[chandler-users] An answer to "In Chandler, nothing is ever overdue - Part 2 of 2"

[Allan Day]

Hi Pierre-François, everyone,

> I write this in answer to Mimi's blog post.

Super! I also wanted to email about it.
 
Mimi: 

> > But I worry about going down the path of more granualar LATER sub-sections
> > I worry about falling into the trap of over-planning,

Too true. At the same time, I think it's important to follow the
principle of mechanism over policy. Maybe you don't need to worry about
over-planning? Maybe that should be for the user to worry about? ;)

Pierre-François, you quoted parts of Mimi's blog post. Let me quote a
bigger chunk, since I think it might be helpful:

Mimi:

> > But I worry about going down the path of more granualar LATER sub-sections. 
> > I worry about falling into the trap of over-planning, over-emphasizing the importance
> > of defining timeframes and inadvertently pushing users to assign dates they have no
> > intention of holding themselves to, which again, results in big piles of items
> > getting dumped into NOW when they’re not ready to deal with them.

And pet's response:

> So do I. Tools that pushed me into spending more time planning than
> actually doing real work all failed me precisely because of this : big
> piles of items ;-)
> 
> I certainly wouldn't want chandler to become one of these tools.
> 
> I completely agree with this (if I read it correctly) : if you really
> want
> fine-grained "later" items, just assign them dates !

And some more Mimi:

> > This smaller, hopefully more manageable “LATER-No date assigned” section acts as
> > a reminder that there are deferred items that need to be reviewed and re-evaluated
> > on a regular basis because they’re not going to magically re-appear in NOW on their own.

I'm a little confused here, so excuse me if I get this wrong... :)

Mimi, you wrote that you don't want to push 'users to assign dates'. I
wholeheartedly agree! But doesn't the proposal you've made potentially
do just that? It assumes that most of a users' items will have dates. In
a situation where you only have a small number of Triage Statuses, dates
become the only other way to organise items within a single collection.
(Correct me if I'm wrong!)

The way my work operates, very few items have dates attached to them. If
I were to assign dates to those items as a way to organise them, then
those dates would have to be fairly arbitrary (and more or less
meaningless). I would end up producing the kinds of problem described in
the blog post (items popping up unwanted in NOW).

Pierre-François, when you state 'just assign them dates', wouldn't this
be the result, or am I wrong somehow?

An idea that Mimi mentioned in an earlier email would be my preferred
solution: user defined Triage Statuses. In my mind, users would be able
to create as many of these as they wanted. I like this idea because it
would enable users to plan to whatever extent that they want. They could
go for fairly wide, fuzzy statuses, or they could have very neatly
defined, narrow ones. Mechanism over policy (with a good set of
defaults!).

By all means, have 'LATER-No date assigned' as a default. Just leave us
no date people with a way to organise our items! ;)

Best,

Allan