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How are these modeled in workflow systems? In GTD, a book you’re reading now would be a project, and the next chapter might be a next action, but typically nobody tracks books this way. The habit+project part of reading books is too trivial to track. The hard part is elsewhere
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If you’ve used GTD for at least a year, you’ll have noticed something: the Someday/Maybe list moves very slowly. In the Areas of Concern top-level list, most Someday/Maybe items come from “play”, “meaning” or “enrichment” areas. You don’t someday/maybe taxes or a work deliverable
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This is not an accident. Processes are disproportionately from the nice-to-have enrichment side of life. Each item is individually unnecessary, but if you don’t do some subset, life will seem meaningless. Book lists, bucket lists, collection hobbies, tinkering/making hobbies...
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Subtlety: With books history matters as much as the future. A book doesn’t ever quite exit the someday maybe list because it can only be declared “done” if it doesn’t merit another reread. A book is a potentially infinite-pass “project” if you like it enough.
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That is the setup. Now imagine a life “work”flow where 90% of the energy is in processes like this and the project/habit parts are trivial. Everything is a thread with an extended past and an indefinitely extended future.
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Things that have this character tend to have a someday/maybe character. Nothing must *necessarily* be done, it’s all optional, but you want a certain amount of energy contained in that process. Example: book reading, travel, hobbies, key relationships.
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Further, imagine that these processes interact like in a distributed computing system, full of CAP theorem messiness. Your travel inspires your reading inspires your game design hobby inspires more travel. You want to keep this fertile reaction going.
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Now... design a system like GTD where the “process” is the first class citizen, indefinitely extended memory is valuable, there are no due dates, nothing *must* be done, and the governing spirit is play not work. So this is a “playflow” design challenge.
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Three states of life "Settled down" like your parents want = 90% of your energy is in "habits" "Exploring life" like you do in your 20s and think you'll want to do forever = 90% of your energy is in "projects" Both are recipes for misery after 30.
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You need 90% energy in processes that won't terminate till you die, but aren't habits or projects. Each also has an associated "system" that grows continuously over your lifetime, and ideally reaches perfection 1 minute before you die.
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Suspicion: best playflow models will also be social in nature, and "store" state in relationship states with other people to the extent possible. Ie every robust playflow stream line is a relationship state as well (with a coach, sport partner, anthropomorphized thing, etc)
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Wish I were more artistic in capturing the right-brained imagery where my ideas usually start. This is a rough picture of my starting point for this thread.
Image
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