Mimi Yin wrote:
Hi Andre,
Could you elaborate on that? Do you 'sit' in the Dashboard the same way
you might 'sit' in your Email Inbox? What kinds of things do you do in
the Dashboard collection, as opposed to one of your user-defined
collections.
Thx,
Mimi
Hi Mimi,
After some more time noodling on and using the Dashboard, I think I
might have an answer to your question now. (Thanks for your patience and
thanks for asking again.)
So, yes and no, really. My current thinking is that the distinction in
large part has to do with not being able to exclude In from the
Dashboard in the recent incarnations of Chandler. Please note that my
perspective is infected with my interpretation of the GTD meme.
I do "sit" in the Dashboard somewhat the same way I might "sit" in my
email inbox, but not all of the time. Truer to reality, I would like to
be sitting in my Dashboard sometimes the same as sitting in my email
Inbox, and sometimes not the same, but the current implementation of the
Chandler Dashboard does not provide me this flexibility. What seems to
me would be more useful and adaptable is the ability to flexibly and
easily include or exclude the GTD Collection, OSAF Triaging, GTD
Processing & GTD Organizing activities (that is, processing one's Inbox)
from the GTD Doing activity (that is, getting things done on the
runway). (Reviewing is in the batter also, but better covered separately.)
From the Dashboard spec and other OSAF wiki pages, the Dashboard is
characterized as the GTD "Runway". My interpretation (challengeable as
it may be) of the GTD Runway is that it is basically about the Doing
activity. In our information and interruption intensive world,
processing and organizing completely every new item I take next from the
Inbox is not practical for me all of the time, leading to my delight
with the idea, design, and implementation of the Now/Later/Done
front-end triaging in Chandler. Triage helps one with the information
intensity, but not the interruptions. Rather, with Inbox conflated (cool
word I learned from you) with Runway in the Chandler Dashboard, one is
guaranteed interruptions, no matter how easily triaged.
It would be great to be able to flexibly use the Dashboard for only
focused, uninterrupted Doing in the applicable context of the moment
with items that seamlessly span kinds and collections, both mine and
not-mine. It would be also great at my election to quickly and flexibly
include my Inbox items with the Runway items in my Dashboard so that I
could, for example, confirm where I should focus next by quickly
triaging my Inbox in relation to my existing Runway items, with the
likely outcome being a refined Runway. In some cases, it may be most
coherent to separately triage, process, and organize In, leading to the
desire to be able to flexibly add individual items to the Runway /
Dashboard.
My question a couple of weeks ago about being able to remove items
individually from the Dashboard, that is, move items individually to one
or many collections, arises from the desire to file items for reference
and for other reasons. Maybe it's just me, but being able to mark the
triage status of items in the Dashboard as "Done," and being able to add
them to other collections, but not being able to also remove them from
the Dashboard, seems incomplete to me. Unless I misunderstand, items I
want to keep for reference or in a "Waiting For" state for example
(begging custom triage status types) will have to also stay in the
Dashboard in the current implementation.
Hope this makes some sense and is useful. Did I answer your question?
Please let me know if you have any more questions.
Thanks, Andre
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