Horses for courses: Voodoopad, Tinderbox, Curio, Devonthink, etc

Posted by Dr Andus
Mar 1, 2013 at 10:50 PM

Prion wrote:
>I have already tried the two extremes and found out that neither of
>these approaches work for me:
>1) know one program well and use it for everything, even despite some
>weaknesses here and there
>2) pick THE best software for each job and use each of these programs
>(and possibly more)
>3) pick a really geeky program and get lost without getting anything
>done (actually, I achieved that goal pretty well, but now I know that I
>cannot master org-mode)
> >What are your suggestions for a good balance between points 1 and 2?
>I’d love to hear about lessons you learned from wrestling with similar
>problems, what are the fundamentally different tasks that you accept
>using different tools for?

Hi Prion - welcome to the forum. As you say, it’s horses for courses. But, here are my 2 cents, as a fellow academic type…

I think the balance lies in abandoning the focus on the tools and concentrating first on the workflows that need to be taken care of. Although the tools of course can’t be separated from the workflows. However, a given workflow can be supported by different tools and toolchains (several tools strung together to take care of a workflow), and once you have worked out the workflows (process flows), individual pieces of the toolchains can be replaced.

So the questions are:

1) What workflows need to be set up to carry out your tasks?
2) How to model and construct process flows?
3) What tools are required for each workflow?
4) How to select the right tools for each workflow?

I’d suggest that it’s also necessary to model/construct an overall hardware-software infrastructure (desktops, monitors, handhelds, input devices, software utilities etc.) to support the workflows. And I think there needs to be one overall general framework to take care of the overall backdrop and generic tasks.

E.g. by general framework I mean: What is the way new data gets into the system (email, browser, Dropbox etc.)? How are tasks created and tracked (calendar, todo list manager)? How are data captured, organised, labelled, retrieved (file managers, desktop search engines, databases)? How are projects identified, created and managed?

And then specialist (such as academic research, writing etc.) workflows and corresponding toolchains would need to be designed and strung together for each task.

Ideally of course one would want to have as few tools as possible, to make the process efficient. But it’s unlikely that one tool can take care of the general infrastructure and project and data management and also of all specialist tasks.

How to model workflows and design toolchains? It can be drawn by hand or by using some kind of a concept mapping software like VUE. I like to save my VUE concept maps as PNG files and insert them into my database of choice, ConnectedText, so I don’t forget them.

How to find the right tools? Through a lengthy process of search + trial. One needs to enter the CRIMPer life cycle. It can even take years of trying out different types of software until the optimal system and workflows and toolchains emerge and fall into place. Then the trialling and shopping can stop, and one enters into a stage of stabilising the system, tinkering on the edges, occasionally replacing tools or steps in the workflow (until the next crisis or technological paradigm change).