This morning started with a call from my wife’s dentist, reminding her of her Monday appointment. That got me thinking – the reason that professionals of all kinds spend money reminding people of their appointments is that so many forget them, along with many other important details that sooner or later — and often when they aren’t expecting it – they will suddenly need. Think that doesn’t apply to you? What is your car’s VIN? If it is ever stolen you will need that.

That got me thinking about how I have never understood why PDAs did not become a mainstream success. They are the perfect personal organizers and detail holders, yet most people still see them as geek tools. They seem to think that using a PDA is arduous and takes huge amounts of time. And so they stumble through life missing appointments, overdrawing their checking accounts, searching for telephone numbers, and failing at keeping their diets. And every April they spend miserable days searching for receipts and trying to figure out their income taxes.

My father and his sister had tremendous memories for details. He could buy gas on the way to work and that night remember exactly how much gallons he pumped and what he spent. Even in old age she could remember dozens of telephone numbers. Me – not so much. I am lucky when I remember my own phone number, and asf or how much I spent at the store – I forget that before I get to the car. But with my PDA (actually at the moment a small Windows tablet) I can capture all that information as I get it – I record what I spend on gas and how much I get at the pump, how much I spend at the store at the checkout, and my next doctor’s appointment when I make it.

Of course this takes discipline. But the reward is huge. I don’t have to remember any of it. And when I need some personal fact, no matter how obscure – my son’s shirt size or the VIN for my Miata – I know exactly where to find it. And because I keep careful records, things like Income Tax become much easier – all the records are in Quicken, recorded when I spent the money or deposited the check, and accessing them is just a couple of screen taps away.

The amount of information I commonly carry with me and have at my fingertips is much more than anyone could possibly remember. I remember visiting my aunt when we needed the number of a local restaurant to get a dinner reservation. She reached for the phone book, and I got out my PDA. A couple of taps and I had the number, and she suddenly realized that while she could remember 20 or so phone numbers I had more than 1,000 in my pocket. She still joked me about having “a notebook that needs a battery”, and she never got one herself, but she understood why I did.

Today of course there only is one real PDA, the iPod Touch. Smartphones abound, and that connectivity can be a huge benefit – for e-mail, IM and other digital

communications of course but also because it can allow you to keep data online where you can access it from whatever device is most useful at the moment – laptop, tablet, or handheld. But from what I see few people use them to really organize themselves. Which is too bad because it really does pay off. More than anything else it frees you from the tyranny of the detail. My handheld allows me to focus on what I want to do instead of being blindsided by one organizational issue after another.