I rarely (every 1-2 yrs) post personal content on any social media platform, otherwise just direct album shares with specific people. HOWEVER getting into the habit of just snapping pictures of stuff that might be useful later (or interesting, important, etc) has become an extremely flexible and low-effort form of documentation, journaling, note-taking, and CYA.
Examples:
Need documentation for a purchase? You have the receipt.
Rental company (car/hotel/landlord/hw-store/bike/scooter) scamming you for damage at exorbitant rates? Pics prove you returned item in same condition.
Insurance needs serial number for the gadget you lost on the train? Good thing you took a picture of the sticker on the bottom.
Can’t remember what day it was you visited that person/place a few years ago? Search by location/time of day/contact.
Need to prove a product arrived damaged or dead? Easy, took pictures at delivery and during unboxing.
Can’t remember how box was packed? Check unboxing photos.
Manufacturer demands video of non-working item for warranty? Already have it.
Need to remember how something was wired/assembled before taking apart? Done.
Support can’t help with intermittent technical problem until you can reproduce. Good thing your instinct was to screenshot the error message.
Also handy for things like “where was this plugged in?” And "what’s that sticker I can’t quite read on the back of this bulky thing I can’t/don’t want to move
Yeah you’re totally right about pictures as documentation. I do it a lot but you seem to be even better than I am. Curious – do you have a good system for keeping pictures like that searchable or organized? That’s my only issue with it, is that sometimes those can be hard to dig back through
I usually just lean on the local auto-tagging and OCR of the photo app, but sometimes if I take a pic that I suspect I’ll reference a lot, or just want it to be easy to find quickly even if I’m high or concussed or whatever, I’ll add a handful of likely keywords as custom tags.
My recommendation, however, is to favor delayed organization. While you may spend more time later digging to find the thing, it’s a good bet that (1) most things won’t need to be found i.e. most front-loaded effort would be wasted, (2) everything can actually still be found even if it occasionally takes a little longer, and (3) on-device image recognition and automatic cataloging tends to improve over time making everything more searchable retroactively.
It turns out that habit is quite a life hack.
I rarely (every 1-2 yrs) post personal content on any social media platform, otherwise just direct album shares with specific people. HOWEVER getting into the habit of just snapping pictures of stuff that might be useful later (or interesting, important, etc) has become an extremely flexible and low-effort form of documentation, journaling, note-taking, and CYA.
Examples:
It has just been an endlessly useful habit.
Also handy for things like “where was this plugged in?” And "what’s that sticker I can’t quite read on the back of this bulky thing I can’t/don’t want to move
Also, “where did I park in big parking areas (e.g., theme parks)?”
Yeah you’re totally right about pictures as documentation. I do it a lot but you seem to be even better than I am. Curious – do you have a good system for keeping pictures like that searchable or organized? That’s my only issue with it, is that sometimes those can be hard to dig back through
I usually just lean on the local auto-tagging and OCR of the photo app, but sometimes if I take a pic that I suspect I’ll reference a lot, or just want it to be easy to find quickly even if I’m high or concussed or whatever, I’ll add a handful of likely keywords as custom tags.
My recommendation, however, is to favor delayed organization. While you may spend more time later digging to find the thing, it’s a good bet that (1) most things won’t need to be found i.e. most front-loaded effort would be wasted, (2) everything can actually still be found even if it occasionally takes a little longer, and (3) on-device image recognition and automatic cataloging tends to improve over time making everything more searchable retroactively.