Most of the tasks I do involve a number of different files. Designing an experiment means I've got to have open the papers I'm building on or referring to, plus notes on the design, plus IRB forms proposing or approving the new experiment. Creating the stimuli for an experiment means I've got to have the stimulus-creation program (Excel, Presentation, a compiler, whatever) open, plus my notes about what the stimulus should be. Analysing data means I've got to have my lab notebook open, plus the analysis files I'm creating, plus any old analysis files I'm using as models. This means that a big part of the cognitive load of resuming a task is remembering what files I need to complete it, and where they all are.
I've found a couple of half-solutions of various kinds. After an awful lot of digging around on the web, I did find a sadly now-defunct tool called Multifire; it allowed the creation of a txt file that referred to different documents or folders or websites, which opened them all by a double-click. It's a little limited, since it can only open any given file type in its default program and doesn't allow for any specification there--and anyway it's since vanished from the web completely. My favorite task-management tool, Remember the Milk, supports adding a URL to a task, but not any other type of file reference.
I would love to see a utility that has all the wonderful task-management features of RTM, but also allows a wide variety of files to be grouped with tasks. So, a task like "check readiness for new experiment" would include a link to the stimuli to be tested, to the consent & questionnaire files for review, and to the recruitment text for posting.
Man, I really want this to be easier than it is.
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