knoway

So, here we go.

Tasks happen either Once, Many times, or are continuous (All the time).

Tasks involve either One person, Many people, or All the people.

These are two axises that form a matrix thus:

OK, so you go shopping. You make a list, then go and buy the things. This is just you (O) and just once (O).

Next, you have a subscription to buy coffee from an online shop. This benefits you (O) but happens many times (M), until you cancel.

Finally for the top row you (O) wish to remain calm by using a breathing technique, which is on your mind all the time (A).

Next let's think about the 'Many' row. We are dealing with tasks that involve many (M) people.

You arrange a meeting with several people which will solve a problem in one event. Say you are interviewing a new window cleaner. You and your spouse (M) meet with them once (O).

You are in charge of a project, which will require the team (M) meeting regularly (M) over a period of time.

Finally, your family (M) wishes to maintain a serene environment without children continually at war with each other, so you continually (A) remind yourselves to 'Be Kind'.

Finally we deal with the existential.

Not many of us create events which involve all people. Where the audience for a task is wider than those people you know directly, we consider this an All (A) task.

You post to LinkedIn (A), to publicise an event your organisation is attending (O).

As a teacher, your students (A) are getting a series of lessons (M).

While practising your deeply held beliefs, everyone you meet (A) everyday (A) receives your love and personal attentiveness (maybe). (This is also the self-actualisation from the top of Maslow's hierarchy of needs).

Amo is latin for 'I love'. I know, very pretentious. OMA is also a recursive acronym 'Oma's My Acronym' which is very geek and makes my brain happy.

There is school of philosophical thought (Plato's theory of forms) that proposes a perfect mirror world in which exists an ideal form of everything we experience in our world. So a circle in our world reflects (imperfectly) the ideal 'circleness' that exists in the form world. This will be a familiar thought process to those who use object-oriented programming, especially pure object languages like Smalltalk.

From this philosophy I wanted to completely encapsulate the possible classifications of event which I might undertake in everyday life. More importantly, I wanted to be able to classify events so that I knew what resources to allocate to a particular type. Perhaps also to automate the checking around an event so that an algorithm might automatically know the data types and scheduling requirements.

Attempts to overlay this system onto regular personal information management systems have been mainly futile. The one system that might work is the text-only file format described at texttodo.org.

One day I might instantiate this as a front-end to texttodo.

This method and its description are © Dr M Hocking. First published c.2005 at gnotis.com. As with the other content on this site, it may be reproduced - with attribution - for non-commercial purposes.