+1 with the concept of
"drawing in your notebook"
Daniel
Mimi Yin wrote:
Looking back on
what different people have been saying, perhaps the "concrete way" to
think about Stickies is NOT as a Kind of item, but more as a way to
display items.
So any item,
one with fuzzy dates or specific dates, notes, photos, documents, could
be displayed as a floating "sticky" in a view. It's simply a way to do
what you were describing as "drawing in your notebook". A way to
visually differentiate important information from all the rest.
Mimi
On Nov 9, 2005,
at 11:11 AM, Daniel Vareika wrote:
Mimi Yin wrote:
Hi Daniel,
So if I understand you
correctly, your concern is that Stickies encourages the wrong kinds of
behaviors? By allowing people to pile on lots of fuzzy-date Stickies,
do we set people up to delay and perhaps never decide what their
information means to them? Possibly No. 1 way to not getting anything
done, ever in GTD?
This
is precisely what I meant. Although 3M might sell a huge lot of them
and might be a really successful business
I completely see where
you're coming from and it's a fine line to walk when designing any
personal productivity tool. How do you provide people with enough
flexibility, such that they will actually bother to use the system, yet
herd them in the general direction of more effective productivity? It
was a recurring theme in our day with David Allen and we haven't quite
figured out a party line on this issue.
Neither
have I
However, a pattern has
begun to emerge from our various GTD discussions:
While the core of GTD
is conceptual in nature and addresses basic human behavioral tendencies
and problems, I often feel the specifics of GTD methodology have more
to do with treating the symptoms of the problem of human
disorganization, not the problem itself.
An analogy might be:
Having chocolate cake around results in over-eating for some people.
But it would be very sad for everyone if we had to ban chocolate cake
altogether AND it's not clear that getting rid of the source of
temptation would solve the root of someone's overeating problem either.
If
you dare to ban chocolate cake I will personally go up there and kill
you with my own hands, don´t even dare!! :o)
Being less childish, lets
put an analogy.
One could go with a
Freudian psychologist and would probably be for many years trying to
solve the root of a problem
One could go to a behavior
(not sure the word in English) psychologist and treat the symptoms but
get you going in a month or two.
Or one could go to first a
behavior and after treating successfully the symptom, then decide to
dig deeper and do a Freudian but maybe taking less time and pain.
If it was you, which one
would you choose?
Please note that I know
nothing about psychologist treatments, I am only supposing.
In GTD, the resistance
to keeping things fuzzy could be reinterpreted as simply an antidote to
symptoms specific to a concrete and unflexible "information world"
where:
1. a piece of paper
can only live in a single folder
2. a note can only
live in one GTD flat list and
3. pieces of paper and
notes can't change to become other things
Which leads us to
ponder: how would the GTD methodology change if it was no longer
bounded by the real-world physical metaphors of files in file folders?
Let me think it over the
pillow
In Chandler, items
can live in multiple places and items themselves can change (through
stamping). Chandler items are NOT like the papers and manila folders in
our file cabinets.
So now if we address
two of the specific GTD concerns you brought up in the context of
Chandler's "new world" paradigm, how does the discussion change?
1. Do Stickies
encourage people to have multiple Inboxes? One on their calendar, the
other in the Dashboard. Not really, since items live in multiple places
in Chandler, any sticky you add to your Calendar would have a Triage
status (just like any other content item in the PIM) and would be
managed in your Dashboard as well with the help of automatic Ticklers.
I
am not at your same level about Chandler to give you a quick response
to this one :o(
2. Will Stickies just
pile up into an incomprehensible mess over time? This is certainly a
danger for some people. But I wonder if one of the problems with
Stickies (both electronic and paper) is that they're great for
capturing fuzzy data, but once they've been created, they can never
become more than that. They can never become more structured and
specific OR at least, it's an onerous process for you to turn a generic
sticky into something that has specific meaning to you.
You
really have a point in this one. Please note that in my last mails I
was speaking of the stickies less like stickies but more of what they
could actually mean to the user. Fuzziness, Different kind of graphic
representation. I would include the property of morphing into something
else maybe from your words above.
Which is where
stamping and labeling in Chandler comes in. You can start out by
plopping a sticky on your calendar for this week. And then over time,
you can add specificity to the sticky: Tuesday, 2PM, with Joanne, at
Mondo's, to talk about: new hires, etc...
=====
In sum,
The ability to
easily"turn your sticky" into more and more structured data over time
PLUS
The ability to keep
track of this "fuzzy" data through Triage and Tickling in the Dashboard
may EQUAL
A self-sustaining
system that actually allows people to be flexible with data and iterate
on information WITHOUT losing track of it and having it all end up in
various messy piles all over the place.
At least that's the
dream.
I
now it´s a dream and I am well intentioned to feed it.
I for sure love to dream.
What I feel right now is
that everything is very abstract (minded).
It´s like I would love to
give it a try and say well I was wrong or well this is great but with
this little twist it would be excellent.
But what is sure is that I
am here to help (or at least I want to).
I think this gets at
some of the core concepts behind how Chandler is a system, not just a
storage facility.
I
have been doing some thinking about this, I have (I believe) some
interesting concepts I would love to share, but still I could not find
the time to fully (even quickly) develop.
Yours,
Daniel
:o) Mimi
At 11:14 AM -0300
11/9/05, Daniel Vareika wrote:
Mimi:
As I said, with
stickies I am not sure where I am right or wrong, I was just putting
forward a pillar of GTD.
I understand every
point you make, I do not disagree with you.
A part of me loves the
stickies in the calendar, the other part tells me it might be wrong.
Self
Criticism:
I do have stickies
(real physical ones) around the computer monitor.
They are actually even
one on top of the other.
I have counted them,
there are 40 of them in 12 piles.
Some are short lived
and work, some are not.
I did use stickies on
the mac, but in the end I decided that it was more of a mess than a
help (this is truly personal).
![DSCN3695.gif]()
Points
in this issue:
1) To know whether
people find stickies (physical or software based) really useful. What I
mean is whether they help more than get in the way although one might
use them a lot.
I use them a lot but
doing a serious self criticism I would prefer not having to use them at
all or limit my usage.
2) White spaces in a
calendar is really telling us something not nothing. It is telling us
how much time by the space do we have left so as to use thoughtfully.
White spaces are
useful, the size of them transmit invaluable information.
3) I love the concept
of fuzziness in a calendar, that is for me the greatest point Mimi has.
With other calendar apps like the Palm Desktop one finds things to be
sometimes too rigid. Fuzziness is a great concept to explore.
4) Going over the
stickies concept what I love is not really the concept as a stickie but
graphically speaking, another way to convey info.
Let me explain myself:
I, might be boring regarding calendars, but I recall what girls did in
school and high school. They did a lot of drawing, some really
beautiful, most of them conveyed really useful info for them, like
their best friends birthdays. To be able to convey some type of info in
a different manner, even different size makes it much more attractive,
but mostly much more useful, since for them, their best friends party
was the most important thing.
I know this concept is
adding a layer of complexity not intended even for 1.0 but it could be
good to brainstorm on it, why we are compelled by some other form of
graphically presenting the information.
For one thing we have
different icons in our desktop that transmit clearly their function.
5) I believe there are
other, really useful ways of managing and arranging information.
This might have
nothing to do with tags, keywords, dates or users. It is how we arrange
spatially that info. I do it for certain with my desktop, even taking
the time to change some folders icon to more descriptive ones.
For me, the spatial
relationship of these folders, their icons and how they are arranged,
conveys really useful info.
The same thing happens
with our physical desktop and our office in a broader sense.
6) Clutter. I
understand Mimi´s point in that visual clutter regarding the GUI is
different from one owns clutter.
From experience we all
know that what might be clean for one is a mess to another, and one is
capable of finding even in it´s own mess that little paper.
Nonetheless, reading GTD points out some other things, like its bad to
have many different in boxes, that we end up not really managing our
life. I am trying to work like GTD although it´s hard to be methodical,
but I find there are really benefits on it. Still I would not
generalize an opinion (I am talking only for myself).
Idea:
Maybe those stickies
could be really small ones like the notes in Acrobat (much cuter
though!) and that you could open them or see inside them if you point
at them. This way they won´t use much real state. On the other hand
they could be different icons like smiling faces, etc.. to be able to
personalize them and mean something to the user. This way it gets much
more personal a calendar in a traditional sense.
Transparency and Fade
in or out as Brad pointed out, I think are worth brainstorming.
Yours,
Daniel
Mimi Yin wrote:
Yes
you're right, David Allen does say to only put things on your calendar
that are appointments, commitments to time that you will not break, not
well-intentioned plans to get work done, that in all likelihood will
get pushed aside as new emergencies come in to throw you off balance.
By
simply maintaining a list of things you CAN do rather than trying to
adhere to traditional notions of "time management" where you try and
plot out exactly when you're going to complete tasks, is his way of
maintaining a state of mind like water. You stay flexible, by not
locking yourself down with a "schedule" you can't keep anyway.
I
wonder though, if the stickies on the calendar is something different
from "time management." The whole idea is that you keep things loose.
You're not blocking out time to complete tasks (ie. Next Monday from
1-3PM, I'm going to write this proposal) which is simply unrealistic,
because you have no idea what's going to have happened Monday morning
that's going to blow away your plans.
Instead,
you're simply placing reminders for yourself near and around the
appropriate time period.
So
think of the stickies as yet another way to display a GTD context. Time
sensitive contexts. This is essentially what David Allen does himself
with his month-based Tickler files. He puts items into folders labeled
with each month of the year and the beginning of each Month, he dumps
the contents of that Month's folder into his Inbox.
Instead
of @hardware store or @computer, this is for things that are @October
(ie. Go enjoy fall colors in the park.) or @Next week (ie. Pick up
pastries for people at the Office on the way to work.)
Whenever
you are looking at a week on your calendar, you are pulling up an
@context list for things that are relevant to that week. The same way
when you pull up an @context list for things relevant to the hardware
store, you're asking yourself, what things can I get done at the
hardware store?
So
if anything, stickies on the calendar could be conceived of as the
opposite of time management. Instead, it's a way for people to "be
fuzzy" about when they do things and simply assign a loose date range.
Over time, as things become clearer, as your calendar fills up, as new
information comes to light, you may narrow the window of time...but
like most other things in Chandler, it's an iterative process.
:o)
As
for clutter, I generally believe that self-made clutter is okay. Some
people thrive on it. What's overwhelming is when the UI comes
pre-cluttered with concepts and gizmos you don't understand or when you
have to navigate someone else's self-made clutter.
On
Nov 8, 2005, at 5:20 PM, Daniel Vareika wrote:
Mimi:
Although it sounds
compelling (to use real state that is in other way unused, we would be
promoting as for GTD a bad habit.
If I was to stick to
the rule of GTD that only those things that one should do on a certain
moment should be in the calendar, then the concept of stickies
shouldn´t go.
On the other hand one
is being too orthodox on this matter.
It is extremely
attractive the idea and the display, but again:
would we be promoting
clear, fast transmission of the info, or clutter?
I still prefer the Mac
OS simplicity.
I do not know how to
make this powerful, attractive idea something that empowers users
instead of getting into the way.
I would like feedbacks
on that matter.
I might be completely
off
I think it means much
more than stickies whats in place in this one.
Yours,
Daniel
I am being the devils
advocate on purpose, not because I want to.
Mimi Yin wrote:
Also
sending out an idea that someone who is interviewing for the Scooby
designer position came up with during their interview.
The problem they were
presented with was: There's all this free space on the calendar that's
not being used, how can we help the user maximize screen real estate?
It's potentially a
really great way to simulate the way people use paper calendars.
Proposal: Floating
stickies on the calendar.
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