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...
Conversation
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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Despite lots of serious things going on in the world, more and more energy is shifting from “work” like activities to “play” like. Either actual play, or work disguised as play via gamification. So we need playflow systems.
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Aside: I've written about this before a couple of times.
ribbonfarm.com/2015/07/21/inb
and less relevantly
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Scott Adams' "Systems Over Goals" idea is also loosely rhyming here. blog.dilbert.com/2013/11/18/goa
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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.
Replying to
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.
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