Dealing with growing backlog (was: next-error for agenda searches)

[Ihor Radchenko]

Samuel Wales <samologist@gmail.com> writes:

> one issue with this great thing called capture is that there is
> nothing quite so convenient that does the exact opposite.
>
> [you can regularly purge, if your life/forest is simple enough or you
> have the physical ability to do things.  but you can't just
> org-doneify-lower-value-stuff-i-captured-when-wasn't-sure-of-their-value-at-the-time
> without adding energy, concentration, time, etc.]

If I understand you correctly you are talking about ever-growing someday
list.

My latest solution to this problem (which I am quite happy with) is the
following:

1. Every day/week I go through recently added someday staff and look if
   it still looks useful.  For ideas, I just check if they still make
   sense and for links, I open each link and skim through the abstract
   and sometimes link text in more details.

   When I first did the above, I was surprised that 50-80% of captured
   staff is just gone because it is not as interesting as it looked
   initially.

2. The ideas/links I mark for some day in future are scheduled using
   org-learn. They will appear again in my agenda a few days later and I
   can re-assess them. If still looks interesting, but someday not now -
   reschedule using org-learn utilising spaced repetition. Otherwise -
   archive.

   With the above approach, I only see "not sure" ideas
   days->weeks->years later. Only several times a year. More useful
   ideas remind about themselves more frequently and I often end up
   actually using them.

   Credit of this idea:
   https://www.getdnote.com/blog/how-i-built-personal-knowledge-base-for-myself/

The total time needed to do the described is surprisingly small,
especially with the ability to do bulk agenda operations to postpone all
the maybe staff when you have no time/energy/mental power.

Best,
Ihor