gtg-contributors team mailing list archive

[Lionel Dricot <ploum@xxxxxxxxx>]

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Le 23/03/12 19:04, Bertrand Rousseau a écrit :
> 
> I understand your point of view, and I agree with most of it, but I
> think the reasoning is incomplete.
> 
> You define a "correct" way of organizing oneself (task are when all
> subtask are done), and an "abusive" way (parent tasks are container
> for groups of seemingly related tasks).
> 
> I'm ok with that distinction. But you actually why the "abusive"
> way of organizing yourself introduce some kind of pervertion
> (either at the organization system level or in GTG and GTG's UI).
> 
> Those elements are however essential to the discussion: is it just
> wrong to organize yourself this way? (In which case GTG could act
> as a promoter of a better way to organize, therefore achieving a
> goal of improving one's life). Or is it ok to organize yourself
> this way, but wrong to use GTG like this? (Therefore actually
> deciding that GTG is not made for the people preferring this
> organization scheme).
> 
> Depending on those, the stated goal of GTG and its potential public
> would be different. This is something that must be decided, and
> acted upon by carefully designing so that no confusion is
> possible.
> 
> Bertrand
> 


I agree. I said "abuse" because it's not something that I envisionned
when we started GTG. And, as I remember, you agreed with me at that point.

Now, at a very first glance, I believe that, yes GTG should promote a
better way of organazing. We are talking about "tasks", not random notes.

As someone said on Twitter just now, a task usually start with a verb.
If you cannot start the title with a verb, it's probably not a task.


1) I believe that tasks have, by essence, specificities and are not
simply a bunch of notes.

2) One of these specificity is that some tasks are required to be
completed before being able to work on another task. (this is the very
essence of a GANTT diagram, for example).

3) GTG should encourage its users to manage tasks and help users to
displays only tasks that are useful in a specific context.

4) displaying only tasks that can be achieved now is one of useful
filter (currently named "workview").


Based on those 4 asumptions, I strongly believe that GTG should
promote this way of working as much as possible.

As I said, I don't think that it's "a personal way of working": it
depends of the situation and the same person might sometimes use GTG
correctly, sometimes abuse it.

Also, it should be noted that it is easier to "abuse" GTG than to use
it in what I call the correct way.

Last but not least, all the bad examples lead, sometimes very subtly,
to non-logical behaviour and, by extension, to procrastination.

For example:

- -> Firefox
- --> Download
- --> Install
- --> Configure extensions


Means that, in the current workview, you see 3 tasks. Three of them
being no "doable". Thus, it defeats the whole workview.

If we hade a "do it now" plugin, a plugin that choose randomly a task
to do it now, it would not work either.

It means that you have to think about what you need to do. Thus, GTG
becomes a simple "note manager" and doesn't take advantage of knowing
we are talking about tasks, all the "task management" workload being
on your brain, not GTG.

Last but not least, once the three subtasks are done, you will end
with "Firefox" in your list, not knowing what to do. It might even
stays in your list for a while because you don't remember exactly.


There's also the "Kitchen" vs "call the plumber" problem. As I've read
once on Stormy's blog, most of the time we procrastinate on tasks
where we don't know exactly what to do. This is universal and in all
books against procrastination (like GTD).

I believe that a good todo manager should try to fight
procrastination. Encouraging you to use a verb, displaying tasks in
the way they should be achieved, all of that is useful and, IMHO,
general, not a personal thing.


All of that to say that we should not force people. If people want to
abuse a software, that's fine. But we should make it easier to use the
software in one way defined as "correct" by the developers and not
caring about those who abuse.

I believe that a good software design starts with a strong idea on the
concepts and on how to use them.

If we choose that what I call "abuse" is a perfectly valid use case
and that we should cover all those use cases, in the end GTG will be
only Tomboy with support for tags.

But I'm confident that the only reason why people, including me, abuse
GTG is because it's easier and more intuitive. It's not related with a
"personal workflow", only with the natural laziness of listing tasks
in the order they come to your mind.


Lionel
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