There isn't an endgame "organized" state. For folks wandering into these woods, fair warning - you cannot take someone else's workflow, apply it to your way of

There isn't an endgame "organized" state. For folks wandering into these woods, fair warning - you cannot take someone else's workflow, apply it to your way of doing things and hope to reap the benefits. You can, without realizing it, be in an infinite loop, copying others, till you burn out. There is a reason why posts around organizing thoughts, ideas and tasks have been floating around HN for eternity. Best avoided. Start with what and why. My way is to imagine that a perfect magical tool/workflow already exists to solve my problem, I just haven't found it yet, then imagine all the ways it makes me better, where and how I will use it, why I can't live without it. Now I have a fairly good way of knowing if this is what I want, does it sound possible or if its a fool's errand. Only then can I look around for tools and other's solutions and try filling the gaps. I stay away from getting too deep into ready products, they either disappoint, are too flexible or are too rigid. Personally, I have settled on using many tools (index cards, whiteboard, freeplane, plain text, google docs, excel) using each for what they are really good at, where they are good at. I only use the core features, not the frills, not the unique propositions; makes it easy to replace when they change too much are unavailable or something better comes along. I have a hard either "bulk copy-pastable" or scriptable rule, if a tool supports neither, its just tossed out right in the beginning. Some people I know like it the other way round, everything in one, familiar, productive tool. Didn't work for me.