Bit Literacy - Mark Hurst [21]
Features like these might be useful in some cases, but if they don’t support the central idea of bit literacy—letting the bits go—they shouldn’t be in the tool. Categorization, rather than decreasing the user’s load of bits, would actually add more bits that the user needs to manage. Moreover, such features invite users to play around with the tool more than they need to. Productivity is measured in the amount of work users get done outside of the todo list, not the amount of time they spend organizing the list itself.
The truth is that many users just don’t want to do their work. Given a choice between completing a todo or spending several minutes deciding what color it should be, lots of people—especially techies, who love playing with software—would choose the latter. Colors are fun, pretty, and don’t require much thought. Doing the actual work in the todo requires time and energy, risks failure, and might not be any fun. Users are best served by a tool that encourages the discipline of actually getting the work done, rather than endlessly tweaking the system.
About the long list
A bit-literate todo list gets users back to work by focusing them only on what they need to do today. There’s only one downside: if the user has too many todos, the todo list quickly exposes that uncomfortable truth. Once the user is done setting things up, the list of todos that need immediate attention may stretch far down the screen—a demoralizing sight. Some users, despairing, reflexively look for technology to save them: perhaps a different feature, or multiple todo lists, would help stem the tide. As one user put it in an e-mail:
What should I do about very long gootodo lists (150 items and counting)? I’m a follower of [complex paper-based system] and have tried to think of this as my next actions list. Since you advocate ‘going to zero’ on e-mail and gootodo...What’s your recommendation on this? Should I create ANOTHER LIST as my ‘don’t forget’ list? Or is it OK to carry long lists like this one in gootodo?
The plain fact is that having too much work isn’t something that a todo list can fix. Todo lists can only show what there is to do, and help users organize and prioritize it all. If there’s too much work to do, then a good todo list should at least make that clear, so users can think about how to re-organize or even turn down some of the work. The worst thing a todo list can do is obscure the problem, distracting users with a thick layer of needless features and complexity.
Users should, however, procrastinate when appropriate. If a user can’t realistically get to all 150 items today, he should forward them to some point in the future when he can get to them. But if he sees that he can’t ever complete all his work—if he thinks he may be carrying 150 todos forever—then that’s an issue he must address separately from any software or system. Talking to the boss may get some of those action items re-assigned to someone else. But no system, no matter how complex or high-tech, can address such a problem that originates outside the bit world.
A good measure of success in todo management is the number of items sitting on today’s list. Similar to the message count in e-mail, the todo count is a quick benchmark to see how close the user is to being “done.” And just as bit-literate users should empty the e-mail inbox once a day, they should also try to empty the todo list at least once a week. (It’s unrealistic to finish the todo list every single day, since some todos take several days to complete.) It’s a great feeling to leave the office on a Friday afternoon, knowing that the weekend is starting and both the e-mail inbox and todo list are empty: you’re done. (Until Monday, that is.)
Using Gootodo for followup
There’s one more benefit of Gootodo that’s worth exploring. It’s easily overlooked, because it’s not something that people expect from a todo list, but it’s a monumentally important benefit to bit-literate users: followup. By using CC and BCC in e-mail,