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Wer aufhört, besser werden zu wollen, hört auf, gut zu sein.
(Those who stop trying to advance, stop being good.)
Marie von Ebner-Eschenbach

Personal Information Management (PIM) can be understood in a narrower sense (Calendar, Todos, Contacs) or in a very broad sense which I do prefer: it is the art of organizing yourself and your data.

I don't even limit PIM to digital data. I've started loving PIM before I was aware of its existence: I was the one in school who was designing and optimizing his Filofax paper sheets, who knew why the previous twenty marks (and their average) were not optimal, when a teacher is going to ask me to summarize the previous lecture by maintaining statistics, and so forth.

So I am an organizer freak and I like fiddling with my personal workflows.

For a couple of years I was lucky do be able to do basic research on PIM topics and I wrote my PhD thesis I am very proud of.

In my spare time, I optimize my personal workflows, write little helper tools (GitHub, GitLab, Codeberg), help others to work more efficiently, look for the best tools out there that match my requirements, have more fun with the tools we have to use, learn from the experience of others, give talks about PIM.

This is what I love, this is what I do for fun.

A PlantUML component diagram showing a "PIM" box that contains "personal requirements", "personal methods", and "personal tools and workflow implementations". Outside of that box are "external/group requirements", "external/group methods", and "external/group tools and\nworkflow implementations". "external/group methods" also has influence on the personal tooling side.
Scope definition for "Personal Information Management" (PIM) in the context of my work.

From 2014 to 2021, I taught my PIM lecture (1ECTS) at the St. Pölten University of Applied Sciences. My students are surprised, how inefficient they were doing even «common» things like handling email, managing files like photographs on your computer, or searching for information. It is so rewarding to see students realizing how much improvement is possible with some background-knowledge and a few hints here or there. In 2021 and 2024, I held that PIM lecture in an extended way (2ECTS) at Graz University of Technology.

I hereby claim that I am able to save you at least twenty minutes of your computer time a day just by looking over your shoulder and suggesting more advanced tools, better methods, and efficient workflows. Multiply this with your computer-life and you get a small glimpse what it is possible. However, it's still your decision if you want to use this extra-time to get more stuff done or if you want to enjoy more spare time instead. ;-)

I 2023, I gave a 44min talk on various selected topics related to PIM which might be of general interest.

Some general PIM articles:

Some tool-related PIM articles:

You might also check out my articles on emacs, privacy, quantified self, security, and surveillance.

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