Re: Outlining and Fuzzy Thinking

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Note: This message is from the outliners.com archive kindly provided by Dave Winer.

Outliners.com Message ID: 865

Posted by a.j.clelford
2000-12-11 10:10:56

To connect two points from earlier on:-

The first is that outliners impose hierachy and - for want of a better word - a definiteness about what is put in them. Usually that’s a strength. But somehow setting ideas in solid stone doesn’t help when your thinking is still fluttering around and hasn’t settled anywhere for certain yet.

For me, pen and paper Buzan-style Mind Maps (mentioned by Joshua Allen message 12/10/00) can do this, but IMHO once you try to do this using a program (such as Inspiration) it all becomes too solid, not fluid enough.

Maybe what we want is a method of inputting this thinking in a way that doesn’t fix it until much later. Putting the information in needs to be very quick and easy. I wonder if even typing fixes it too much and makes life too difficult?

The nearest I’ve come to cracking things is with 3 By 5. I still have to type thoughts and ideas in but I can shuffle the file cards about on the electronic pinboard in front of me. Their location becomes a map of my thinking and I can constantly drag things around. But I must admit, even this is 2nd best to a mind map on paper - perhaps because I may think clearer spatially.

Heresy! Is this one of those tasks best done NOT using a computer?

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