Why can't I find anything?

It’s amazing, and frustrating, to me when I can’t find some bit of information. It’s not as if I don’t have a place to keep things. Oh, no, it’s definitely not that. I’m well aware that it’s having too many places to keep things that makes it so hard to find stuff.

Several times this week I went looking for information about something from more than a couple years ago and couldn’t find it. This was maddening, since I like to think of myself as someone who takes copious notes about everything and has a thoughtfully-considered system for storing them.

But where did I put that one thing? How the hell should I kow? I mean, it’s probably somewhere in one of these…

• Tinderbox
• TheBrain
• A text (Markdown) file
• DEVONthink
• Confluence
• TiddlyWiki
• Evernote
• Curio
• Circus Ponies Notebook
• Ulysses
• Apple Notes
• VoodooPad
• VimWiki
• Org-mode
• My Blog(s)

Do you see what I’m dealing with here? It’s madness.

I start out with the best of intentions. I’ll say, “This cool New Thing is where I’m keeping everything from now on!” I’ll move recent stuff into New Thing and convince myself that I’ve finally solved my problem. For good!

Fast forward two weeks…

New Thing is great, but I miss [INSERT FEATURE] about Old Thing. I open up Old Thing and OMG how did I ever stop using this? It’s awesome!

Sigh. Repeat this on a regular basis over a decade or more and it’s just a confusing, messy, shit-pile and I’m fumbling around in Spotlight hoping to get lucky.

Anyway, you can probably guess what I’ve been doing this weekend. Maybe I’ll sum it up in another post if I can get over the shame of it all.