Are we, outliners fans, just a bunch of outlined mind maniacs?

Posted by Stephen Zeoli
May 3, 2013 at 02:12 PM

My experience is similar to yours, Cassius. I had no interest in outlines prior to GrandView. To me they were just drudge work assigned by teachers. But with GrandView, I learned how useful an outline can be for all kinds of work, from brainstorming a project to organizing a day. GrandView was so versatile, that it wasn’t after I was no longer able to use it that I again became less reliant on outlines, learning they can be too rigid for some tasks.

One thing I never did with GrandView, though it was capable of handling it, is as an information capture and organizing app. I guess info wasn’t so readily available back then in the pre-email, pre-Internet days. I had less need for organizing those things. I’ve come to see that outlines are limiting for this kind of mass data storage. It’s nice when you can arrange such info into an outline to get a grasp on the structure of a sub-set of data, but for overall cataloging and organizing, I find the outline becomes too overwhelmed.

Alex, while your initial assertion (which I assumed you did not want us to take totally seriously) that outlining people probably have a slightly warped brain, I think the truth is that everyone who tackles problems with outlines does so with a unique set of needs and desired outcomes. So that for some people it is a matter of an obsession with order, but with others it is with a need to bring temporary order from the chaos of their own lives (often the case with me). With others it is just the only way to make sense of information. And with others it is a matter of sifting through the data to find a unique perspective. Etc…

That’s why this forum is so enjoyable: Not because we are all the same, but because we are all different.

Steve Z.