Bit Literacy - Mark Hurst [17]
The Todo's Life Cycle
Managing todos properly requires an understanding of how they work. The four phases in the life of a todo are creation, inactivity, activation, and completion:
Creation is, obviously, the moment at which the user creates the todo. The user should create the todo right away, as soon as he learns of the need for it, even if the todo doesn’t require action until later.
Inactivity is a possible period of “hibernation” between creation and activation. Some todos need action right when they’re created, and so they skip this step; other todos, like the dry cleaning example, may be inactive for days or longer before they “wake up.” Inactive todos must remain out of sight, where they won’t distract or overload the user, until they activate.
Activation is the moment at which the todo is available to be completed, and when it begins to remind the user about its existence. The todo then remains active until it’s complete. (That is, unless the user makes the todo inactive again for some amount of time. This involves redating a todo into the future, which is covered below.) For example, the dry cleaning todo activates on Friday, when the clothes are available to be picked up.
Completion is when the todo is done, and checked off the todo list. It could also mean the user deleting a todo, if it has become irrelevant since its creation.
For a todo list to be an appropriate choice for bit-literate users, it must allow todos to move through each phase above. (Most todo lists, as we’ll see later, miss the second phase—inactivity—which leads to all sorts of problems.) It also must have a simple interface, allowing quick and easy usage. And as described previously, a todo list must be based in bits—not paper—in order to meet the challenges of scale and time. With those requirements in mind, we can state the four components of a bit-literate todo list:
Each todo is associated with a particular day.
Users can create new todos via e-mail, either for today or a day in the future.
Each todo has a priority ranking within its day.
Each todo can contain a detail field as well as a summary, much the same way an e-mail can contain a message body as well as a Subject line.
Surprisingly few tools today contain these components—not because any of the features are complex or expensive to create, but because the technology industry is mostly unaware of bit literacy. Even so, bit-literate users must use a todo list with all four aspects listed above: association with date, compatibility with e-mail, ranking within a day, and a detail field. A todo list program without all four components is like a trampoline intended to get people to the moon. It’s a cute idea, and it may even be fun to try out, but it’s not going to work.
Flawed solutions are common. Paper-based systems, as described above, are by definition incapable of being bit-literate. Software and Web-based tools are mostly ineffective, too, exhibiting one of two problems:
Some are too simple: These todo lists offer attractive, simple interfaces that allow users to easily add todos to a list. But the features stop there. They can’t associate todos with a day, and strangely enough, some don’t even offer a detail field for todos—only a summary. It’s as if an e-mail program used Subject lines only, but no message bodies. Regardless of any other aspects of a todo list, the absence of a detail field limits it to being a kind of online collection of sticky notes—good for quick reminders and grocery-shopping lists, but not much else.
The failure to associate todos with days makes these services even less effective.
Others are too complex: In contrast to the simplistic todo list, this approach is to pack every possible feature into a single product. By trying to be “everything to everyone,” the tool ends up being not much for anyone. With a high-tech mess of menus, tabs, colors, windows, wizards, flags, panes, and popups, even simple tasks are a challenge. Microsoft Outlook is a