Using Pocket Informant to its potential

[Phillip Dyson]

I just posted a decription of what I did to get ready for a cousin's wedding using Outlook and PocketInformant. You can read about it here.

I'm wondering, how do you take advantage of the power and versatility of your pda and software to be more organized?

You have any tips or suggestions.

[Phillip Dyson]

I just posted a decription of what I did to get ready for a cousin's wedding using Outlook and PocketInformant. You can read about it here.

I'm wondering, how do you take advantage of the power and versatility of your pda and software to be more organized?

You have any tips or suggestions.

[Kowalski]

pocket informant, adb idea library and phat notes are the applications i use to organize my life. here is some tricks i use:
i categorize everthing, even notes, so i can find things easily.
every morning befoure i get up from bed, i plan my day. i have a task category called today and i copy some tasks from general categories to today category.
at the end of the day i check to see how much work i have done all day and i have left something to the next day. i do all this planning by the aid of PI tasks. i use calender just for appointments and as event remainder.

i plan to extend my pda usage by keeping a journal/diary. i bought a stowaway BT keyboard for this purpose.

[emuelle1]

I use Outlook on the Desktop. On my Pocket PC, I use Ulti-Planner and Pocket Day. UP has slightly more functionality but I like the way that Pocket Day displays data. I like to see a list of my appointments and tasks for the day.

I use an adeptation of the Franklin Covey system. For categories, I assign the "roles" I fill in the capacity of the tasks or appointments. I also categorize notes like that. Roles are things like husband, father, employee, homeowner, etc. I try to keep these as limited as possible, with a misc category for all the stuff that just doesn't fit elsewhere. For journaling, I create an all day appointment for just about each day called "Daily Record of Events". In it, I try to record everything significant that happend that day, as short and specific as I can. That way when I get a call about a certain thing, I can do an Outlook search and find the record quickly.

I have ADB Idea library, but I've never really managed to use it to it's full capacity. I've tried Bizorg, and no offense to the developer, but I can't figure out what the point is. I have to actively import my Outlook notes into that program, but when I make new Outlook notes I have to import all of them and the ones already in there duplicate. I can't seem to find any extra functionality to it that isn't in the other programs I have. Nothing personal.

[Phillip Dyson]

I tried Adb Idea Library once before, but it didn't quite have the PIM integration that I was looking for. It only allowed tasks and standard notes if I remember correctly.

I would like to be able to link contacts, appointments, tasks, and notes together (Which PI provides except for PhatNotes) but then I'd like to be able to view all the items together.

[emuelle1]

Ulti-Planner has the ability to link contacts, appointments, and tasks together, but not notes. They plan on expanding their notes editor in later versions though.

[Phillip Dyson]

Ulti-Planner looks like a pretty nice application. Unfortunately I've already invested quite a bit into PocketInformant.

So, how do you organize complex events? Do you use categories or links? Do you create contacts and appointments? How about tasks?

[emuelle1]

Ulti-Planner does offer a master task feature, although I'd prefer it to be a little more powerful. I have used ADS Idea library in the past to create a task hiearchy in order to break a task down into intermediate steps I didn't get very far with it because my ipaq at the time had problems syncing and I was hard resetting a lot. It got to be a pain having to relink and reorder the tasks. I stopped doing it and never picked back up, even after I replaced the switchboard and fixed the problem. However, my Axim x30 is highly stable so I could go back to that type of organization again.

I thought about downloading a trial of PI or AF, but I was afraid I'd like it and my wife won't like the idea of me spending yet more money on my Pocket PC. Normally I get sidetracked and don't spend the time working with a trial that I should, so just about the time I'm learning how useful it could be the trial runs out.

[krypticide]

You might be interested in this:

http://www.pocketpcthoughts.com/foru...ic.php?t=39800