Grow Your Own ‘How To’ Wiki

Lifehacker has a great post up tonight which draws from an idea of Matt Cutts, a Google Programmer. Matt suggests keeping a record of all the little tasks you end up forcing yourself to learn. Rather than risk having to re-learn it you can just head to your 'How To' directory and call up your original record.

While both articles suggest a directory of text files [Lifehacker also mentions a wiki] I thought I'd take it in a different direction.

I've been reading up and playing around with GTDTiddlyWiki Plus for awhile now. Up until today I'd been using it for recipes. After reading these two articles I thought TiddlyWiki would be a great solution.

Consider this, with GTDTiddlyWiki you could easily add tasks on the fly and tag them. You could also easily sort them based on category. @Computer for tech solutions, @HomeRepair for household repairs, @Recipes for your favorite meals and even @Directions for reminders on how to get from A to Z.

What's also nice about this solution is that it's portable. Without too much trouble you can duplicate your wiki and pass it along to a friend or even keep a backup on USB.

The important part of this is just persistence. If you do something, and you think you may need a hand remembering how to do it down the line, be sure to record it.

From my experience GTDTiddlyWiki has been great for keeping track of recipes and I think from here on out I'll be using it for other 'How To' things as well.