Quote:
Originally Posted by LizPf
As far as messy and broken systems, any system that lets me get my ideas out of my head in a way I can recover them later, without tying me up in planning flow is better than no system at all. A system that forces me to go through a 5 step process when an Action needs only 2-3 steps (Collect --> (Review -->) Do) is a system I won't use ... and I'll be back to my messy, broken non-system.
|
I'll admit to being a little confused by your Inbox hangups, but I'm not going to argue about them - I'm certainly no stranger to personal stubborn hangups.
I understand that you use OF with a non-GTD system, and that OF is designed to be a task management program that's flexible enough normal people as well as supporting the workflow for GTD fanatics. But as accessible as it is, it
must support the GTD workflow, or it fails one of its primary goals.
It's not a question of whether a feature is GTD 'canonical', it's a question of whether a feature circumvents the implementation of the GTD workflow. And so I think it would be useful to look at where OF fits into the GTD workflow (Collect-Process-Organize-Review-Do).
Processing, Reviewing, and Doing all require our input. A computer program can't determine what to do with the miscellanious pile of stuff that ends up in the inbox. Nor can the system review itself. Nor do we have robot slaves to do all our unpleasant tasks, much as I would love to send a robot to the dentist instead of going myself.
This leaves Collect and Organize for OF to help us. How OF helps us with collection is obvious, and I think Quick Entry and the Inbox are superbly done
when they don't try to process your items for you.
Organize is a little more complicated to think about because what we think of as organizing isn't exactly what GTD means by organizing. The only things GTD wants to keep track of are:
1. A list of every next or single action you have
2. A list of every project in your life, with its status and next action
3. A list of things you might one day like to do (Someday/Maybe)
4. A list of things you are waiting for.
And this is where OF should shine, because this is what computers are good at - keeping track of lists, and looking at parts of lists, and reordering lists based on different criteria. Only things aren't showing up in their proper lists, and that's a problem with processing. Things are skipping the Inbox by default. Things without a context can leave the inbox, even though lacking a context indicates they haven't really been processed. Things without a project not appearing in your list, and not being able to be processed!
While OF can't process for us, our ability to process items in OF is getting less and less GTD like.