On Jan 5, 2008, at 1:09 PM, Davor Cubranic wrote:
On Saturday 05 January 2008 06:22:33 Mimi Yin wrote:
But, do these things need to happen in order? Should you only work on
these one at a time? Instead of creating 5 tasks and tracking them
all, why not just have a single event item that represents the
meeting and simply DO (on that meeting item) what needs to be done to
set up this meeting?
The problem, at least in GTD terms, is that it's hard to see at a
glance
what's the next thing you could work on right now, given your current
location and amount of available time. You'll have to do a sequential
scan of all your projects, reading through their list of to-do items
and then deciding which one is next.
Yes, a way to see sub-tasks as first class items in the table without
losing it's connection to the parent project would be much better. I
think what I'm struggling with is: Is Chandler still useful as a more
general productivity tool *without* that functionality?
What I'm questioning is the idea for any project, you only have 1
next action, which is what tools like Omni-Focus assume.
The example I gave was intended to show that actually, most of the
sub-tasks in the item could be done in parallel and often are done in
parallel.
An alternate way to approach the workflow would be to create an item
in Chandler that *is* the project and then work directly in the item,
treating it as a (shared) workspace for that project.
+ Create an event: Next all-hands
+ Put it on the calendar as an anytime event over the span of a week
while you narrow in on the date.
+ When you've figured out a date, you define the event time.
+ To help you figure out the date, you could email the event or share
it with key stakeholders and ask each person to list out times they
can't make it and any other constraints they have.
+ To brainstorm re: agenda you can just jot down ideas right in the
Notes field of the agenda. Your brainstorm will slowly evolve into
the actual agenda you send out.
+ To collect input from others, you can email or share it with key
stakeholders and ask them to add their own ideas to the list.
+ To send the invitation, you address it and send it out via email.
+ But even sending out the invitation isn't necessarily the last step
because you or others could think of more things to add to the agenda
and end up sending out a subsequent update to the invite.
This is pretty neat description. Would this be an "ideal" Chandler
workflow for collaboration?
I dunno about ideal ;) I think it's more a way of approaching how to
make the most out of Chandler. I think we are all so used to thinking
of task managers simply as ways to list out what we need to do that
we don't realize that a big part of the problem is that we don't
really have tools that help us both manage what we need to do *and*
help us do them as well (except for email).
The reason why we can offer this is because we're more than just a
simple list / outliner and because we have sharing and email. If
there's just a list, all you can do is list out the work you need to
do because there isn't really room to spread out and do your work.
I don't think Chandler is an outliner at all right now, simple or
otherwise.
No, agreed we're not an outliner.
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