![]() My writing on the subject is for the purposes of advancing knowledge (scholarly purposes.) I never comment on the brand that goes by that name nor do I comment on the author of the book. My comments about Getting Things Done are directed exclusively at the book Getting Things Done. See my next blog post on the future of self-quantification. It is a free integrative collection of concepts backed by a sample workbook. MySelfQuantifier is not a complete solution to the problem of tracking one’s time, let alone all self-quantification. Thus self-quantification apps could integrate with OmniFocus. As noted above, OmniFocus has an AppleScript® dictionary. ![]() I recommend these apps without hesitation. I am a dedicated user of OmniFocus, OmniOutliner and OmniGraffle. OmniGroup produces some of the best apps for MacOS®. The screencasts adds to thousands of words on the system, with more to follow. I’ve recently published a collection of screencasts on the mySelfQuantifier time tracking system. With mySelfQuantifier, you can track the amount of time spent on particular projects and in particular activities. With the mySelfQuantifier time-tracking system and example workbook, I’ve tried to address these two OmniFocus gaps. mySelfQuantifier could and I think should leverage it. Whereas OmniFocus does not directly support time-tracking, it has an extensive AppleScript dictionary which could be used by time-tracking software developers. If not, the R&D community would learn from the publication of their results, and no doubt be able to fix the problem in short order. I suspect that a couple of AI graduates would be able to crack this nut relatively quickly. Consider also that we are in the era of deep learning. OmniFocus is not particularly inexpensive either. Its OmniFocus seems to be the most popular personal project management app. In my opinion, the foregoing is not too much to ask of a company like OmniGroup. (As you would expect, writing, programming, debugging, and reading are important types of activities.) Aside. Some of the actions that matter most to knowledge workers are described in mySelfQuantifier. ![]() Then, OmniFocus should provide a way to filter activities by activity type. One should not have to classify it as such. For example, if one of your tasks is to read a paper, OmniFocus should know that this is a reading action. OmniFocus should, in addition, learn to automatically categorize actions. I have argued elsewhere on this web site (and in Cognitive Productivity) that OmniGroup could replace OmniFocus’s notion of context with the notion of activities. More important than context for modern knowledge workers is the notion of activity. Thus, the notion of context presented in Getting Things Done is archaic and not particularly helpful for knowledge workers. My own Cognitive Productivity contains an AI-based extension of Popper’s seminal concepts. Essential readings on knowledge work include Karl Popper’s Objective Knowledge and Carl Bereiter’s Education and Mind in the Knowledge Age. Philosophy of knowledge is one of the cognitive sciences. Cognitive science is, after all, quite concerned with the production and usage of personal and objective (public) knowledge. To understand my point it helps to read about knowledge work by cognitive scientists and philosophers. It’s just a correction of its common misrepresentation in the blogosphere, and I am sad to say, in some books written by academics on productivity (as I have mentioned elsewhere on this site). That book is instead a general productivity system. Where are the examples in that book about creating new theories, for instance? You will find them in the empty set. Although many who write about the book have swallowed the claim hook, line and sinker, that Getting Things Done presents a knowledge work system, the fact is that it was clearly not designed specifically for the core functions of knowledge work -e.g., learning and creating new scientific knowledge. The system deals with piles of paper and projects like cleaning one’s garage. As popular and useful as the book is, its ideas were developed in the 1990s. However, a major limitation of those apps is that they do not provide time tracking functions.Īnother issue with OmniFocus stems from its over-commitment to David Allen’s book Getting Things Done. Beyond creating and editing projects in personal project management software like OmniFocus and Things, one needs to know how much time one has sunk into one’s projects.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |