Simon Willison’s Weblog

Private wikis for personal organisation

5th April 2003

I’ve been struggling with different methods of staying organised for as long a I can remember, but I think I’ve finally found something that works. A couple of days ago I set myself up a password protected Wiki (using my own slightly modified version of WikkiTikkiTavi) to see if a private personal Wiki could help me stay on top of things. It’s already proving remarkably useful. I’ve set up the front page as a to-do list, split in to University, Work and Personal sections. Any tasks which involve writing or developing ideas are wiki words linking to a page where I can develop them further. I’ve also got a section devoted to things I plan to blog (hence the recent surge in blogging activity), a bunch of links to useful sites and the beginnings of a collection of phone numbers and contact details. I also finally have a good place to keep all of those irritating but essential pieces of information such as my National Insurance number.

Of course, with the amount of personal data I am now accumulating security is likely to become more of an issue due to the threat of identity theft (I’m not keeping anything truly vital like passwords on there but it’s still a consideration). Maybe I should start looking in to https.