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Workflowy: Your Brain on One Page
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Posted by Dr Andus
Apr 20, 2014 at 10:00 PM
Garland Coulson wrote:
>What I don’t like about Workflowy is that everything is in one outline.
>I don’t want my entire business and personal life in one outline.
I happen to like that feature, especially for those reasons ;) I like to have everything in one place, synced across all my devices.
I use it mainly as a to-do manager and for breaking down tasks and keeping track of them, not so much as an outliner, although those uses can sometimes overlap.
The benefit of having everything in one outline is that items and sub-outlines can be quickly moved around with keyboard shortcuts and reorganised, while viewed in the same pane.
I think Workflowy’s organisational metaphor is not all that different from the traditional directory structure. Each item can be also thought of as a folder that contains other items or folders. Moreover, each item can also be treated as a category.
This allows for a lot of flexibility for organising stuff. However, since these elements (item, folder, category) all use the same visual representation (a bullet-pointed line of text), it’s not that easy to distinguish between them. The recent addition of some rich text formatting alleviates that problem somewhat.
Posted by jaslar
Apr 21, 2014 at 03:57 AM
Yes, I think this one really is a feature, not a bug. I find that I work with enough different outliners, and store things in just enough places, that sometimes it’s hard to track down just which tool and filing system I was working with.
In Workflowy, there’s only one outline to search, and searching is fast. And hoisting is one of its great strengths. I continue, I think, to find myself in a narrowing phase: Workflowy is a good place to stash all kinds of outlines, not only because I know where they are, but they’re also fairly easy to move in and out.
Posted by disillusioned
May 23, 2014 at 09:08 PM
After years of using TreePad, then KeyNote, then KeyNote NF, then RightNote, recently I got that old itch and started looking around. Finally overcoming overwhelmed-by-too-many-options and paralysis-by-analysis, two weeks ago I took a deep breath and cast my lot with WorkFlowy. Although I was planning to try it out for a couple months with a limited set of notes and then decide, after a few days I went Pro and started copying more and more of my still-useful notes into it from RightNote. I probably have around 800 items in it by now.
It’s got a few quirks I’m still getting used to, but overall I’m finding it an excellent tool with a smooth user experience. One big missing feature for me is a lack of text hyperlinks (hiding a URL behind text), leaving my outline cluttered with lots of big, ugly, distracting URLs. My current workaround is to put URLs in notes under the item, where only the first line is displayed, in smaller and lighter type. I also don’t like that you can’t select more than one line and that you can’t cut & paste anything other than one line of text.
The first time I opened the Android app and saw my outline on my phone was quite an experience, and I’m enjoying being able to add quick to-dos on the run. Going Pro enabled me to have an automatic daily backup to my Dropbox, which helped me overcome my nervousness at having so much of my data in one small young company’s hands.
Posted by Daly de Gagne
May 24, 2014 at 02:00 PM
When I first looked at Workflowy I thought it was too bare bones. Maybe it was at the time; I don’t remember.
Like many I’ve been looking for the ideal single pane outliner. As a Mac user in the 90s I liked MORE and InControl. After switching to the PC in 2002 and searching for the single pane outliner I gave up.
More recently I checked out Fargo, but it didn’t feel quite right. But that got me looking again at what’s available.
UVOutliner I looked at, but wondered if it’s still being developed. I liked it, but didn’t want to go with a program that’s dormant. That’s why I asked several days ago whether UV was still being developed; no one responded, and that may be the answer to my question. :)
I looked at Checkvist. I liked what I saw, especially the column capability (like my old pal InControl). Also, giving it closer scrutiny than befor, I liked Workflowy.
This last week I tried out both of them. I realized I’d become so accustomed to dual pane outliners and the non-outliner Evernote that I was stale when it came to working serious with a single pane outliner.
It took a couple of days of just adding stuff, reviewing it, acting on some items, adding more stuff, etc to get the hang of it again.
I’m glad I did. I find it faster to scan up and down a single pane outline than a dual pane. Seemingly I am more aware of the various contexts, from meta to micro, at play in my life and activities. I’m able to keep more things in mind, more easily, and for my ADHD, executive function challenged brain this is a good thing.
Without intending to I found myself finally writing a master activity list. I’m making a trip to Toronto next week, and so set up an activity list focused on what must be done prior to leaving.
A few days ago I made my choice, deciding in favour of Workflowy.
Why?
I like the fact it is part of Chrome Apps.
Workflowy’s screen presence is more visually appealing to me.
I very much like it’s hoist on steroids feature.
Someday I hope Workflowy will introduce columns.
Tagging is pretty basic, but it does the job.
CheckVist is a great program also, and anyone looking for a single pane outliner should check it out. Noteliner is also an excellent program to consider, and I may look at it again.
Seemingly single pane outlining is rebounding in the Windows world.
Daly
Posted by Dr Andus
Jun 4, 2014 at 11:17 PM
disillusioned wrote:
>One big missing
>feature for me is a lack of text hyperlinks (hiding a URL behind text),
>leaving my outline cluttered with lots of big, ugly, distracting URLs.
On the plus side, I was delighted to discover that links to other applications (in my case to individual items in ConnectedText and Surfulater) work really well (at least from the Workflowy Chrome app) on the PC.