 and python.

As I'm frequently working on different machines with different OS's, I'm putting more and more stuff online these day - Google Docs, Zoho Office, gmail, Google Notebook, etc.

So I'm not really trying so much to synchronize back to an offline app, so I just copy and paste when I need to.

Regarding organization and productivity issues, are you familiar with the excellent site http://www.lifehacker.com

That entire site is devoted to productivity tips and getting organized. They have lots of good ideas and excellent reader suggestions as well.

Thanks for that Lifehacker thing , looks interesting

lifehacker == awesome

I also like MAKE:, which I have a subscription too. Very cool stuff.

I use evolution a lot for organizing my mails, my appointments and tasks (and outlook at work... no evolution available there... ) as well as tomboy desktop notes. I started using gnucash some months ago but - I don't find the time to use it as much as I would like to. Thus a lot of my financial organizing is still done with pen & paper.

I have one bank account, no credit cards, and no loans except my student loan, so that's very simple.

Otherwise, I have the 'important' tag for emails in Evolution, and tasks - http://pimlico-project.org/tasks.html , it's packaged in MDV (I package it). that's about all I need =)

So I'm still a palm guy. I pack my Palm Zire around religiously. I don't need the frills (or even a color display). But I can make appointments, add phone contacts, To-Do Lists, etc.

I can then sync my palm whenever i'm on my computer using jpilot (which exports to iCal). I can use the export feature (in iCal, which I find Google Calendar likes better than CSV) and upload my calendar to the Google Calendar.

Everytime I get a new phone, I don't lose my contact info. On the other hand, I have to pack around another device. But I hate packing around a cellphone.

No, my Palm isn't running Linux. :-(

I use gnucash, but it missing one important feature. There is no convenient way to purge off old data. I had to remove 2 years of data, one transaction at a time, and then put in a reconciling transaction to bring everything back into balance. It was a real pain, considering that I had about 30 transactions per month. It is hard to believe that there is no automated way to do it.

You can't kill the audit trail in one fell swoop guys like me have nightmares about that

This might not be the solution you are looking for, but say after you reconcile your bank accounts to the end of the year, you could simply print off your trial balance and journal in the figures as opening balances for the next year in a new file, and archive the old one. Just a thought.

I use Linux for everything. I haven't booted into Windows for a long time. I have Windows on both my laptops, but rarely boot one of them (Windows only), and the other runs Fedora 7 and I can't remember when I last booted into Windows on that machine. Desktops are Linux only.

Recently, I tried to find a good diagramming tool. Dia had a lot of objects, but they looked very basic and not flashy. I now use OpenOffice Draw, since I've now got the nice flashy objects to use in here. I could run Visio via wine, but I really don't want to. If I had no choice, then I would, but I make sure I try every single option available, or make do with basics, than go to wine and the dark side.

Pardon the semi-hijack, but I seem to only be able to find an exe for Money Manager Ex even though it claims to be cross-platform.

Available in all forms, it would seem, from here.

BTW, am I the only one that uses a good old fashioned diary, and a pen?

I have a journal, but it has been about 1 year now since I've used it.

To add a followup, I tried to use KPilot and KOrganizer instead of JPilot. The problem is that FC6 doesn't want to use the new version of Pilot-Link so the up-to-date Kpilot won't work. You have to get the Pilot-link and Kpilot and build them from source. I wanted this beceause KOrganizer (or Kontact) can pull calendars from links and so I could Google Calendar and keep things more and more updated.

I used to use Evolution for all my PIM stuff - until Novell took over its development. Don't like it much anymore.

And since moving to a Mac for my 'work machine' I have discovered the awesomeness of Apple Mail, iCal and Address Book which are all integrated and excellent little apps.

But Google's offering of goodies via Gmail is pretty good - I like the calendar.

reiver: I go weeks at a time without using a pen, and months without writing more than a cheque or a signature. it's a digital age =)

No, I also use one. I need/use it whenever I am not at the office. I hate Palms.

Nooooooooooooooo I refuuuuuuuuuuuuse!

As much as I am a wannabe geek, i'm no good when it comes to flicking through documents on screen. Although in my line of work, when you have several files (accounts, tax, correspondence, and then client record in their varying forms) to work with daily, things are so much easy when you can have them on a desk and flick through them as desired, having them all on screen isn't practical. My boss was considering a paperless office, he received a resounding no from all concerned (however I believe the reliability of our Win 2K3 server "hit the nail in the coffin" so to speak).

I can't stand documents on a screen either. What I would like though, is a tablet pc or one of those ebook readers, that'd make it much more bearable.

For notes and todo: I use a small, A2 sized book split into categories with some tabs. The one i have atm is spiral bound, so i chuck a pen in the spiral.
For dates: I try to use my uni diary, but usually I end up remembering them myself. Going to print out calendars and glue them into the aforementioned notebook instead.
For email: I bought myself a dreamhost account on sunday, and download all my email accounts to the one place and read it via imap or the webmail ui.

I wouldnt mind a pda, but I can't afford one, and the above setup works pretty well.

James

Ah, the beauty of Dreamhost. One of the best things I've ever done was signing up.

I'm thinking of going back to using a Moleskin - although I get by pretty well by using iCal and the other Apple apps, which I just sync with my phone (SE v600i).

I have an HP iPaq hw6915, but Windows Mobile is pathetic and the phone functionality is utter crap so it lives in my cubby hole (or glove compartment, if you will) and only gets used as a GPS.

I did a similar thing in November last year, I have an email only account with 1and1, 5x2GB mail box's with anti virus, anti-spam, and regular backups, for little more than £10, IMAP rocks IMHO.

I do it myself...I run a personal private mail server on my server box (for incoming only, not outgoing). It uses fetchmail to grab all my mail from my various accounts, filters it through spamassassin, and serves it out via courier-imap. Then I can just access that IMAP server from anywhere and have all my mail properly in sync. My webserver also makes it available via Roundcubemail for when I'm on someone else's machine with no decent IMAP client.

Probably the single best workflow change I ever made, when I set it up a couple of years back.