Where should I store good advice?

I think the key here is "being exposed to it so that eventually it becomes part of how I function?". If you never cull your online bookmarks or go through the things you've saved to ReadtItLater, you're in the same boat as you are with your file cabinet. Conversely, given the habit of reviewing/purging on a regular basis, you'll be exposed to it whether it's in a paper or electronic filing system.

Personally, I use SpringPad. As I go through my day, I add interesting links & bits of information...advice, things I want to buy, movies I need to see, etc...into springpad. At the end of the day or the beginning of the next (whenever I go through and revise my to-do list, I review the batch of "recently added" (I think they default into an "uncategorized" bucket) add the relevant tags, and quite often, eliminate a few--like the link for a new messenger bag that I wanted, but realized I don't NEED.

More importantly, as I'm going through and reviewing my tags, I am exposing myself to previously stored content, reminding myself of what's there, and if there's something that I need to get to or want to review, I can just add a tag for "immediate action" or something, just to remind myself to look at it.

That's worked pretty well for me...but only if I DO it. While reliability and access are important factors in any data/knowledge management system, be it paper or electronic, it's only worthwhile if you USE it. Find a system that's easy and intuitive for you to use. Then develop the discipline to USE it. Take a different paper folder on the train with you every day to work, and eventually you'll be cycling through purges and reviews. Read a link aggregator on lunch every day and tag things for future review or deletion. Once the habit develops, you'll find yourself managing your information a LOT better.

Good luck!

Either I use a knowledge managment software or if it is just a single lonely link and you don't want to add personal notes a bookmarks tagging software like delicious. It also shows you the bookmarks in chronological order.

I explained here how I would tag references/links to find them again fast. Don't use only thematic tags like in a folder system, use 4-6 tags for your links above, e.g. productivity howto career article 2012 frequent/important/interesting. Use the tags also to rate the links.

Sometimes I save the website additionally with ScrapBook, if it is a important and timeless piece of information to me. If it is just a longer article and I don't have the time during the week to read it, I save it with Read It Later for the weekend. (All mentioned addons exist afaik for Chrome/FF)

btw: thanks for the links ;)

The others have provided some solid advice. The only thing I'd like to add/stress is only implementing advice one strategy at a time. If you're a moderately fast reader, this means you'll be consuming more information than you'll be able to effectively implement. When you find advice that you'd like to practice, make it your goal for that week, or even month, to implement it. It isn't unusual for people to give up or forget to stick to advice; you may choose to persistently practice it until it is almost second nature, or you may interpret this forgetfulness as a sign that the advice just doesn't work for you. Ideally, you'll grow so comfortable with putting the advice into practice that you'll be prepared to discover/implement/modify additional advice.

To more directly answer your question, you may find it best to focus on the current advice-of-interest before moving on to other advice, thereby avoiding the need to store much information at all. It may be easiest to keep a running list of advice/books/strategies you want to check out next, after you have successfully implemented the earlier advice. If you would really like to consistently add to your collection of advice without that pause, I find that self-created wikis are a wonderful way to draw meaningful connections between material (and often this type of material has enough overlap that you will consistently be drilling yourself with information/advice without even realizing it.

I would like to share my observations regarding this topic with you, I divided them into two sections:

1. Technical side - tools that you may use

   You should store such information in a place that is:

   • easily accessible - kind of online storage seems to be the best option
   • allows you to update/modify information easily
   • ideally - integrated with your current tools, todo lists etc.

   I am using RTM (Remeber the milk) lists for simple pieces of advice and .doc document that is stored on Dropbox for longer ones. Apart from that, If I come across some interesting websites, articles I store them in my online bookmarks library - Diigo (great website). All of those tools I use on a daily basis for other tasks.

2. Conceptual side - collecting advice

   If you are so eager to collect advice, you read many articles on topics like personal productivity, time-management etc. There is a risk that you 'learn' more than you can really try out. So sometimes it is just better to stop reading self-help mumbo-jumbo, clicking "read later" button and just try out things in practice! In that way the amount of knowledge you have to somewhere store and manage will be reasonable and you will be able to verify it immediately. So just keep it mind while collecting, organizing tips, advice etc. .

I use digital and physical memo boards

1. Collecting anything interesting in evernote, categorized into notebooks, acts as my digital memo board
2. A physical cork board I use to pin things that I find interesting - which I need to remember

This is what I do 1. Collect all interesting stuff on Evernote 2. Sort by "Updated" date and see the oldest note. Read. Delete sentences in the note you have already internalized or pretty much know very well 3. Move on to the next note

This way every once in a while your note will keep coming up which you will read and update as necessary

I use Evernote and the browser plugin Clearly. I use Clearly to get rid of all the advertising and navigation around the content and send this to Evernote. This is very easy.

In Evernote I tag these notes with "to read" and "while waiting" and whenever I have to sit and wait and don't know what to do, I can read the stuff I have tagged this way with the Evernote app on my smartphone or whatever.

The output Clearly produces can also be printed very nice.

So this is what I'm doing currently with OmniFocus:

• Create an on-hold project called Flashcards
• Create subtasks per flashcard subject
• Create a task per question, and put the answer in the task notes
• Hide all task notes
• On my daily checklist (also an on-hold project), I have "read 3 flashcards"
• Pick a subject, read some questions and fold out the notes

So for example, for 1MTD I have these: (the answers are normally hidden)

• 1MTD: One Minute ToDO
  • Which three levels of tasks are there?
    1. Critical Now: Everything that needs to be done absolutely today or you don't go home
    2. Opportunity now: Less than 20 tasks that can be done within the next 10 days
    3. Over the Horizon: Everything else
  • How should you handle incoming email?
    • File it into a big archive folder or turn it into a task
  • What are task start dates used for?
    • Hiding tasks until they are opportune, and sorting tasks according to staleness (FRESH)
  • What is FRESH?
    • Fresh Requests Earn Sorting Higher: sort tasks in descending start date order so that more recently added tasks are more important, which they probably are. You can change start dates to influence sorting.

I'll update this answer when I've used the flashcard system for a couple months.

Edit: it didn't work. The omnifocus app is not a flashcard system and the little speedbumps you get because of that made me not use this system. Next I'll try Anki or similar as explained on this nice blog post: Memorizing a programming language using spaced repetition software.

Everyone needs a reliable, safe place to store information. Different people seem to like different programs, depending on whether they're more interested in data capture, organization, presentation or search features.

Evernote is popular with a lot of folks. As I understand it, its strength is capturing information on the fly. Another program available on the Mac (it was originally on NeXT) is Circus Ponies Notebook. Its strength is presentation of information in Notebook-like formatted web pages, etc. I'm not sure it's still being actively developed, however.

None of these were really satisfactory for me, I wanted somewhere (one program) where I could store everything from little tips to lengthy research notes. I use DevonThink, which is only available on the Mac. Its strengths are organization and search, although it's not bad with capture either, since it has a universal inbox applet that can take a wide variety of formats, including .pdf's.

I highly recommend it, though the iOS app is reportedly buggy and supposedly being rewritten, so I can't recommend that yet. BTW, I have since upgraded to DT Pro, but DT Personal is plenty powerful enough for most users.

http://www.devontechnologies.com/products/devonthink/overview.html