[Design] Chandler as a Managed Workspace

[Mimi Yin]

On Jan 5, 2008, at 1:09 PM, Davor Cubranic wrote:

> On Saturday 05 January 2008 06:22:33 Mimi Yin wrote:
>> But, do these things need to happen in order? Should you only work on
>> these one at a time? Instead of creating 5 tasks and tracking them
>> all, why not just have a single event item that represents the
>> meeting and simply DO (on that meeting item) what needs to be done to
>> set up this meeting?
>
> The problem, at least in GTD terms, is that it's hard to see at a  
> glance
> what's the next thing you could work on right now, given your current
> location and amount of available time. You'll have to do a sequential
> scan of all your projects, reading through their list of to-do items
> and then deciding which one is next.

Yes, a way to see sub-tasks as first class items in the table without  
losing it's connection to the parent project would be much better. I  
think what I'm struggling with is: Is Chandler still useful as a more  
general productivity tool *without* that functionality?

What I'm questioning is the idea for any project, you only have 1  
next action, which is what tools like Omni-Focus assume.

The example I gave was intended to show that actually, most of the  
sub-tasks in the item could be done in parallel and often are done in  
parallel.

>> An alternate way to approach the workflow would be to create an item
>> in Chandler that *is* the project and then work directly in the item,
>> treating it as a (shared) workspace for that project.
>>
>> + Create an event: Next all-hands
>> + Put it on the calendar as an anytime event over the span of a week
>> while you narrow in on the date.
>> + When you've figured out a date, you define the event time.
>> + To help you figure out the date, you could email the event or share
>> it with key stakeholders and ask each person to list out times they
>> can't make it and any other constraints they have.
>> + To brainstorm re: agenda you can just jot down ideas right in the
>> Notes field of the agenda. Your brainstorm will slowly evolve into
>> the actual agenda you send out.
>> + To collect input from others, you can email or share it with key
>> stakeholders and ask them to add their own ideas to the list.
>> + To send the invitation, you address it and send it out via email.
>> + But even sending out the invitation isn't necessarily the last step
>> because you or others could think of more things to add to the agenda
>> and end up sending out a subsequent update to the invite.
>
> This is pretty neat description. Would this be an "ideal" Chandler
> workflow for collaboration?

I dunno about ideal ;) I think it's more a way of approaching how to  
make the most out of Chandler. I think we are all so used to thinking  
of task managers simply as ways to list out what we need to do that  
we don't realize that a big part of the problem is that we don't  
really have tools that help us both manage what we need to do *and*  
help us do them as well (except for email).

>> The reason why we can offer this is because we're more than just a
>> simple list / outliner and because we have sharing and email. If
>> there's just a list, all you can do is list out the work you need to
>> do because there isn't really room to spread out and do your work.
>
> I don't think Chandler is an outliner at all right now, simple or
> otherwise.

No, agreed we're not an outliner.