We need a notion of digital squalor. If bits were atoms, almost the entire digital world would be a massive, fetid slum, with all of us sitting around in our own filth. Normal disgust responses don't quite work on this. We are a lot more forgiving of digital squalor than physical
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And it used to be just objects/stocks. Like overflowing inboxes (trash cans), desktops littered with icons, etc. Now it's extending to flows. Filthy streams full of loose ends, floating garbage etc. etc.
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This is not a UX problem really. It's a sensitivity problem. Instead of providing kinda dumb AI-based clean-up algorithms and helpers, computers and browsers should emit a poopy smell if you let things get too dank
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We have to sensitize ourselves to sheer cost of this stuff. Biology evolved the disgust/nausea physical response, including throwing up at truly awful smells, for defensive purposes. We need to have an equally visceral response for digital squalor (and I'm not being metaphoric)
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We don't notice because near equilibrium, it is still fine. But the size of the region of attraction around inbox-zero type states where clean-up is in P is shrinking. And past that threshold, the heavy lift of a "sweep" to reset a GTD is going from NP --> PSPACE or something.
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This rant is primarily self-directed. Right now, my digital life is basically a garbage pile in a slum, on the brink of a gas explosion :D
Partly because, I've kinda gone on strike. Doing the work to get on top of it just encourages more dumping.
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The worst offenders are governments. They are BAD at digital, create work that MUST be done, and create the biggest steaming-piles-of-shit digital workflow crap you can't avoid. Anything to do with taxes, reporting, compliance with regulations stinks.
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I think I literally have something like a dozen inboxes now that can't really be consolidated into one. I can't do the kind of hard work does in bringing governance and order to the digital slums. Even GTD was just barely within my capacity for discipline.
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I’ve level-set to “Inboxes 100” now. Means I’m mostly on top of things across various facets of life. 😛
Dropbox is the only product that makes me feel confident in ability to manage current workflows.
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haha, mine is about 50 because that's the single page on gmail
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Use "Manage Your Now" (ignore the cheesy ads for it) instead of (or in addition to) GTD. Significantly lower computational complexity and it /works/.


