On the 43 Folders Google Group, “rpmuller” asked for help with some problems regarding his GTD implementation. As always, the helpful folks of the Google Group lent a hand. It came to light that the culprit was that he was afraid to use what I refer to as the “pressure valve” of GTD, the Someday/Maybe list.
Changing how I store the Someday/Maybe list has made it more useful, and helped fix the blockage that kept inactive projects on my active desktop. Since this was one of the major problems with my own GTD setup that I recently diagnosed and solved, a few words on the subject seem worthwhile.
What I did
Since I do the index card/coin-envelope thing, you can see a version of my particular Someday/Maybe implementation here; it’s a display on the wall. Not the wall shown, but the same idea, similar layout; I see it and add notes to it pretty much every day.
The lessons learned from what worked versus what didn’t work should be moderately easy to translate to the Kinkless OO system or textfiles, Emacs Planner Mode, PyGTD, or whatever you happen to use.
What didn’t work:
I stored S/M items out of the way, in a file box, and relied on my virtuous nature to pull it out and review it periodically.
(Relying on my better nature to do a chore is generally a bad idea.)
This fell apart. Putting a card in the file box was, in the words of the Google Group, “exiling it to Siberia.” And so I hesitated. What should have been a simple way to say “not now, but later” to projects that I just couldn’t attend to at the moment ended up being the equivalent of throwing them away.
What did work:
I turned the S/M list into ambient information, somewhere not necessarily easy to manipulate, but at least easy to see out of the corner of my eye. In other words, it’s on the wall.
This created an unexpected benefit: because this list is a display of books I want to read, movies I want to see, languages I’d like to learn, art prints I’d want to buy and have framed, and so on, it rapidly becomes a kind of representational display. Much like having your CD collection in a stand where people can admire it.
This is, of course, a double-edged sword; you’re putting your (lack of?) tastes up for display. But the advantage of the cards is that only the top item is visible, so you can keep the Kurosawa Critereon Box Set on top of “DVDs To Buy” and bury “Kung Fu Samauri vs. Gojira XXVI” somewhere below.
But the point is that you end up paying more attention to it than you would a filebox. And it acts as a nice trigger for other people to suggest movies and books you might like. Provided anyone ever visits you, that is. :)
Applying the Lesson
I’m well aware that most people use the computer for their GTD implementation, so the suggestions here aren’t going to directly apply. But the underlying lessons will: Don’t hide your Someday/Maybe list. Make it visible, make it something you’ll want to tinker with, something you’ll keep updated.
Agile Software guru Alastair Cockburn calls this sort of display an “information radiator.” It keeps the stuff that you’re familiar with fresh in your mind, without being intrusive.
So, how can you take a computer list and make it into an information radiator? Some ideas:
Print your Someday-Maybe list and keep it posted up on the wall of your office or cube.
Have an applescript interpret the OO file as plain text, and pipe it to your desktop via GeekTool.
(Note that both of these suggestions suffer from the fact that your list will become invisible rapidly if you don’t keep updating and changing it.)
Use a perl script to take your list, interpret it as an RSS feed, and host it locally. Bookmark it in Safari. Then make it the source of your RSS Visualizer screen saver under 10.4 Tiger.
Hook up an LCD projector and project the RSS Visualizer onto the wall of your office. Also, burn a few hundred dollar bills while you’re at it, and stock up on projector bulbs.
Have an applescript auto-print your Someday-Maybe list to cards and envelopes, and use that to build a hanging display. Also, please take pictures and send me the applescript when you’re done, because I want one. :) Sacrifice of first-born child negotiable.
Other suggestions welcome.