DonationCoder.com Software > The Getting Organized Experiment of 2007
New Getting Organized Experiment?
Paul Keith:
Hmm...is it possible to have three GOE themes in 1 GOE?
I think you guys all have ideas that supplement each other.
kwacky1's GDE could easily allow for guinea pigs err... testers :P of mouser's "Invent new Productivity System" idea which can be tested by users willing to follow nudone's "works for 2 months" idea which can be expanded into a productivity guidelines idea that call for testers to follow a set guideline to "blind" test the "created" productivity systems.
I think it's a great theme for this year's GOE with the only problem being of motivation where most users might not feel like creating a system and offer it for free (literally see lots of Mark Forsters' fans complaining of how he is giving AF for free in their forum) while others might not feel motivated enough to have their specific systems be criticized and lambasted with flaws.
Another issue is the risk of having one small subset of productivity system users completely taking over the subforums and end up steering the experiment to their way of thinking. An example would be how GTD fanboys might complain of how a program isn't exactly optimized for that system which forces the program to host a GTD hack or even force the developer to focus on that area. Imagine how much more this issue will rise with an actual productivity system in development as opposed to just a single productivity software.
DC might get people who would complain if a system inventor didn't factor in weekly reviews or contexts or even the reverse: people might be too afraid of scrutinizing and hurting the inventor's feelings that they don't even try to compare the different systems.
Oh and nudone, nah. You're not cynical. Cynical would be to set a standard where a working system should be able to organize and read an entire delicious bookmark list or a volume readers' entire constantly growing "to buy and read" list on shorter or of equal time than the original collector has using their own money and resources to gather and read those stuff. (Which would be my minimal standard for an effective system.)
Paul Keith:
Note: This is more of a direct reply to kwacky1's post. I'm starting to re-consider superboyac's advise of cutting my post up and doing it seldomly rather than often. Not so much to cut my posts into little bits but to try and separate various contexts.
Paul, I feel that your post represents the sentiments of the previous GOE's, based on what I've read about the previous GOE's so far.
I feel that the GOE is a frugal productivity system, it has a kind "bite off as much or as little as you want, no more, no less, we'll support you all the way"
Plus I feel the GOE addresses your 3rd point, community. DC is already a community, yes it's primary purpose is software and software development, but there is so much more to this site than that (and I know I've hardly scratched the surface). DC is full of sub communities, and I feel the GOE community is just a bunch of disorganised, disillusioned or disinterested people who aren't completely sold on the ideas of the 'trailblazers' and are looking deeper for something more.
For me, GOE seems to be about a journey of discovery, it's just another level of research. I mean really, I wonder how many people took part in GOE, got organised and then got disorganised? (Maybe they're following some Not GTD fad)
Hey, that would be cool, a Getting Disorganised Experiment.
Up until recently I was terminally disorganised. I found a GTD system that works for me at work and am now looking for something that will help me outside of work (and yes I signed up for and am currently using, Autofocus).
Oh, and Paul, your posts are too long, but I do enjoy healthy discussion! :Thmbsup:
-kwacky1 (February 09, 2009, 05:13 AM)
--- End quote ---
Thanks for sharing your impression with the previous GOE. I wasn't really here then and didn't know what people thought of it.
I think while DC is a community full of sub-communities, it is still limited in the sense that at it's core, it's still a tech community. This isn't meant to insult the type of community mouser allowed for and nurtured. I do get what you're saying. I just think that often times, core audience still has lots of "pull" into how a topic, even ones made by a sub-community, are supposed to go.
This is why I think a general productivity forum on the level of DC is still much more beneficial than DC having a productivity subforum. This isn't to say that the latter won't be very helpful. It's just that the latter won't have as much pull as an actual forum where people don't just think of going there for productivity, but people literally flock there to systematically both improve and criticize each system to the point that new comers searching for a productivity forum won't be led to blogs like lifehacker or specific forums like Allen's or Forster's where people tend to support the inventor rather than address topics in ways that might even go against the current idol's system. See topics like these for example which pop out in Forster's forum when LH advertised AutoFocus which shows how even a prominent trailblazer's forum can be closed off to the demands of these newer less-wowed users whose voices are only made apparent when a sudden paradigm shift happens where tons of casual users who aren't emotionally attached to the system all write rude, non-detailed, pass me by posts in the actual forum. (and I'd argue by then it would be too late as that community might have been traumatized already to the point of shunning any poster's opinion that might seem in line with those threads no matter how sincere or detailed future "devil's advocate" posters might be.)
app103:
I have learned something from experience, and the process of learning it has come at a very heavy price...
I once thought I wasn't all that productive and that I could benefit from a productivity system of some sort, and agreed to participate in the first GOE here on the forum.
Each & every system presented, left me with a confused look on my face, as they weren't geared towards how I live my life. I couldn't figure out what I was supposed to be doing. For example, GTD has some @phone crap that doesn't apply to people like me that avoid phones and maybe makes 2 calls a year! And they all either make a distinction between work life & home life, or are only geared towards one of them, ignoring the other. And I don't make that distinction or seperation in my life. Or they assume that the area you need to be more productive in, is in a corporate office setting. Or they assume you have disposable income to blow on "productivity crap", which they insist that you can't be productive without. (none of these systems recycle envelopes from junk mail for your todo lists, or use empty ramen cases for your inbox)
And then they wanted me to over-think things, over-plan things, and think about things I didn't want to think about. Why do I have to plan where I want my career to be 10 years from now in order to get the dishes done today? Why do I need to have well defined long term goals, and have them written down? Is this so I can be disappointed in myself if my life takes a change in direction or doesn't go as planned?
None of the productivity gurus believe in "organized chaos".
The end result was that these systems destroyed my productivity and left me feeling very seriously depressed about my life. I was lucky to have survived. I felt worthless. I was borderline suicidal.
I haven't been able to fully recover from it.
But this is what I learned:
I already was quite productive before all of this and I didn't need any help being that way. I had my own productivity system that was perfect for me, and it worked better than anything anybody else has ever come up with, written about, blogged about, or talked about. This system was a part of who I was and something I did on pure instinct. And it was frugal (just like me) and cost me $0 in the way of supplies, tools, books, and software.
Now if I could only figure out how I used to do it, I could return to my highly productive life that I used to have, regain my self-esteem, my purpose, and be a much happier person.
I thought about taking notes related to my journey back to my former self, with the intention of writing my own book on how to be productive (and happy), but then it dawned on me...
If I did, the system wouldn't work for anyone else but me, and it's quite likely that I would screw up other people as badly as other people's productivity systems screwed me up.
I know I am not alone. I know there has to be other people that were destroyed by all the productivity crap, like I was.
Here is my best advice:
Stay away from other people's productivity systems that were designed to work for them, how they think, and how they live their lives. Stay away from productivity systems designed to line the pockets of their creators...writers that create a new system when they start running low on cash. Stay away from productivity systems designed to increase traffic and sell ad space on blogs that publish the system. Stay away from productivity systems that come with magical mops. (nudone's "works for 2 months system" is nothing but magical mops)
Just don't do it....
Just do it.
Look into yourself and draw from that, the system you already know from instinct. Following anyone else's system will destroy that part of you that already knows how to be productive. It will take away your instinct. You already know what you have to do. You already know how to do it. You know where your strengths & weaknesses are. You know how to fix it. You don't need anyone else to tell you.
mouser:
app,
i didn't realize you had such a bad experience with the GOE.. i knew it didn't help you but didn't realize it caused so much damage.
perhaps part of the problem was that these systems make it seem like they are right for everyone and if they don't work for you then there must be something wrong with you; and therefore they set up expectations that are unrealistic.
do you think it wouldn't have been such a bad experience if you had just gone into it thinking "let me try this idea and see if it has any value to me or not?".. or was there something inherent in just learning about or trying these approaches that threw you off your stride so dramatically. i guess what i'm trying to get at is if you think merely learning about and trying to follow any of these approaches will somehow doing lasting damage to a person's productivity.
as many people here know (as it's been made fun of plenty of times) i have taken away some ideas from these systems and formulated by own system of index cards which i have found extremely useful. so for me learning about these systems has been a good thing, but i never went into it expecting a miracle or expecting to slavishly follow their rules, only to survey the field.
app103:
Mouser, did you actually try any of these systems? Or did you just go shopping for tools from within them, skipping over the bulk of what they contained?
I think what I did was take apart something that wasn't broken and tried to fix it, because I didn't realize it wasn't broken. And we all know what happens when you do that.
And what I was trying to fix was something the "experts" swear should never have worked in the first place.
I can't remember which comedian it was that told the story about a kid that was capable of the impossible and could ride his bicycle on the edge of a fence, because he hadn't learned about gravity yet. As soon as someone told the kid why it was impossible for him to do that and taught him what gravity was, the kid could no longer ride his bicycle on the edge of the fence.
That's kind of what happened to me.
as many people here know (as it's been made fun of plenty of times) i have taken away some ideas from these systems and formulated by own system of index cards which i have found extremely useful.
-mouser (February 14, 2009, 12:56 PM)
--- End quote ---
Technically, you came up with that yourself, on day 1, before we officially got started. I think you just instinctively knew that would work for you, while you were out shopping. I think you could have quit at that point and not been any less productive than when the whole GOE was over. So without having to go through any of this again, you can come up with something else that works for yourself, just like before,
Like I said...you already know how to do it. You don't need anyone else to tell you.
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