Keeping Found Things Found: The Study and Practice of Personal Information Management

Chapter Eight Measuring and evaluating

“Should I change?” With the wisdom of hindsight, we may regret a change we’ve made. Or, we may wish we’d made it much sooner. We measure and evaluate in our practice of PIM so that we can act with more foresight and spend less time regretting. A yardstick for measuring and evaluating a change considers its impact on not just one but several activities of PIM. A tool that makes it easier to keep items has little value if items go into a “black hole” and cannot be found again later.

The only person ...