I don't think caring much about special effects is necessarily universal. Good special effects add almost nothing to my enjoyment, and bad special effects detract almost nothing.
I've found mostly the opposite. Some well arranged windows are quite a nice anchor, I'm working on what's there in front of me. It's like bowling with bumpers in place, instead of the ball going in the gutter, the structure keeps it in the lane. I've found it necessary to devote time to cleaning and clearing windows, and sometimes I forget what's going on, and as I'm closing out the windows because I forgot what was going on, oh! there's this half finished thing that I actually really want finished.
What am I working on, what's in progress? The work space is the map. The terrain is changing as the task progresses, and so must the map, but the map is useful, even if it takes a bit of redrawing here and there.
The desktops (multiple, 3-7) are the map of the work. Part of the work is keeping the map accurate, not wadding it up and throwing it in the trash.
I suppose different things work for different people, but I started with the suggestion here and came around to skillful use of space as the work map itself.
Cleaning and updating are continuous, not a 'big bang' clear-the-desks event, mostly. But if it's not continuous, the big bang is probably better.
Some spots are problem spots, like digital notebooks, desktop icons. When I notice a problem spot, I create a recurring task to remove one X per week, or in some of the worst cases, one X per day. I have a rule of clearing out the oldest two days of email each day. I miss some days if I'm busy, but on average rate out = rate in, because I will always catch up within a day or two applying the rule that the oldest two days of email need eviction (make a task out of it, archive it, whatever) every day. Rate out = rate in
I think it's where one plugs the external world into in their brain. For my daily work, I plug the desktop to my current thought stream (or short term memory?). Anything not immediately relevant to what I'm thinking about is an unnecessary speed bump or stutter in my speech, which means minimal window decoration, no status bars, ... and anything not visible can be summoned by a quick single "label" somehow, not by navigating a structure. This is more similar to what the author suggested.
{And if I'm getting what you said correctly}
What you described, is similar to how I organize my drawers in my room. Everything is visible at once, but navigating them usually takes 2 or 3 steps. Without this visual map I'm completely lost.
Agree that different things work for different people. And even different things work for the same person at different time.
I, too, operate using the "nothing" approach as my DEFAULT and most common mode.
In my mind, the big things I never forget to attend to (they are big). The small things that I might forget, who cares, they're less important and the forgetting is a natural prioritization mechanism.
Some times I do feel overwhelmed by how many "big things" I have to juggle but won't "remember" or "it takes too much cognitive load to track". In that case, I make an ephemeral list on paper. That helps me adjust my perspective (sometimes things that I worried about are now clearly in the not urgent or not importang bucket).
I understand why people organize things around them, also on their computer. While I am working I also do it. On Gnome I have 1-2 desktops per tasks when working on multiple things. As you say say, they are "the map of the work", nice metaphor. But, jumping in the next morning I get sort of overwhelmed, especially with multiple tasks ongoing.
Over time I have come to the ritual of closing everything in the evening (end of afternoon really), what is still running is on servers in Tmux labeled with the task number, sometimes I leave Readme's open with instructions to myself (vscode or obsidian), but starting clean works better for me (like OP). I sort of slowly load the context in the morning and start to ramp up. That is what it feels like. It works for me. When I boot up, I have 5 empty desktops and zero tabs open in the browser. But it is all filled up relatively quickly again. I do have rituals/rules, like secondary, longer running tasks (ie long running data analysis workflows) are usually on desktop 4. Element/Slack/Signal on desktop 5, outlook/teams (for current client) + other side stuff in browser on desktop 1. Desktop 2 is very dynamic, usually where I spend most time, it overflows onto desktop 3 when I need more space, both are filled with terminals, vscode, browser windows. I have my laptop screen on the side, but for some reason never use it... I just use my Iiyama ultra-wide with quarter tiling (probably would tile more if Gnome would support it, KDE did, loved that, but love the simplicity of Gnome more).
I'm considering making 6 desktops haha. Oh, I really can't work with dynamic desktops, as I "need" some stuff to be on the final desktop, far away yet easy to reach.
Current client has an Excel file for tasks. Really hate that. Tried pushing her to MS Tasks, didn't really work well. But I also need a large space for context and subtasks. For some data analysis tasks I made a small Django system, with a page (model/view) per dataset. That works very well for us, it was very much worth the effort to set that up. The view grabs in data from several locations so it also helps me quickly look things up.
You made me think of this quote: "If you want to build a ship, don't drum up the men to gather wood, divide the work, and give orders. Instead, teach them to yearn for the vast and endless sea." - Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
WinRAR has a lot of great features as an archiver and compressor. It can create parity archives, and has a lot of other great features if you look at the manual
Granted it doesn’t have compression advantage over 7z, but those flags and features look great when I want to create archives, generally better and more convenient than anything else I look at, but I usually end up going with plain old zip files since various utilities can scan and search through them, etc., a network effect win for the zip format. But it also underscores that the best compression ratio doesn’t count for that much for me and some other people
Well said. The ability to embed a recovery record for really important stuff and the command line support is enough for me to keep using Winrar forever.
They've always used copying as one of their signature moves, see zune vs ipod, win3/95 vs mac, early Internet explorer based on spyglass/NCSA mosaic, Novell eDirectory vs ActiveDirectory, C# vs Java, F# vs Ocaml, and many more I would have to think hard about and take a long time to remember.
They tend to enter late with a me-too product, whether they copy, acquire, or embrace-extend-extinguish, but copying does play as large a role as any of their strategies, none of which generally involve actual innovation and often lean heavily on illegal, underhanded, or unethical business tactics.
Please try using F# or C# for once and you'll see how incorrect this statement is. Both had huge amounts of novel work that influenced the whole industry.
It's useful. It's not science. Those two statements don't have any contradiction. "Pseudo-science" sounds like a dismissal without further evaluation beyond "is it science?" In practice, it's more useful than the scientific big 5 model of personality.
How is it more useful than the Big 5? I find the Big 5 to have far more explanatory power. Openness to Experience especially is an under-discussed factor in human relationships.
The fact that the MBTI frantically added a fifth type for neuroticism is all the evidence you that at best it's playing catch up real personality science. The MBTI is all about profiting off of a human desire for belonging, which is why all the examples that the major sites give for each type are historical heroes (are you more of an Abraham Lincoln or Joan of Arc). Neuroticism is a harder sell, but guess what? Thinking of myself as a sensitive/neurotic person has been extremely enlightening, more than all the MBTI results in the world.
I'm preaching to the choir, but I get fired up about this stuff.
The early death of smokers tends to save a long, expensive period of end-of-life care. I believe smoking deaths reduce health care costs, ironically enough.
That study is almost 30 year old, has there been more current research? I also wonder if externalities like trauma on friends/family are factored in, I could imagine there are some transitive effects?
That sounds like sour grapes from a CEO that only and very simply got out-played at a CEO's main job of overall strategy. Even every employee working 80 hours a week still couldn't paper over complete CEO strategic failure. He's seriously going to plead that Google didn't have the man hours or resources to win with their PhD head-count and bankroll? Ridiculous.
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