In a recent bout of interest in ‘personal information management,’ I’ve been thinking about and talking to people about the way we stay organized and on top of things.  Some people like GTD, others use google gcal/gmail/etc, others use post-its, and a whole host of people don’t record this information at all.  Instead, they do what I am calling friendsourcing.  (Until a better name comes along, at least.)

We’re familiar with outsourcing - sending our tasks or whatever to totally outside people.  We’re familiar, too, with crowdsourcing - asking the lazyweb/lazytwitter/lazytumblr world to answer questions for ourselves.  In either case, these methods are generally going to people who we trust marginally, perhaps only because that’s their job (outsourcing) or because we hope that correct answers will bubble to the top (crowdsourcing).

I’m finding an increasing number of people who do this friendsourcing thing - that is, they delgate this organization and other data to remember to trusted friends.  My advisor, for instance, freely admits that he doesn’t record things or rely on himself to remember information - he tells his grad students, and among those (presumably) trusted people, someone will remember and remind him.  A friend of mine has also said that he doesn’t write down activites and relies on reminders, especially from people (in this case, me) who he has determined generally do know what’s going on.

I think the thing that makes this really different is (1) that these are generally scheduling or organizational items and (2) that these people have found that relying on others is more effective, for them, than trying to remember information on their own.