[chandler-users] The story of a new user

[Allan Day]

Hi Mimi,
>
> Thanks for writing in with your use cases. User write-ups are very 
> helpful as we continue to refine the product.
I'm glad it's helpful. I was concerned that, being something of a 
non-standard user, I might be throwing things off. Feel free to ignore me!
>
> I think all of your requests are reasonable. Ideally, Chandler would 
> support the ability to allow users to define their own Triage Statuses.
That really would be the best thing, as far as I'm concerned.

One thing that I'm often aware of is the way that the future has a 
tendency to expand and contract - often, I'm looking three weeks into 
the future. At times, this can expand to 9 months or a year, only to 
collapse down again later. The ability to adjust Triage Statuses would 
be helpful in dealing with that.
>
> Now onto philosophy ;)
Excellent! :)
> I agree with the sentiment that life is fuzzy. The Triage Statuses are 
> meant to be a reflection of that, so I am concerned that you feel that 
> NOW implies such a strict sense of time.
>
> If the NOW section were renamed something like ACTIVE, would it make 
> more sense for you? Would you be more comfortable having multiple 
> items in there at the same time?
Oh, don't worry about me too much! ;)

The way I described it is how I understand NOW... that's all I can say. 
So, yes, ACTIVE would be much closer to the way I manage my work, but 
again, that's just me.

Thanks for getting back,

Allan
>
> Mimi
>
> On Mar 17, 2008, at 9:30 AM, Allan Day wrote:
>
>> Thanks for your reply, bak.
>>> Just a few thoughts from another Chandler newbie.
>>>
>>> Allan Day wrote:
>>>> [...]
>>>> *Now*
>>>> When is now?! Are we ever 'in the now'? To me, 'now' says 'right this
>>>> moment'. But when is this actually the case? Things in my life are 
>>>> a bit
>>>> fuzzier than that. Philosophically speaking, the accessibility of 
>>>> 'now'
>>>> is an open question - are we able to access the 'now' as a subject of
>>>> conscious thought? I'd prefer something that meant something a little
>>>> fuzzier - 'round about now', 'any minute now', 'happening', 'soon',
>>>> 'today', 'in-progress'.
>>>> On a more practical level, the whole work flow thing isn't 
>>>> happening for
>>>> me. All the items in my collections are currently set to 'Later'. 
>>>> Again,
>>>> this may be a consequence of my not using Chandler's calendering
>>>> functionality.
>>>>
>>>> The imperative behind 'now' seems to be that I should have multiple
>>>> items happening 'now', but that isn't the way me or my work operates.
>>> I sort of had this same reaction, but the fact of the matter is that 
>>> it's up to you to decide!  My workflow thing so far has been to have 
>>> everything set to 'LATER', and then bring in a group of things that 
>>> could happen today, soon, to 'NOW', and then process them to 'DONE'.
>>>
>>> Basically -- do what makes sense!  The rules are not embedded in the 
>>> tool like they are with some other GTD-ish apps like ThinkingRock or 
>>> iGTD or whatever.
>>>
>>> As for 'NOW' vs. 'Any minute now' -- screen real estate is 
>>> expensive!  I believe the idea is to just recognize the ambiguity 
>>> here and use 'NOW' for the sake of brevity. :)  Map it to some other 
>>> concept as you see fit.
>> I agree - there's no reason why I can't understand 'now' in a way 
>> that suits me. Except that 'now' does have an inescapable meaning in 
>> this context - the context of 'now' 'done' 'later'. I can choose to 
>> reinterpret, but only in a way which clearly goes against the 
>> intended meaning.
>>
>> Don't get me wrong - I see why 'now' is the right word for many (if 
>> not most) users of Chandler. I guess what I was getting at is that 
>> the kind of work that I do doesn't involve much stuff happening 
>> 'now'. I'm not a typical user of Chandler. As such, I was thinking 
>> that it would be nice to have some other ways of designating items - 
>> 'soon', 'upcoming', 'next', 'on ice', 'deferred'.
>>>> *Publishing*
>>>> Currently, I'm using the Hub purely as a means to synchronise my
>>>> collections over multiple machines (the web front end will come in the
>>>> future, I'm sure). To share a collection with the Hub, I 'Publish' it,
>>>> but it is unclear to me whether such published collections are 
>>>> publicly
>>>> accessible or not. The word 'Publish' would suggest that they are, 
>>>> but I
>>>> don't really want them to be.
>>> They are not.  You have to give someone a that URL with the long, 
>>> funky UUID in it, and also generate a ticket that lives on the hub 
>>> and allows people to see it.  It is analogous to the way you share 
>>> calendars in Google Calendar.
>>>
>>> But I hear you.  My solution is to run my own Chandler server -- 
>>> then again, I spent some time in the UNIX admin salt mines, so it 
>>> was not much of a time investment to me.
>> It's good to hear that it's not public.
>>>>
>>>> *The dashboard*
>>>> Why not 'All'? I think someone else said it on this list - a dashboard
>>>> is something with a steering wheel on it. I don't see what additional
>>>> meaning the word 'dashboard' carries which could be useful in this
>>>> situation.
>>> Actually, dashboard != 'All'.  It only equals 'All' if you want it to.
>>>
>>> This is kind of nifty -- what I've done is group stuff in 
>>> collections by context, in a GTD-ish type of way.  So I have a @work 
>>> and @home collection, for example.  At home I right-click '@work' 
>>> and select the 'Don't show in dashboard' option, and vice versa at 
>>> work -- that way, I don't have distracting clutter in my list of 
>>> action items for stuff from the wrong context in 'Dashboard'.
>>>
>> True - Dashboard isn't quite the same as all. (Though couldn't you 
>> exclude from 'all? Maybe that would be a little contradictory...!)
>>
>> Maybe my unease with 'Dashboard' reflects the way I'm using Chandler. 
>> To me, 'Dashboard' means the place where everything gets controlled, 
>> where things are assigned, where I survey everything that is going 
>> on, and where that stuff gets managed. But that's not what I use 
>> Chandler for. I use it to manage a very discrete set of items; two or 
>> three lists, essentially. To me, it's a tool with a specific, rather 
>> than a general, purpose, and no me, 'all' communicates this in a way 
>> that 'Dashboard' doesn't.
>>
>> I'm not writing this to say 'this is how I think Chandler should be'. 
>> I realise that there must be a lot of that already! All I'm saying is 
>> that in my particular case - my particular use of Chandler - these 
>> are the things that I (rightly or wrongly) encountered. That's as far 
>> as it goes. :)
>>
>> Allan
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>