The type of personal information you keep is very broad - there can be study notes, ideas for a new business, plans for travel, shopping lists and all the general tips you find on the web. You wouldn't (or shouldn't) save all your documents in one giant folder and the same applies to your personal notes - there needs to be a way to find them easily.
Folders are a standard way of keeping information grouped together and there are several ways to use folders in LifePIM - you can try the methods below
Some people put everything in lifepim and simply use the search. This works well if you have a small number of notes (less than 100) and you can tag notes with text keywords to make searching easier
eg use the string TODO in front a task you want to do at some stage, or assign a short non-word to each of your projects and use them in the title of notes.
DIYCAR - take car for service
WEBJSGAME - notes on the javascript game
WEBBLOG - blog about using folders
WEBJSGAME - links to libraries to use for game
If you are a light note taker, this might work fine for you but you need to be consistent with your short names, or have a note with list of all your projects
! Master List of Projects
WEBBLOG - notes for the blog
WEBJSGAME - project to build a simple javascript game
DIYCAR - any note around car maintenance and upgrades
DIYHOME - for any notes to fix things around the home
Option 2 - Standard : Work, Fun, Study, Home, Health
These are basic groupings to sort the notes into main areas. Having folders also makes it easier to assign Goals to each folder
Option 3 - Detailed
People who keep a lot of notes, often have a more detailed folder approach
my folder structure is below
Family - school holidays, fav recipes, clothes sizes
Home - room and window sizes, renovations
Car - maintenance schedules, history of service
Games - notes on games
Web - links to articles, papers, misc
Fun - links to funny youtube videos, jokes, misc
Study - class timetables, homework, assignments, online courses
Health - log of health issues, fitness tracking, sports
Work - stuff for work
Business - tax, sales, processes around business, new ideas
Design - working out layouts and new features
Dev - notes on development tasks
Support - processes for customer support, list of issues, requests for features
RasbPI - hobby section (I should have called it hobbies) for hardware hacking
AI - notes and links to papers on AI, tips for Tensorflow, code samples
Option 4 - A folder for each project
Make a new folder for each of your projects as they come along.
This can work well at the start, but after a few years of use you'll have many unused project folders which have long been completed. They still show up in the search
To get around this you can
a) remove the project folder (notes still have the tag in them but no longer has a separate view)
b) rename the folder and all notes to a standard folder like 'Old Projects'
c) archive the notes - an archive note is still searchable but won't show up on the main page
The downside to this method is picking a folder from the dropdown list on a mobile device - you need to scroll each time, which can be annoying, but if you are not a heavy mobile user then this method offers a way to group your information in a nice fine grain.
Option 5 - make a new account for each main area
Have a separate account for personal, work, business and any specific project is another way to manage your data.
Pros
- keeps data separate, and makes search simpler (especially if you have thousands of notes and ideas)
- finer control of folders
- keeps you focused on the task at hand (when in your work account, that is all the stuff you have)
Cons
- remembering the logon and password for each of the accounts (not really a problem if you use a password manager)
- no single search all notes because stuff is in different accounts
One area this method does work well, is if you are writing a story or doing worldbuilding - you work out the plot in the notes, store character info in the contacts, and use the calendar to store a timeline of events in your world.
This way, all the fictional data is essentially excluded from your main information store, and it avoids reminders coming up such as "Find the Lost Sword of Algyn - due in 2 days"