From Organized Chaos to Groups of Relational Context

Organization. One of those things that for me, takes a lot of habit-building and patience to make workable for me. See, I've had my challenges with staying organized over the years. Then, 2 years ago, I find out I've likely been managing symptoms of ADHD for most of my life. How does that show up for me?

• constant context switching: I used to find myself constantly, and unintentionally, switching between tasks, never really focusing on one thing for too long. The more unorganized my thoughts or obligations are, the more likely I am to bounce between them.
• nagging sense of guilt: Meanwhile, the guilt of not making progress on my goals, or social things like forgetting to text someone back, starts to creep in a lot.
• pressure to produce: The heavy feeling that I need to get something done, only to engage in that distraction loop to distract me from the feeling (or, more appropriately, save that feeling for later, with twice the pressure).

For a long time, I really just kind of haphazardly went along my day, with one running long todo list. I'd get overwhelmed. It was literally just organized chaos. No readily apparent system or theory to organization, beyond what I thought was the most important thing (usually informed by recency bias, or the that happened most recently).

I was an avid user of manilla folders (remember paper? lol), with labels even! At first glance, you may think they were just stuffed with random documents and tossed into a filing drawer. However, there was a system to the madness. The first time I started to connect the dots, someone remarked about me having stacks of books in my living room. Yet, I could always find what I needed with ease.

information recall is not linear for me

Continuing on the thread about my books, let's talk about my bookshelf. Many people have an approach organizing their books in ways that are similar to a bookstore or library - by genre, and/or by author. Not I. Those stacks of books? They were stacked in a way that reflected recent use - last one opened, first one on the top. Now, the rest of my books were on a bookshelf, but not with any strong adherence to an organization method.

The connection wasn't just about the last book I read, but also the topics that were most frequent in that period. Those topics were random, but the combination of frequency and recency made it easy to generally know where my books were at a given moment.

I noticed I did the same thing with important paperwork. There was a moment where I needed the prior year's tax return for some reason. I knew exactly where to look. I remembered that the last time I had to think about this return, was when I applied for an apartment. I go look for where I stored my lease, and there was my tax return. I tend to make relationships between some contexts, anchored by recency, that may not be apparent at first glance.

This has not historically worked for my notes. I've run down so many different systems to find a note-taking equivalent that works for me.

piles of context, but for notes

Years ago, I deliberately set out to be more organized with my notes and tasks.

I went hard. First, I became a card-carrying member of the cult(ure) of GTD, or Getting Things Done. I had hopes that its emphasis on task management and workflows would help me stay on top of things. Yet, no matter how good it felt when I started, I would end up in a place where it felt like trying to fit square pegs into round holes. Having a pile of items in the Inbox to filter was okay, but breaking things by immediacy wasn't enough. I tried this approach repeatedly for years - I still have the original book I bought on GTD, published in 2010! Maybe something was just missing from this approach.

So, I found my to an (un)healthy Moleskine habit - yep, I tried Bullet Journaling. At first, this worked well. I could fill in my context as needed. Chronological ordering made it easier to relate disparate topics to the context of what I was doing on a given date. I always kept a Moleskine in my pocket or in my bookbag (told you it was a habit). However, it felt like a chore to fill out each day's schedule, and table of contents, and the constant need to review it all drove me crazy. Over time, I started to lose context, because my notes would grow well beyond a single page, and I soon had a shelf full of Moleskine notebooks, labeled by quarter and year. The portability sucked. If I had one notebook per year, then this would've been great. But I probably averaged a new Moleskine every 2 months. I'm having to reference across notebooks in ways that started to add more friction than it was worth.

I'd also used a number of other systems, and different applications, like the original Evernote, Simplenote, Quip, Wunderlist - I mean, the list goes on and on. To do lists, alone, worked within a single context (like grocery shopping, or a project plan). Across contexts? I needed something more from my application.

what about folders and tags?

To add more context, I came to rely on traditional digital organizational methods: folders, tags, and categories. But these systems have limitations too. For instance:

• My folders became both too broad and too narrow. I remember creating a folder called "Research" and then realizing it was too vague. It ended up becoming a dumping ground for all my research notes, making it difficult to find specific information. Then I'd create a folder. You know what happened right? Research had so. many. folders. Oof. Folder sprawl.
• Tags can lead to a mess of overlapping labels. I tried using tags to group together my notes, but soon found myself with a dozen different tags that didn't quite fit the categories I had in mind. This led to a cluttered and confusing system where finding what I needed became an exercise in frustration. I would also find myself fighting to remember why I created a certain tag. Or, I'd get a random tag that was a mistakenly accepted suggestion from the application.
• The "Sort Me" folder that never gets sorted: Don't judge me, but the amount of times I've created a "Sort Me" folder (yes, really) in the last 5 years, and never actually sort through its contents... is probably in the high double digits. This meant that important information was lost in the depths of the digital abyss, making it difficult to recall or find later on. This did lead to me having a ritual of the "Sort Me" day, where I would periodically go through a given "Sort Me" folder and move things to their proper place. This my digital version of the box of files to shred that never gets shredded (don't judge me).
• Categories. Categories led to a weird path where I had to give a each document one category and many tags. What started out as a decent, widely used system in other contexts, just got in my way in the long run.

backlinking notes: relationships are the context I need

That's when I became aware of note-taking apps that have backlinking. I've long been familiar with relational data that is held together via linked items. Finding out that I can use a tool that allows for creating a connection between notes was an "ah ha" moment for me. I never thought about this idea of a connected web of notes, forming relationships I can use contextually. Instead of forcing my ideas into predefined categories, I can let them exist as individual entities, linked together by their relevance to each other.

This has been a personal game-changer. By linking related ideas and concepts together, I've found that my thoughts are better organized, and my productivity has increased significantly.

Over time, my system has evolved to incorporate more flexibility and adaptability. I've learned to prioritize what's truly important, and let go of the need for categorization and compartmentalization. This has allowed me to focus on what really matters, rather than getting bogged down in the minutiae of organization.

lessons learned

Looking back, I can see that my journey was marked by a series of trial-and-error moments, where I experimented with different systems and tools until finding what worked for me. Here are some key lessons I've learned along the way:

• Flexibility is key: Be open to trying new things, and don't be afraid to pivot when something isn't working.
• Prioritize what matters: Focus on what's truly important, rather than getting bogged down in the details of organization.
• Embrace imperfection: Recognize that it's okay not to have everything figured out, and that it's okay to make mistakes.

In the end, it's all about finding what works for you. For some people, a Bullet Journal or GTD might be the perfect fit. But for me, it was only when I let go of the need to categorize and compartmentalize everything that I finally found a system that allowed me to flourish. So, here's where I'm at with it right now. The biggest difference is that I'm much more accepting of the need to be flexible in knowing that my system will continue to adapt - and that's okay.