What Is The Most Annoying Thing In Your Current Setup And How Do You Deal With It?

[cfoley]

That's interesting! I was thinking about this last night and was considering how paper and electronic systems play with our sense of object permanence. With paper, the action will be exactly where and how you wrote it. So will other things like blemishes on the paper that can act as visual cues. With electronic systems, that is not necessarily the case. Pressing sort changes the order instantly. Resizing a window might change all the line breaks. Viewing on a different device will almost certainly make everything look different. A software update might change the look and feel. Then there are features like making items that are checked off disappear from view.

I concluded that paper plays better with our sense of object permanence -- but maybe that only applies to some people (people like me). Your post suggests that it works differently for you.

 

[gtdstudente]

Absolutely! I also find myself more likely to reword things for clarity.



Aaah. I've been trying to trigger my rewrite based on how messy it is all getting. I could try a monthly rewrite and see how that works.

@cfoley

Something you might GTD appreciate:

Like using digital to keep paper fresh, crispy, and clean

Like using paper to keep digital fresh, crispy, and clean

As you see GTD fit. . . .

 

[gtdstudente]

I always had a problem with the permanence of writing on paper, which led to bad effects throughout my workflow. With digital tools, I revise and reorder easily. I know there are people who combine paper and digital tools. I have no idea what the distribution of practices is. My wife is still using a color-coded Microsoft Word document, combining that with use of Things. I have no idea how she does that either.

@mcogilvie

Sounds like a marriage made in GTD heaven . . . nice . . . very nice

 

[mcogilvie]

That's interesting! I was thinking about this last night and was considering how paper and electronic systems play with our sense of object permanence. With paper, the action will be exactly where and how you wrote it. So will other things like blemishes on the paper that can act as visual cues. With electronic systems, that is not necessarily the case. Pressing sort changes the order instantly. Resizing a window might change all the line breaks. Viewing on a different device will almost certainly make everything look different. A software update might change the look and feel. Then there are features like making items that are checked off disappear from view.

I concluded that paper plays better with our sense of object permanence -- but maybe that only applies to some people (people like me). Your post suggests that it works differently for you.

I think you are absolutely correct about object permanence, although I think of it as a sense of place: for example, all my active projects and next actions are ‘here.” I find Things has a much stronger sense of place for me than OmniFocus, Todoist or Reminders. It hasn’t had an automatic sort feature since version 1 (now on v3 many years later). Its strengths lie more in quick, easy manual manipulation of lists. Some people can use a spreadsheet for their next actions, but I wouldn’t.

 

[TesTeq]

I always had a problem with the permanence of writing on paper, which led to bad effects throughout my workflow. With digital tools, I revise and reorder easily. I know there are people who combine paper and digital tools. I have no idea what the distribution of practices is. My wife is still using a color-coded Microsoft Word document, combining that with use of Things. I have no idea how she does that either.

@mcogilvie I always had a problem with the impermanence of digital storage. There's no easy way to backup Things data. You can use their cloud service but it is not a backup. It is a synchronization service which – in the event of one machine going crazy – will synchronize this craziness everywhere. How can I trust such unnecessarily complex system?

 

[TesTeq]

With paper, the action will be exactly where and how you wrote it.

@cfoley That's it what I love about paper. In Things, I know that some future actions are intentionally hidden but there's no easy way to "turn the page and see them".

 

[FocusGuy]

@mcogilvie I always had a problem with the impermanence of digital storage. There's no easy way to backup Things data. You can use their cloud service but it is not a backup. It is a synchronization service which – in the event of one machine going crazy – will synchronize this craziness everywhere. How can I trust such unnecessarily complex system?

There is a local safe of the things database it is in the private library. However this safe database is not as easy to restore as the Omnifocus one... Happily I never had trouble with things.

 

[dtj]

PEBCAK- Problem exists between chair and keyboard.

 

[mcogilvie]

PEBCAK- Problem exists between chair and keyboard.

Ah yes, the old User Headspace Error. It happens a lot.

 

[devon.marie]

That's interesting! I was thinking about this last night and was considering how paper and electronic systems play with our sense of object permanence. With paper, the action will be exactly where and how you wrote it. So will other things like blemishes on the paper that can act as visual cues. With electronic systems, that is not necessarily the case. Pressing sort changes the order instantly. Resizing a window might change all the line breaks. Viewing on a different device will almost certainly make everything look different. A software update might change the look and feel. Then there are features like making items that are checked off disappear from view.

I had to finally accept that this is how my brain works. I am 100% visual in how I orient in the world, and that goes for how I use tools. I like things to be in the same spot on my computer screen, looking the same way. I remember where things are, and if it gets moved but I don't see it there, it is lost to me. Someone will ask me about a meeting we had 4 years ago, and I'll remember which notebook I took notes in, and that they were on the bottom right of a page, and in what color ink...

So I've accepted that this is what I need to help ground me in the world and have leaned into it. I use a completely paper-based system now, and have for a while, with the exception of required Google Calendar use for work (but I still replicate it on paper for myself). It's more inconvenient in a lot of ways - I can't just narrate new tasks to my smartwatch like I used to, or attach files to my tasks. But the ways it works better for me vastly outweigh this. I remember if I put something on a todo list. I remember my plans for the day. I am faster at grabbing a notebook and flipping to the right page than I ever was rooting around in file structures to find what I'm looking for, after forgetting what I named the file. That, and every single piece of software I've used more than a couple of years has either gone bust on me or drastically changed or become simply cost-prohibitive, sending me adrift once again. A notebook is a notebook. The basic format hasn't changed in ~500 years.