Cyborganize launched - the ultimate outliner productivity system

Posted by JBfromBrainStormWFO
Jul 24, 2011 at 01:50 AM

Bob:

Yes, the Facebook claim has been a marketing disaster so far. However, I’m still of the opinion that innovations along the critical path to intelligence augmentation are more valuable than social networking sites, no matter how high their stock market valuations.

A more relevant comparison would be Google, which also augments effective intelligence.

> It is lossless AND frictionless.
“Those terms are meaningless. “

They are not meaningless, I clearly define them. Lossless means no trash can. Frictionless means not liable to writer’s block or the equivalent in thinking and execution, in other words low anxiety and low stress. Friction here refers to mental resistance, which is a known phenomenon proceeding from known causes, and measurable in various ways.

“Can?t you simply and succintly state the benefits of Cyborganize, preferably with annotated screenshots,”

With screenshots, no. Neither can GTD, because both are workflows, not applications. I’ve stated my claims as simply and succinctly as GTD has.

“For me, the best solution is one that doesn?t involve a lot of thinking to master. It should be intuitive, it should require little more than a couple of bullet points and a couple of screenshots to make the ?sale?.”

Unfortunately Cyborganize’s presentation is still such that the cognitive investment required is higher than what you’re willing to provide. However GTD takes an entire book to explain, so I don’t feel this is an abject failure on my part, though I intend to continue to improve upon it.

“Cyborganize seems like too much work to achieve nebulous benefits.”

The benefits are specific, but the language and type may be unfamiliar to you.

“Noteliner is a bit more than a standard outliner. Have you used it?”

I have not and there is no need. I read the website. It is not capable of the volume processing required.

Daly:

“you have not specified what capabilities of the digital medium GTD is unable to take advantage of.”

I do so in my linked article. Specifically, it fails to take advantage of the potential for volume text processing, to increase the percentage of your info the system embraces. Secondly, it fails to take advantage of the cumulative effects of small and cognitively cheap sorting decisions in a dynamic outline to surface the big picture. Thirdly, it fails to provide a structure for refinement of longer thoughts. Fourthly, it fails to provide for focused temporary workspaces. These are just off the top of my head, and all are linked to the static, slow and expensive nature of paper, relative to digital.

“I find it difficult to agree with your notion that failure is a given.”

Of course it is not a 100% rule, but it is a good principle.

I understand your concerns but Refactor Your Wetware is quite good on those topics and I think you’ll be satisfied. It is my primary source on that issue.

MaxThink and BrainStormWFO both have high volume text processing capacity. Three design elements make this possible:
1. focus
2. rapid hotkey sorting with marks
3. no title/body distinction. i.e., all entries are potential titles.

Database outliners like MyInfo are too slow because they must save the database between edits, and they also violate #3. Noteliner is lacking in #1 and #2.

It takes a special design to manage volumes like 66,000 lines of notes, much less 181,000 lines of quotes, which are the volumes we’re talking about when managing all the text one’s life generates and consumes.