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- Update 2023-12-22: added number of Org-mode tasks statistics
I do write a lot about PIM topics, I did some PIM research about local file management, I love to give lectures on PIM topics. Therefore, it's quite natural that people start to believe that my personal PIM situation is near perfect.
As I once wrote on Mastodon, this is not the case at all:
I got great feedback from people writing that they are relieved that even "somebody like me" is really struggling with processing all the information as properly as desired.
Therefore, I want to update this persistent article from time to time, showing my current status of some digital debt in terms of unprocessed items in various inboxes of mine.
NOW_IN_ORG_TIMESTAMP="<`date '+%Y-%m-%d %a %H:%M'`>"
zero=" → should be 0"
echo "- Snapshot from ${NOW_IN_ORG_TIMESTAMP} on host \"${HOSTNAME}\""
mailnumwithdirs=$(find ~/Maildir/new/ ~/Maildir/cur/ ~/Maildir/tmp/ | wc -l)
mailnum=$(( mailnumwithdirs - 3 ))
echo " - ${mailnum} emails in my personal inbox ${zero}"
numorginbox=$(grep '^\* ' ~/org/inbox.org | wc -l)
echo " - ${numorginbox} captured and unprocessed Org-mode headings ${zero}"
photos=$(find ~/tmp/digicam/ -name '*.jpg' | wc -l)
echo " - ${photos} digital photographs not described, tagged and archived ${zero}"
numtempfiles=$(find ~/tmp/2del | wc -l)
echo " - ${numtempfiles} temporary files downloaded, not archived or deleted yet - on only one of my machines"
orgnew=$( egrep "\* (NEXT|TODO)" ~/org/*org ~/org/*org_archive | wc -l )
orgstarted=$( egrep "\* STARTED" ~/org/*org ~/org/*org_archive | wc -l )
orgwaiting=$( egrep "\* WAITING" ~/org/*org ~/org/*org_archive | wc -l )
orgfinished=$( egrep "\* (DONE|CANCELLED)" ~/org/*org ~/org/*org_archive | wc -l )
echo " - My current number of Org-mode tasks:"; echo " - ${orgnew} yet to be started → backlog"
echo " - ${orgstarted} ongoing"; echo " - ${orgwaiting} waiting for something or somebody"
echo " - ${orgfinished} finished"
- Snapshot from <2023-12-22 Fri 19:01> on host "sting"
- 30 emails in my personal inbox → should be 0
- 388 captured and unprocessed Org-mode headings → should be 0
- 15708 digital photographs not described, tagged and archived → should be 0
- 159858 temporary files downloaded, not archived or deleted yet - on only one of my machines
- My current number of Org-mode tasks:
- 2599 yet to be started → backlog
- 626 ongoing
- 201 waiting for something or somebody
- 30772 finished
I might get down to zero emails quite easily within half an hour or so. Unfortunately, I'm not as diligent as I should be. I still think that inbox zero is the way to go. Lucky me, I don't get that many emails a day so it's still not a huge issue.
The high number of captured and unprocessed Org-mode inbox headings is really an issue to me. I really need to get this down to zero some day as there are cool ideas, URLs to visit and projects to do hidden in this big pile.
Although I created probably the most amazing and quickest way to manage digital photographs, I probably spent more time writing tools and polishing the workflow than actually processing my photographs. Yes, you might have a hard laugh at this moment, I'll join in myself. ;-) I have no idea, how I should be able to get down to zero here as there are thousands of photographs starting from 2006 or so in this pile. This is really giving me a hard time when I think about it. As my new year's resolution 2022, I tried to archive a couple of hundred images each month to get down but I failed in doing so.
My temporary files folder doesn't need to be empty. However, the more stuff it accumulates, the less likely I might be able to decide to delete stuff in there. Although I named this directory "2del" (short for "to delete") on purpose, there is this thought in my brain that still thinks that "maybe there are some important gems I forgot to file properly". I guess that's natural. Therefore, I do think that I should go through the files and reduce the number here as well.
The number of Org-mode tasks in different states reflect the amount of running and planned PIM projects. One of them is the idea to write a PIM book with the content of my PIM lecture that should be tool-independent and last decades without getting outdated. I started to think about this project around 2012.
So now you know that I'm at least as inconsequent as everybody else. At least I do think that I know quite well how the process actually should work and I've created handy tools to support me. Don't get me wrong: Some of my workflows are working really, really well so that I don't have any debt there.
After all, PIM is just a life-long journey like everything else.