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Amish Computing (forked from:Question: What software is absolutely essential to you)
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Posted by JasonE
Aug 12, 2011 at 07:51 PM
DaXiong wrote:
“I keep toying with the idea of converting everything to txt file and being done with the quest for the holy outliner (movie rights to follow)”
I lived like this for a few month. I did absolutely everything I could in .txt files, even if I had to shoe-horn the task into that paradigm. I highly recommend it because you learn a lot. It became clear to me why some productivity applications had some of the features that they did. You learn how to use productivity software better by spending some time with amish computing.
I have also done the same thing at different times with OneNote, Treesheets, and Mathematica. As you can imagine, l learned a lot about those applications doing so.
JasonE
ebaughjason@gmail.com
http://www.linkedin.com/in/jasonebaugh
Posted by JasonE
Aug 12, 2011 at 09:00 PM
Anyone else ever try amish computing?
Posted by Stephen Zeoli
Aug 12, 2011 at 10:44 PM
JasonE wrote:
>Anyone else ever try amish computing?
Here’s my theory (which will probably be blown out of the water by this esteemed group): Anyone who started computing in the DOS ages would not be overly attracted to Amish computing, because AC would remind us too much of DOS. Then again (and now I’m blowing my own theory out of the water), perhaps we would be more likely to be attracted to AC, because it reminds us of the innocence of our youth.
Hmmm. So never mind. But to answer your question, I really haven’t, though I do like to write in a plain text editor (Notetab).
Steve Z.
Posted by PIMfan
Aug 13, 2011 at 12:04 AM
Earlier this year, I felt a pull toward AC for a couple of reasons:
- I wanted my data to “eternally openable” (is this even a term??? lol)
- I wanted cross-platform compatibility guaranteed (I dream of a macbook, but work/home has PC’s)
- avoidance of proprietary formats
The kicker for me was that I wasn’t willing to sacrifice power to achieve the above - whatever the heck that means….
After a bit of research, I decided to try out Emacs Org-mode. Wow, you talk about power, it oozes power beyond all reality. The excitement grew, and next thing I know, I’m proudly showing off my org-mode usage to co-workers, who often asked “Are you writing code these days?”.
But within a month, I hit a brick wall. For all it’s power, I realized that the investment made in trying to learn and memorize all the gazillions of keystroke combinations was wearing on me. I knew that there was a steep investment in learning to use it, but ended up feeling like the learning was more focused on memorizing keystrokes than leveraging information I put into it and learning the tool. Every day became a reminder that memory loss is an inevitable companion to the grey streaks near my temples…..
So despite my deeply sincere respect and admiration for what Org-mode is capable of, I am unable to live in it the way it deserves….And so we’ve parted ways, albeit with a tinge of sadness on my part. Perhaps the greatest potential tool in my attempt at living “Amish Computing” style was beyond my ability to use it as it deserves…..And so I returned to the eternally familial land of txt, RTF, and HMTL - three lifelong companions that don’t always act like friends…...
Posted by JBfrom
Aug 13, 2011 at 07:47 AM
I too have a great deal of respect for Org Mode.
It is my primary word processor and working environment. It contains my scratch working files and my chronological tapes of all the text I generate.
I don’t use the TODO functions and agenda. I just like it for its text management and basic outlining, and Emacs ability to have lots of text files open without choking, control windows, switch screens, etc. All mouse free.
I also tried living in Org-Mode with its GTD features and outlining, but I found that the outlining was not as flexible and powerful as BrainStorm, and that I needed to manage actions differently, not according to the GTD model. Now I keep all my actionable items in a single BrainStorm file and sort them all against each other to surface urgency and priority. This relative ranking is far more useful to me than trying to set each individual GTD attribute for an individual task in a vacuum. GTD prioritization is relative, not absolute, and this is a critical failing of the GTD methodology that can only be solved with the affordance of a rapid outliner like BrainStorm.
So I am pretty close to Amish Computing in a lot of ways… my chron tapes are all plain text, BrainStorm is 100% plaintext compatible, and then it goes into blogs and wikis, which are mostly plain text. The text must flow.