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Cyborganize launched - the ultimate outliner productivity system
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Posted by Alexander Deliyannis
Jul 29, 2011 at 06:21 AM
@JB I have no desire for anonymity. Just about everything I post on the web purposefully includes my full name. I stand behind my opinions.
My objection for your posting was that you interpreted a reference as an opinion, and used it as a starting point for your own musings (which you are very well entitled to). I believe I made this clear further above, but YMMV.
Thanks for the quick reaction.
Posted by Alexander Deliyannis
Jul 29, 2011 at 06:31 AM
Gary Carson wrote:
>Overall, I
>liked Brainstorm a lot, but this auto-hoisting thing was just too restrictive.
>That’s just me, though. Your mileage may vary.
Indeed, the auto-hoisting approach is probably Brainstorm’s main concept. For building knowledge bottom-up, I find it indispensable. For getting an overview of things it is rather useless. I always copy/paste Brainstorm outlines to a mindmapping program or Treesheets (the results are beautiful) to get a bird’s eye view.
David Tebbutt (the original developer) has noted that the “balloon view” was added much later following users’ persistence, but that it was never properly developed in itself, i.e. it has remained read-only, without word wrap etc
Posted by JBfromBrainStormWFO
Jul 29, 2011 at 03:59 PM
Ok Alexander, I understand now. I was reacting to the negative arguments in the links.
“For building knowledge bottom-up, I find it indispensable. For getting an overview of things it is rather useless.”
That is an excellent summary. It describes the affordance of the tool perfectly. I may build my next sales page version around that as the central idea.
That’s why Cyborganize includes two other modes, the scratch zone for working, and the longform loop for describing interconnected big pictures.
I can see where graphical representation would also be useful for small to mid-sized .brn models, probably as another option in the scratch zone. I’ll try Treesheets, looks nice.
Posted by Foolness
Aug 22, 2011 at 07:37 PM
Registered because I absolutely cannot understand Cyborganize. I can’t claim I understand Brainstorm either but with Brainstorm I chucked it to laziness as to why I didn’t bother trying to learn it beyond treating it like an outliner with drag and drop/hotkey organization.
With Cyborganize, all I end up seeing is akin to how professional bloggers set up themselves to create blogs with constantly producing posts.
I would highly appreciate it if anyone can explain the difference.
Here’s how I understand it:
Scratch files are just notes that you stash into one specific program like Brainstorm.
Snippet Processing Loop is basically a list but for the sake of something more advanced, let’s say it’s a file/web page capturing program like Surfulator, Evernote or even something like Google Docs. You could probably even go so far as just use UltraRecall for this.
Longform Processing is basically first using a braindump (Inbox for GTD) and then transferring the brain dump into multiple tag clouds and then moving the multiple tag clouds into categories. (Essentially skipping the processing stage and replacing it with a manual building/database stage)
After that, what happens?
I don’t see the productivity boost. It seems more like training people to create a personal database but the finished database still has to help the maker be productive. If books alone were productive, every one in school would get As.
It basically seems like the idea is to create one panel where these are all notes and on the other side these is your blog editor with the exception that instead of immediately or randomly creating a post from several references… there’s the additional barrier that you just combine the brain dumps of tags with the notes and then reorganize them into categories and voila! You have now produced a webpage.
From what I understood, you could even use the Cyborganize blog page as an example for the finished product of Cyborganize.
You have your categories:
Benefits
BrainStormWFO
Community
Core Workflow
Getting Started
Getting Unstuck
Installation How-To
Scope and Significance
Theory
Uncategorized
User Feedback
Writing
...and then you have contents within your categories.
If these were truly productive though then people wouldn’t have a hard time reading the Cyborganize help files and wouldn’t request for a video. They would, by virtue of the Cyborganize’s categories, understood that these categories were the core essence of the Cyborganize page and the contents are the affirmers of why these categories became relevant i.e. from initiating Cyborganize you were able to narrow down from the bottom up which categories were important motivators for you to understand the essence of Cyborganize.
...which again, is everything in the categories: Without thinking up of specific categories, the process allowed you to generate the category: BrainStorm because you end up understanding that users need to know about BrainStorm to understand Cyborganize. You also had things like Getting Started because you found when you combine and process the dual panes that users need to find a way to get started and instead of thinking “I’ll add getting started” you just let the synchronization flow so that Getting Started just becomes a natural category that grew from brute forcing and random tags. That same sequence helped you create a less used category in Getting Unstuck. The result is that you have a blog that’s organized closer to a static page.
...Yet again the flaw is, no one feels like reading it. At least not enough people. They seem to demand a video first despite your blog categories being more organized. If it’s already problematic that way, then how does it produce a finished product that makes you more productive outside of book/static web page related content where the task list is to create a set of organized pages? I find the argument against outliners seemingly flawed in the same manner. You seem to be pretty much saying outliners can’t work because in outliners you have to cut and paste the contents to move them elsewhere and you can’t collect these cuts in a random jotted out pane. Yet these could easily be fixed by a clipboard manager that gathers snippets into categories not to mention an external text editor or database.
Posted by JBfrom
Aug 22, 2011 at 08:40 PM
First off, Foolness, thanks for engaging with this. You’ve written quite a lot and I don’t think I’ll be able to clear everything up for you.
Secondly, some people are adopting Cyborganize with success.
Thirdly, it’s my first attempt at releasing this to the world. Yes, it is difficult to understand and poorly communicated. Yes, I will improve it. Right now, knowledge of GTD concepts is basically required, and I probably assume a lot of other knowledge too.
“With Cyborganize, all I end up seeing is akin to how professional bloggers set up themselves to create blogs with constantly producing posts.”
This is something completely different. My first attempt to codify something that took many years to develop. Look at it as a first draft of a book. It’s not really a blog at all.
“Scratch files are just notes that you stash into one specific program like Brainstorm.”
No, scratch files are your working zones in your text editor. Only rarely will you create a scratch BrainStorm file.
“Snippet Processing Loop is basically a list but for the sake of something more advanced, let?s say it?s a file/web page capturing program like Surfulator, Evernote or even something like Google Docs. You could probably even go so far as just use UltraRecall for this.”
No. Snippet processing loop is for fully breaking down and analyzing info in small chunks - sentences, phrases and words. Ultra Recall, Google Docs, Surfulator and Evernote are incapable of doing this at acceptable speeds. In daily use it’s mainly for processing tasks, which actually need that level of detailed handling.
“Longform Processing is basically first using a braindump (Inbox for GTD) and then transferring the brain dump into multiple tag clouds and then moving the multiple tag clouds into categories. (Essentially skipping the processing stage and replacing it with a manual building/database stage)”
Yeah this is actually pretty close. It’s not just brain dumps, it’s all focused work sessions, along with some critical reference info. There’s no tag cloud; I only use categories. I view tags as unreliable because it’s too hard to keep them consistent. The sequence goes through progressively more refined blogs, with the final stage a wiki, book, or other finished product. Yes, I do view Cyborganize.org as T1 content, the final output stage of the Longform Loop. No, that does not mean that it is “perfect,” only that it has reached that degree of complexity and size.
“After that, what happens?”
The final outputs are either execution or finished information. Other than that, nothing happens.
“I don?t see the productivity boost. It seems more like training people to create a personal database but the finished database still has to help the maker be productive. If books alone were productive, every one in school would get As.”
Read the recommended works and try the programs here (http://www.cyborganize.org/singularity-and-credits/) for the theoretical reasons for the productivity boost. Focus particularly on SuperMemo and Andy Hunt’s book.
The purpose of Cyborganize is NOT to Cyborganize. Your long-term goals and todo list drives your priorities. Cyborganize merely assists you in achieving them, by keeping your mind from tripping over itself. The purpose is not to write books. However it does tend to naturally focus and accumulate your knowledge over time - in response to YOUR needs of the moment.
“It basically seems like the idea is to create one panel where these are all notes and on the other side these is your blog editor with the exception that instead of immediately or randomly creating a post from several references? there?s the additional barrier that you just combine the brain dumps of tags with the notes and then reorganize them into categories and voila! You have now produced a webpage.”
What?
“From what I understood, you could even use the Cyborganize blog page as an example for the finished product of Cyborganize.”
“Finished” is not how I would describe it… I believe that if you’re not embarrassed by your release, you released too late.
“If these were truly productive though then people wouldn?t have a hard time reading the Cyborganize help files and wouldn?t request for a video. They would, by virtue of the Cyborganize?s categories, understood that these categories were the core essence of the Cyborganize page and the contents are the affirmers of why these categories became relevant i.e. from initiating Cyborganize you were able to narrow down from the bottom up which categories were important motivators for you to understand the essence of Cyborganize.”
Uh… no. Cyborganize is for your personal productivity. My success or failure in explaining it on a website has nothing to do with its effectiveness. Believe me I’m quite aware of the many problems with the website and Cyborganize is quite capable of managing the process of fixing them, however it’s not at the top of my priority list at the moment. Categories are not the core essence of Cyborganize.
“...which again, is everything in the categories: Without thinking up of specific categories, the process allowed you to generate the category: BrainStorm because you end up understanding that users need to know about BrainStorm to understand Cyborganize. You also had things like Getting Started because you found when you combine and process the dual panes that users need to find a way to get started and instead of thinking ?I?ll add getting started? you just let the synchronization flow so that Getting Started just becomes a natural category that grew from brute forcing and random tags. That same sequence helped you create a less used category in Getting Unstuck. The result is that you have a blog that?s organized closer to a static page.”
What?
“...Yet again the flaw is, no one feels like reading it. At least not enough people. They seem to demand a video first despite your blog categories being more organized. If it?s already problematic that way, then how does it produce a finished product that makes you more productive outside of book/static web page related content where the task list is to create a set of organized pages? I find the argument against outliners seemingly flawed in the same manner. You seem to be pretty much saying outliners can?t work because in outliners you have to cut and paste the contents to move them elsewhere and you can?t collect these cuts in a random jotted out pane. Yet these could easily be fixed by a clipboard manager that gathers snippets into categories not to mention an external text editor or database.”
OK, I see what you’re getting at now. Yes, cyborganize.org is a very rough job right now. Really it’s more like Tier 2.5 content - a bunch of blog posts with some modicum of interconnection. I haven’t done the serious work of organizing and synthesizing everything yet. But I need some kind of feedback to guide that process, so launching it early helps.
BrainStorm is an outliner so I’m not against outliners. The others are just too slow and unfocused. I don’t understand your argument about outliners, maybe screenshots or workflow graphics/videos would be illuminating.
Now here’s an example of Cyborganize in action: I dumped your message into a scratch Emacs file, composed my reply to your quoted paragraphs, posted it on outlinersoftware.com, and will now switch to another scratch file and continue what I was doing before. Later when I batch clean my scratch files, I will upload this to my T3 blog and categorize it “Cyborganize.” I’ll also create an actionable “take into account foolness’s questions on next cyborganize writing round - see T3”. Much later I’ll come back to all this, and the info will be there waiting for me, whether I come across it by searching through my Cyborganize Longform Loop for content ideas, or as I’m sorting through my actionables tree for next Cyborganize actions. It will also be copied into my “notes.org” Emacs chronological tape, and it may even at some point get sorted into my notes.brn file, if I ever catch up on that. Most likely though, it will get re-digested during a future Cyborganize writing session with the aid of BrainStorm, and converted into document editing actionables.
Of course, thanks to the power of spaced repetition imprinting things on one’s memory, I may be able to skip most of that work and still take your ideas into account in the rewrite.
All of it will happen lightning quick, with a defined algorithm, and stress-free. That’s the productivity boost.