


Humans are also shockingly lazy when it comes to managing information. Sophisticated information retrieval mechanisms are generally successful only when they support processes laboriously learned through professional training and practice (e.g., law, medicine, humanities research, etc.). If they can't find something quickly, they simply ask somebody, ideally without having to pick up the phone. Most, however, depend on those documents that they have immediately at hand (on their desk/desktop). A person might do a few cursory searches or pretend to look at an authoritative source. In essence, humans are remarkably lazy when it comes to finding information. There are entire fields of study devoted to these two questions called, respectively, Human Information Behaviour and Personal Information Management.

The first regards how humans find information and the second concerns what humans do with information once it is found. But why are we so weak? We can answer this question in two ways. Humans are lazy with informationĮvernote, Microsoft OneNote, and Google Keep are all about managing information, something which most humans do rather poorly. I say "don't choose." Use all three but for very different reasons. Those tools are Evernote, Microsoft OneNote, and Google Keep. But which one should you use? Three different information-management tribes have emerged and each worship their own particular deity of intervention. We do the only thing we can to manage this overload. It pours in constantly and piles up where we least want it or need it.
