** DONE Nobody's Perfect: My Personal PIM Debt :lb_persistent:pim:personal:blog: CLOSED: [2023-12-10 Sun 18:58] :PROPERTIES: :CREATED: [2023-12-10 Sun 14:02] :ID: 2023-12-10-Nobodys-PIM-is-perfect :END: :LOGBOOK: - State "DONE" from "DONE" [2023-12-22 Fri 19:03] - State "DONE" from "TODO" [2023-12-10 Sun 18:58] :END: - Update 2023-12-22: added number of Org-mode tasks statistics I do write a lot about [[id:tags-pim][PIM topics]], I did some [[https://karl-voit.at/tagstore/en/papers.shtml][PIM research about local file management]], I love to give [[id:2021-08-28-pim-lecture-tug-2021][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: #+CAPTION: My Mastodon post about spring-cleaning my Org-mode inbox file. #+ATTR_HTML: :alt A screenshot of a Mastodon message that reads: In case you might think that I've got my #PIM under control: 3 hours ago I had 791 items (from 2019 onward) in my #inbox. Those are ideas, tasks, notes, bookmarks I captured but didn't process yet. 😲 At the moment, I brought it down to 274 and I'll continue throwing things out tomorrow. πŸ† #+ATTR_HTML: :align center :width 317 :linked-image-width none [[tsfile:2023-07-29T23.38 publicvoit Mastodon - many items in orgmode inbox -- screenshots publicvoit pim.png][https://graz.social/@publicvoit/110799534668480449]] 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. ------------ # Die "#+RESULTS:"-Zeile unten nach dem Update manuell lΓΆschen!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! #+BEGIN_SRC bash :results raw NOW_IN_ORG_TIMESTAMP="<`date '+%Y-%m-%d %a %H:%M'`>" zero=" β†’ 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 β†’ backlog" echo " - ${orgstarted} ongoing"; echo " - ${orgwaiting} waiting for something or somebody" echo " - ${orgfinished} finished" #+END_SRC - Snapshot from <2023-12-22 Fri 19:01> on host "sting" - 30 emails in my personal inbox β†’ should be 0 - 388 captured and unprocessed Org-mode headings β†’ should be 0 - 15708 digital photographs not described, tagged and archived β†’ 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 β†’ 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 [[id:2019-01-13-inbox-zero-inbox-infinity][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 [[id:2014-05-09-managing-digital-photographs][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.