Your Life Story

A simple way to organize your life story: Label a file card for each year of your life. As you rummage through "nostalgia" items, write the information from each item on the appropriate card. A digital database, such as iData or mooDex, with each year as a record, makes the job easier. Now you have a life chronology to start your story and an easy way to get organized.

My hands-down favorite database program is iData 3. At $70 it's a bit pricey. iData Lite, at $30, is the same program but only handles plain text. There's also a version for the iPhone for $5. A simpler, more limited alternative is mooDex . Try it free without limitations, but if you use it pay the $7 shareware fee.

All are Rolodex-type databases, but can handle much more text than a Rolodex card.

There are probably other ways to do it. You can use a word/text processor, but I don't think it's as convenient. I wrote about iData 3 in our newsletter in Feb 2008

I use iData everyday for storing all kinds of information. I have iData files for addresses, auto, software, recipes, projects, purchases, rebates and on and on.

There's a good article on password protecting your iData files using encrypted disk images http://www.idata3.com/ProtectingDatafiles/ This also applies to other kinds of files and, again, it's something I use routinely. If someone steals my computer, they will find that all my sensitive files are encrypted.