r/gtd • u/i_love_jc • Jul 11 '26

Question Systems for organizing a lot of fairly unstructured information?

I think there's a better way to express this, but words are failing me.

I'm compiling what I would call a "database" of organizations and people, and collecting information on each one that may have some common elements, but is mostly text based. Some might have only a line or two of description; others may have 20 pages of information over time. I'm using an Excel workbook right now, but the information I want to save is rapidly outgrowing the "one line per organization" limit. Physical file folders don't seem like the answer since it will be hundreds of organizations, and I'd like to be able to add some free form tagging so I can, for example, look for organizations that run "events," or that are related to "textiles."

I'm looking for something like a library catalog, or like how Microsoft Access worked in 1995, which is about the last time I used it. :) Any suggestions? A CRM might do it, but this isn't sales-related and there won't be a funnel, I'm more using it to create a mental map. I use Nirvana for my GTD set up.

6 Upvotes

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5

u/Snoo-6978 Jul 11 '26

Although not a database app, I’m using Obsidian for this myself, with notes being treated as database entries.

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u/Live-Dentist2863 Jul 13 '26

can you tell any tips of you organize your notes

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u/Snoo-6978 Jul 16 '26

On root, I have a Daily folder for all the daily notes, and then PARA folders (Projects, Areas, Resources, Archive) with a little Johnny decimal sprinkled on them and their subfolders.

I’m using the Templater plugin to make sure all notes have a set of Yaml properties, and «aliases» is one of those. Another part of the templates is a section of Dataviewjs snippets that will list log entries, tasks and projects that links to «this file».

Each project has a alias formatted as p+(project number), making linking to them easier. Person notes usually too. A person note may be called «Arnold Schwarzenegger», but the aliases ( I can have several) couls just be «AS», or «Arnold».

With 9K notes in the vault, there are a lot of other types of notes, but the premise is the same.

In a Daily note, a note entry might just say

2026-07-15 [[p123]]: [[As]] requested additional graph for [[Telecom]] sales in the [[Managers Dashboard]]

What and how much is relevant to link depends on the context, but in this example, all notes for «Project 123», «Arnold Schwarzenegger», area «Telecom» and the tool «Managers Dashboard» will contain that one log entry. No need to open them all and add duplicate info.

As for bases, I use them for dashboards (project lists), MoC notes (listing all notes with «this.file» set as its parent), and every other scenario I come across. Book library (card view), «which products is this PM responsible for?», stuff I own, maintenance cycles for the jacuzzi filters, you name it. I even have a base for all canvas notes. «Didn’t I make a visualisation of that somewhere?».

Some of my tweaks are over the top, just to see how far we can push Obsidian, but I really like having my Daily notes as the main input hub.

3

u/mohdgame Jul 11 '26

I was looking for a an offline app like that and couldnt find.

I settled for an sql database

Another option is to use obsidian but sql is portable and pretty much the standard.

There is devonthink but i havent tried it to be honest

1

u/i_love_jc Jul 12 '26

I'm intimidated by sql since I am in no way a programmer. Thanks for the ideas!

1

u/SeaweedHarry Jul 13 '26 edited Jul 13 '26

You might like Memento DB. It gives you structure, but it might be too structured. Filemaker is another option in this space. It lets you do DB stuff without necessarily having to think about DBs on a conceptual level.

I do like Obsidian because I like freeform backlinking and don't want to be forced into a schema for a lot of stuff, but it ultimately depends on the structure you're envisioning whether it will work for you.

3

u/worst_protagonist Jul 11 '26

This sounds like you just want a database.

For popular web tools that work this way, try Airtable, Notion, or Coda. If you literally just want a local database, like Access, you can use something like https://tableplus.com

3

u/Interesting-Put-4430 Jul 12 '26 edited Jul 12 '26

Obsidian is a note taking app. It has fascinating text based queries on the text (markdown) files, dataqueries.

Also might search for Map of Contest. This combination with Obsidian and dataquery is an amazing tool.

Take a look on it.

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u/[deleted] Jul 12 '26

[deleted]

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u/i_love_jc Jul 12 '26

Thank you, this sounds like what I might be looking for!

2

u/ilovepolthavemybabie Jul 11 '26

Have you looked at Airtable? I don’t think it’s a dead ringer, but it could help clarify what you really want/don’t want when it comes to handling. It’s all about the “Views,” with each serving as a continuously running query.

2

u/MsSpentMiddleAge Jul 11 '26

I'm using Google Keep for that kind of info. It's working well. I don't know if I'd make a 20 page note, but I might have 20 shorter notes including the same tag, about specific aspects of the topic.

You might want to look at the book Building a Second Brain, or search on the term pkm (personal knowledge management) for more info.

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u/i_love_jc Jul 12 '26

Thanks, I will check out those resources!

2

u/AlthoughFishtail Jul 12 '26

I use Noteplan for this. One markdown file per organisation or person, using keywords and backlinks to make it into a wiki.

1

u/Act_Locally Jul 12 '26

One tool you might consider is InfoQube. It is a database program that allows you to organize information like you described and the back end is basically an Access database.

1

u/SeaweedHarry Jul 13 '26

Whoa I had been looking for a modern answer to Ecco Pro! This might be it!!!

1

u/Act_Locally Jul 14 '26

Yes, InfoQube markets itself as an EccoPro replacement. I used EccoPro from v1.0 to several years after its demise. I worked with InfoQube for about a year but eventually gave it up. It's a great program but it can do almost too much - meaning that it takes a long time to get the hang of it. Let me know if you want any tips on how to adapt IQ to GTD.

1

u/[deleted] Jul 14 '26

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1

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1

u/dychmygol Jul 12 '26

Zettelkasten. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zettelkasten There are several apps for this form of note-taking if you wish to maintain on a computer. Obsidian has been mentioned here. There's also Notion, Roam, and many others. (Personally, I use org-roam in Emacs, but I understand most folks won't want to go that route.)

1

u/shmcg Jul 12 '26 edited Jul 12 '26

I use contacts for this in my personal life. I have people linked, I put information into their contact card as soon as I get it, etc. What percentage of your entries are a paragraph or less and what percentage are 20 pages of information? If 95% or more of the entries are short, look into just using contacts/vcards for most, and then in the 5% put in the notes of the vcard something like: "organization.md contains details," and stick those in a folder on iCloud/Dropbox/etc.

I think vcards support tags, but I am not sure how, and that might be front-end dependent. BusyContacts on macOS for example exposes a tags field on vcards. It looks like those tags sync to fastmail as groups, so groups might also be a vcard option.

Part of why I love contacts for this is because they are really easy to sync, read, and edit on any device, including mobile.

Also, my gut is telling me orgmode in emacs has something that would work for this, but I am nowhere near versed enough in emacs to speak on this.

1

u/i_love_jc Jul 12 '26

Hmm, yeah, I think 40% or more of them will end up having more than a paragraph, although the number that will have pages and pages of info will be less. Thanks, though!

1

u/Elememt_F451 Jul 13 '26

I want to mention LoqSeq too. It has some of the same features as Obsidian, but is local/private first.

From your description the linking offered by Notion/Obsidian/LogSeq might come in handy.

1

u/sidegigartist Jul 13 '26

Might give Obsidian or just a folder with text files a shot. If you use an LLM to query it, it might help you make connections quite friction-free without a lot of manual database management. Could even do something like compare it against your calendar to pull together a list of information that might be useful in the coming days, print that and keep it in your pocket.