2011 02-26, managing information overload, slideshare

Managing Information Overload
William Jones
February 26, 2011
2011 NCNMLG/MLGSCA Joint Meeting

Keeping Found Things Found
© copyright, William Jones,
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The World Is at My Doorstep …
And the House Is a Mess:
Putting our information in its place
in a digital age
2

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Everywhere to go but no place to call home:
Building places of our own
for our information
3

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About the Instructor
 Research Associate Professor at the University of Washington
 Manages the Keeping Found Things Found project
 Wrote “Keeping Found Things Found: The Study and Practice of Personal
Information Management” (2007).
 Edited (with Jaime Teevan) the book “Personal Information Management” and a
special issue on PIM for the Communications of the ACM (2006).
 Wrote invited chapters on PIM for ARIST and for the Handbook of Applied Cognition.
 Has organized or co-organized numerous workshops, tutorials and courses on PIM
including an invitational workshop sponsored by the National Science Foundation.
 Have 5 patents relating to search and PIM.
 Dr. Jones received a doctorate in Cognitive Psychology a long time ago from
Carnegie-Mellon University for research in human memory

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Schedule for today
 1:00 Lecture: An Introduction to PIM
 1:30 Lecture: A framework for PIM
 2:00 Group discussion: Failures and successes
 2:30 …break… and first exercise
 3:00 Group discussion: A Comparison of practices
 3:30 Lecture: Designing your own practice of PIM
 4:00 Second exercise: Building your places
 4:30 Group discussion and review
 5:00 Adjourn

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Learning Objectives
1. What personal information management (PIM) is and
how it can be used in everyday life.
2. Six senses in which information is personal.
3. Six activities of personal information management.
4. Key questions to ask whenever considering the use of
new tool or system of PIM.
5. Steps towards designing your own practice of PIM.

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This course is not…
 A review of the latest and greatest.
 A step-by-step “how to”.

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Requests from you
 “how can we stay organized with no/low-tech
tools if we don't have and don't plan to have
techy tools like smart phones, iPads…”
 “how a Kindle can be used to help organize
and distribute a book collection with the
department he supports”.
 “I hope to learn about new ways to manage
my personal, family, and business
schedules.”

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Related Reading
PERSONAL INFORMATION MANAGEMENT
Edited by William Jones and Jaime Teevan
KEEPING FOUND THINGS FOUND: The Study and
Practice of Personal Information Management
By William Jones

An Introduction to PIM
Unit 1

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A Definition
Personal Information Management (PIM) refers to both
the practice and the study of the activities a person
performs in order to acquire or create, store, organize,
maintain, retrieve, use and distribute the information
needed to complete tasks (work-related and not) and to
fulfill various roles and responsibilities (as parent,
employee, friend, member of community, etc.). PIM places
special emphasis on the organization and maintenance of
personal information collections (PICs) in which information
items, such as paper documents, electronic documents,
email messages, web references, handwritten notes, etc.,
are stored for later use and repeated re-use.

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Personal Information Management
Manage –
to handle, to manipulate.
Management –
“The art of getting things done through people”
– Mary Parker Follett (1868-1933)
PIM –
The art of getting things done in your life
through information

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An Ideal of PIM
 … without a lot of fuss or muss.
(We don’t spend a lot of time
filing and organizing).
 We have more time to make
creative, intelligent use of the
information at hand in order
to get things done.
 We have the information we need, when we
need it, where we need it, in the right form,
enough (but not too much)…

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The Benefits of Better PIM
 Enough (but not too much) useful information
at the right time, at the right place, in the right
form/format…
 Better management of our resources: time,
money, energy, etc.
 Better productivity
 Better coordination with others
 Better leverage of “me”

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What are we really managing?
 When you‟re young, you have time and energy
but no money.
 When you‟re middle-aged, you have energy and
money but no time.
 When you‟re old, you have time and money
but no energy.

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Information, the Consumer of…
 Time
 Money
 Energy
 Attention
 Space, digital & physical
 … Well-being?

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Personal Information Management
What is information to us?

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Information Is…
… what‟s in documents, email messages, web
pages, MP3 files, photographs (digital and
paper-based), videos, etc.
... a drain on our money, energy, attention and
time.
... what we create, change, publish and send to
get things done.

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Information Is…
... what we process to “make sense” of our
world (and the raw data we receive through
our senses).
... how other worlds are represented to us:
past and present, possible and pretend.
... how we are represented to the outside
world, accurately or not, for better or worse.
... an extension of us.

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Information to Make Things Real

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Benjamin Franklin

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The Power of Writing It Down
 Gollwitzer & Brandstatter (1997).
 Participants asked to write a report on “How
You Spent Christmas Eve” no later than 48
hours afterward.
 Half wrote down exactly when and where
they would do this; the other half did not.
 3/4 of those who wrote down their intention
completed the task. Only 1/3 of the control
group did.

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So… what’s the problem?
Information Overload?
“We have reason to fear that the multitude of books which
grows every day in a prodigious fashion will make the
following centuries fall into a state as barbarous as that of
the centuries that followed the fall of the Roman Empire.
Unless we try to prevent this danger by separating those
books which we must throw out or leave in oblivion from
those which one should save and within the latter between
what is useful and what is not.“

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So… what’s the problem?
Information Overload?
“We have reason to fear that the multitude of books which
grows every day in a prodigious fashion will make the
following centuries fall into a state as barbarous as that of
the centuries that followed the fall of the Roman Empire.
Unless we try to prevent this danger by separating those
books which we must throw out or leave in oblivion from
those which one should save and within the latter between
what is useful and what is not.“
– Adrien Baillet in 1685

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Information Fragmentation

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Some Historical Perspective:
Let’s Go Back 25 years or so …
 PCs were new and expensive. Computer use for
most users meant terminal access to a mini- or
mainframe computer.
 Digital storage was expensive. E-mail was just
beginning to be used and then only for
communication. Messages were rarely archived.
 The Web… not yet.
 Paper was the preferred form for information
storage.

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Now in 2011…
 We have desktops, laptops and palmtops…
 Digital storage is cheap and plentiful.
 Email use is widespread and email messages
are archived.
 Everything is moving onto the Web and into
special-purpose Internet-based, mobile-
enabled applications.
 And… we still have paper.

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A Web-wide World of Information
It turns out that about 95 percent of what I do on a
computer can now be accomplished through a browser. I
use it for updating Twitter and Facebook and for blogging.
Meebo.com lets me log into several instant-messaging
accounts simultaneously. Last.fm gives me tunes, and
webmail does the email. I use Google Docs for word
processing, and if I need to record video, I can do it directly
from webcam to YouTube…. *
*“The Netbook Effect: How Cheap Little Laptops Hit the Big Time”,
Clive Thompson, Wired Magazine, 02.23.09.
http://www.wired.com/gadgets/wireless/magazine/17-03/mf_netbooks

Keeping Found Things FoundWilliam Jones 29
Individuals collect many different
types of information
radio news &
information 
Email messages
books
newspaper articles 
telephone numbers

budgets 
websites
contact lists
calendar appointments
MAGAZINES &
J OURNALS

graphs & charts
images
bills 
television news & information

accounts
 photographs
signs & instructions


deadlines
schedules 

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Many Types of Information Have
Their Own Distinct Form…
 Distinct patterns, methods, habits of use.
 Distinct supporting applications and tools.
 Distinct organizations.

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Applications each have their own
separate ways to structure
Application Structuring
Outlook Folders
OneNote Notebooks, Sections (top), Pages (right-hand)
Evernote Notebooks, Tags (in a hierarchy).
Remember The Milk Lists, Tags
facebook Groups, Albums, FriendLists, …

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Even Simple Decisions Mean
Checking in Several Places

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A Yearning for Integration
 “Ideally I would have like a unified system, I
wouldn‟t have all these different databases
and all these different check lists and
manuals…something that unified all of the
separate tools and databases that I use” –JS-182
 “..maybe go from media to media a little bit
better, …if I store something out on the wiki,
it will also store something on, in the, in the
file structure.” –AP-123

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Information Fragmentation Creates
Problems at Several Stages of PIM
 Encountering new information
• Do I keep it? Where? How? In which organization? On which computer?
Do I already have this information (somewhere)?
 Finding old information
• Where to look? Which folder? At home or at work? On which computer?
In which email account?
 Organization and maintenance
• Too many organizations! One (or more) for electronic documents, paper
documents, email, web references (Favorites/Bookmarks).
 Using information to get something done
• We may spend several minutes gather information together to work on a
task – even if we know where it is.

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From Many Parts…
 Inderal 1 tablet 3 times a day
 Lanoxin 1 tablet every morning
 Carafate 1 tablet before meals and at bedtime
 Zantac 1 tablet every 12 hours (twice a day)
 Quinaglute 1 tablet 4 times a day
 Coumadin 1 tablet a day

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To a More Coherent Whole*
Breakfast
Lunch
Dinner
Bedtime
Lanoxin X
Inderal X X X
Quinaglute X X X X
Carafate X X X X
Zantac X X
Coumadin X
*From Norman (1993), “Things that make us smart”
based on work of Ruth Day

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3737Copyright © 2006 William Jones, Ptarmigan
Tunnel LLC. All rights reserved
Recognize This?

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This?

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What about This?
*Source: http://www.aip.org/history/curie/periodic.htm

A Framework for PIM
Unit 2

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Some Working Definitions
 An information item is a packaging of information.
Examples of information items include: 1. paper
documents; 2. electronic documents and other files;
3. email messages; 4. web pages; or 5. references
(e.g., shortcuts, alias) to any of the above.
 An information item has an associated information
form determined by the tools and applications that
are used to name, move, copy, delete or otherwise
organize or assign properties to an item.
Paper documents, e-documents and other files,
email messages and web bookmarks.

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A Mapping Weaving Together
Information and Need

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Elements of a Mapping
 Schemes of organization
 Structures that result
 Strategies for managing time, energy, and
information flow
 Supporting tools
 A system that brings these elements together

Finding and Re-finding

Keeping According to
Anticipated Need

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Maintaining & Organizing

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Managing Privacy and
the Information Flow

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Measuring & Evaluating

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Making Sense of and
Using Information

6 Senses of Personal Information

The Senses in Which
Information Can Be Personal
Relation to “me” Examples Issues
1 Controlled by,
owned by me
Email messages in our email
accounts; files on our
computer‟s hard drive.
Security against break-ins or theft., backup,
virus protection, etc.
2 About me Credit history, medical, web
browsing, library books
checked out.
Who sees what when (under which
circumstances)? How is information
corrected or updated? Does it ever go
away?
3 Directed towards
me
Phone calls, drop-ins, TV ads,
web ads, pop-ups.
Protection of me and my money, energy,
attention and time.

The Senses in Which
Information Can Be Personal (ctnd.)
Relation to
“me”
Examples Issues
4 Sent (posted,
provided) by
me
Email, personal web sites,
published reports and
articles.
Who sees what when? Did the message
get through?
5 (Already)
experienced
by me
Web pages that remain on the
Web. Books that remain in
a library. TV and radio
programs that remain
somewhere in “broadcast
ether”.
How to get back to information again later?
6 Potentially
relevant
(useful) to
me; about to
be
experienced
by me.
Somewhere “out there” is the
perfect vacation, house,
job, life-long mate. If only I
could find the right
information!
If only I knew (had some idea of) what I
don‟t know. How to filter out or
otherwise avoid information we don‟t
wish to see? (How to do likewise for
our children?)

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Support Needed for Each Sense of
Personal Information
1. Controlled by, owned by me. Security against break-ins. Support
for back-ups and updates. Support for organization and
maintenance.
2. About me. Privacy laws. Support for privacy preferences (e.g.
P3P). Ability to correct. How come each doctor runs the same tests?
3. Directed toward me. When can I be interrupted? PDAs that know
where we are and what we‟re doing.
4. Sent (posted, provided) by me. Where does the information go?
How is it used? What impact does it have? Am I getting credit?
5. (Already) experienced by me. What is my information diet? What
biases does it introduce?
6. Relevant (useful) to me (or not…). Anticipatory, adaptive filters
that learn over time?

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Tradeoffs for Each Sense
1. Controlled by, owned by me. More time to keep and organize
now or more time to find (and organize) later? Copy or reference?
(Integrity vs. speed & convenience?)
2. About me. Sign? Click “I agree”? Is the risk worth it? Who gets to
know what and when?
3. Directed toward me. Need to know vs. need for privacy. Who gets
through with what information when?
4. Sent (posted, provided) by me. Need to get information out there
but need not to be scooped or plagiarized. The art of email
5. (Already) experienced by me. Need to remember, need to forget
and start from scratch.
6. Relevant (useful) to me (or not…). Filters that work but not too
well. Need for controlled chaos? Not everything we need can be
articulated. We don‟t always know what‟s good for us.

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PICing our battles
A personal information
collection (PIC) is a
personally managed
subset of the PSI.
PICs are “islands” of
structure and coherence
in the PSI “sea”.

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Reference vs. Project Collections
 Project collections. Items in a project
collection are selected to relate to a particular
project that we are trying to complete
 Reference collections. Items in a reference
collection are selected for repeated use but
usually with no specific use in mind.
1. the books of a personal library
2. digital articles kept in an “articles” folder
3. dinner recipes downloaded from the web
4. paper-backed pictures kept in a photo album

A Personal Reference Collection
of Articles

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A Personal Project Collection Near the
Beginning of Efforts to Plan a Wedding

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A View of Folders and Subfolders for
the Same Wedding, Six Months Later…

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The Tension Between Reference and
Project Collections

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Group Discussion
 Reflect on your own management of personal
information (e.g., documents, email
messages, web references, etc). Think about
the tools, techniques, organizations and
strategies that you use to manage your
information.

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A. Think of a tool, technique, organizational scheme or
strategy that has worked well for you over the past
few months in your efforts to manage "information
overload".

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From you
 “Prioritize, prioritize - consolidating all events
into one gadget, one calendar has been the
most helpful. I like the paper calendar, but it's
not very practical and often gets left behind;
separating a personal calendar from work
calendar also doesn't work for me, especially
when obligating my time with elementary
school functions and work.”

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B. think of a tool, technique, organizational
scheme or strategy that you might have
initially embraced with high hopes but that
turned out not to work so well for you.

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From you
 I like the idea of having a small notebook; to
document thoughts, notes when attending
meetings or one on one sessions with my
manager; however, using the same notebook for
a variety of things was not practical and when I
tried to separate notebooks, my filing system
was so backed up i wasn't able to locate the
notebook that corresponded with the appropriate
committee, etc. Often meetings are called last
minute and in haste, I grab whatever notebook
or pad and run with it.

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Works and doesn’t work?
 “…approach to document management at
work years ago. It works in most cases and
for almost all team members, however, we do
not all agree on the „Filing System”.
Documents get placed in some odd
places. Some documents do not get files at
all and end up mixed up in a huge list of
documents in the main directory. I spend too
much time looking for documents. There has
got to be a better way.”

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Exercise: Systems of PIM
 You will pick or be assigned a partner.
 One of you will interview the other for 15
minutes; then switch.
 Please keep track of your time!
 Your objective as interviewer is to understand
as much as you can about your partner‟s
system of PIM.
 You will report back to the group after the break.

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Your Approach as Interviewer
 Consider each of three major forms:
 Documents and other files “owned” by your
partner.
 Email, calendars and other forms of
communication and time/task/to-do management.
 Web resources – Facebook, Flickr, gmail,
del.icio.us, RTM, Things, YouTube …
 For each form:
 What is the overriding structure?
 What are the supporting tools?

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Group Discussion
 Compare yourself with your partner with
respect to…
 Structures and
 Supporting tools
 for...
 Documents and files
 Email, calendars, communication, task, time and
to-do management.
 Web resources.

Designing Your Own
Practice of PIM
Unit 3

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Towards Better Finding & Re-Finding
 Reminding/remembering to look. Look around. What
do you need to remember to find? Look at your
attentional spaces – desktops – physical and digital, your
inbox(es), your calendar(s). What have you forgotten to
look for?
 Recall. Don‟t get stuck. Think broadly about the places
you might look. “Phone a friend” – use your friends and
colleagues as information sources too (and reciprocate).
 Recognition. Look once. Look again. Sort for version.
 Repeat? What else? Where else? Be clear on whether a
complete set is really needed. There is no “complete set”
of information any time the Web is involved.

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Different methods depending on
“temperature”
 Hot (immediate) information – just click.
 Links on a home web page, the desktop, papers
on a physical desktop, tabs on a browser.
 Warm (working) information – browse,
navigate
 Paths through a folder hierarchy or a web site.
 Cold (old, archived) information -- search

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Towards better keeping & organizing
 Reminding/remembering to look. Watch for overconfidence.
Think specifically about the circumstances of need later on.
Where? When? How (in what form) will you need the information
later. Assess and make use of your attentional surfaces according
to your observation of your own habits. Where does your attention
go in a typical day? Keep important things in more than one place
– but use shortcuts where possible. Send yourself email.
 Recall. Pick a scheme of organization and stick with it.
 Recognition. Don‟t be afraid to use long descriptive names for
files. In email exchanges with others relating to a particular
project, establish conventions for the first part of the subject line
(e.g., all messages relating to “project A” should begin with
“project A”).
 Repeat? Group together (by tag or folder) items you are certain to
need together again later.

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New, Old Ways of Keeping
 Make it easy!
 Half the value of notes is in their “keeping” (initial
writing) even if you never look at them again later.
 Examples:
 Send an email to yourself. Start a conversation!
 Keep paper notebook.
 Keep a Word document (if you use MS Word).

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Meta-level Activities:
Focus on the Mapping
 Maintaining &
organizing
 Managing
privacy &
information flow
 Measuring &
evaluating
 Making sense

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Schemes of Maintenance and
Organization

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Towards Better Maintaining &
Organizing
 Offload, delegate, collaborate. Not all the information we need,
needs to be maintained by us.
 Consolidate.
 Back it up! Backup plans should be realistic. If you find yourself
putting off a backup because of the time and trouble, consider an
alternate plan.
 Clean up! But... move, don‟t delete, digital information.
 Scrub. Toss or give a decent burial to old projects you will never do.
Get on with life.
 Anoint the “correct, current” version of a document or
presentation. Make sure there is only one “current” file for this
document on your primary computer and make sure this version is in
fact the latest, greatest version.
 Avoid archival use of exotic, application-specific formats.

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Strategies for Information Flow

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Establish Policies & Expectations
 A door closed, open or in-between
 Response time for email messages
 Use out-of-office notices.
 Manage your manager.
 Telephone calls, incoming & outgoing.
 Solicited. Unsolicited.
 Xbox? Television?

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Supporting Tools

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Towards Better Measuring &
Evaluating
 Make the choice real. Be sure to consider real choices rather
than “do you like it, yes or no” questions. The status quo is
always an option.
 Situate. Consider choices with respect to and, preferably in,
real situations in your practice of PIM.
 Sample over two or more days if time permits and under
different situations of information management and use.
 There is no such thing as not deciding. Even a decision to
postpone or not decide – is itself a decision.
 Frame choices in terms of loss as well as benefit.
 For any choice consider its many impacts whether or not
explicitly designed for in the tool.

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A Yardstick for PIM Tools &
Techniques
 How does it help me keep,
find & re-find, maintain &
organize, manage privacy &
information flow …?
 How does it help me
manage information owned
by me, about me, directed
towards me, sent by me,
experienced by me, relevant
to me…

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Measuring OneNote

By 6 Activities of PIM
Tools:
OneNote
PIM activities:
keep
+meetings
- Other places.
find,
re-find
+ meeting notes
maintain &
organize
+ meeting notes
manage flow
N/A
make sense
?
measure &
assess
Good way to see
where the time
goes & who I
need to meet…

Keeping Found Things Found 85
By 6 Senses of Personal Information
Tools:
OneNote
PIM senses:
owned by me
+ notes
- email, files, web
references
about me
N/A
addressed to
me
N/A
sent by me
no
experienced
by me
+ meeting notes
relevant to
me
N/A
William Jones

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Future Directions for Putting more
“Meta” into a Practice of PIM
 Incidental
• Instrumented versions of everything.
• Information fades away with disuse?
• Item event logs.
 Incremental
• Case by case decisions for flow.
 Integrative
• Don‟t organize. Plan do!
• One structure; many supporting tools.

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A home re-model as a mind map

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A OneNote rendition of the home re-
model.

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An Evernote rendition of the home
re-model

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Planz

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Other Views, in Other Tools…
 Gantt chart visualizations.
 Workflows.
 Decision trees.
 Concept maps.
 Newspaper style or “Box model”.
 Various list and “details” views.
 Many visualizations of a tree.

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But what can you do? … right now?

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A Personal Unifying Taxonomy (PUT)
 Personal – People own their PUTs. The “P” might also
stand for “Portable”. Or “Persistent”.
 Unifying – All information that relates to a person in one
way or another can be classified and organized into the
PUT no matter what its form (email, e-document, or any
of several kinds of web info
 Taxonomy – as a basis for a classification of personal
information. The structure of the taxonomy is a directed
graph not a strict hierarchy.
93

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Example

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Another example

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Some tips
 Structured names for reference collections.
 Smith, 2010, “As I did think”.
 Universal date encoding for project & task
folders
 “2011-03-15, spring vacation”
 Use a maximum of 3 to 7 subfolders in a
project collection
 Create subfolders for versions and in-place
archival
 zz versions, zz archive

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Working with your partner, design
your own PUT
 Where will you use? Which devices? Which
apps?
 For digital files and folders?
 Tags & tabs?
 Paper documents?
 How easy …
 To use consistently for keeping new information?
 To find old information?
 To expand as needed?

Discussion and Review

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What Have We Covered Today?
1. What personal information management (PIM)
is and how it can be used in everyday life.
2. Six senses in which information is personal.
3. Six activities of personal information
management.
4. Key questions to ask whenever considering the
use of new tool or system of PIM.
5. Steps towards designing your own practice of
PIM and a PUT.

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A Mapping Weaving Together
Information and Need

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Meta-level Activities:
Focus on the Mapping
 Maintaining &
organizing
 Managing
privacy &
information flow
 Measuring &
evaluating
 Making sense

6 Senses of Personal Information

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A Personal Unifying Taxonomy (PUT)
 Personal – People own their PUTs. The “P” might also
stand for “Portable”. Or “Persistent”.
 Unifying – All information that relates to a person in one
way or another can be classified and organized into the
PUT no matter what its form (email, e-document, or any
of several kinds of web info
 Taxonomy – as a basis for a classification of personal
information. The structure of the taxonomy is a directed
graph not a strict hierarchy.
103

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Read On?
PERSONAL INFORMATION MANAGEMENT
Edited by William Jones and Jaime Teevan
KEEPING FOUND THINGS FOUND: The Study and
Practice of Personal Information Management
By William Jones

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Follow-on Questions or Comments?
 Please email me:
o williamj@uw.edu
 Visit the Information School web site on PIM:
o http://pim.ischool.washington.edu/
 Visit the Keeping Found Things Found web
site:
o http://kftf.ischool.washington.edu/
o … or simply search for “KFTF” in Google or
another search service.

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For “Extra Credit” 
kftf.ischool.washington.edu/planner
_index.htm
(Or just search on
“keeping found things found”)

2011
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Thank You!

2011 02-26, managing information overload, slideshare

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