[CSG Winter 2006] Mimi Yin on triage and information lifecycles

Mimi talked a lot about focus, and integration of PIM data allowing you to focus - answering the question "what should I be doing right now?" instead of "where should I look for things I should be doing now?"

Mimi notes that task lists are themselves artifacts of a pre-digital era. For information workers, the item itself (the draft of an email, a meeting that needs scheduling, the document you need to work on) should be on the list - just like we leave the video to be returned in the hallway, instead of writing "return video" on a list. That's what the Chandler "stamping" concept is about.

Chandler has "bi-directional" references, where each item that belongs to a collection contains data indicating the collection(s) it belongs to, and the collection knows what items it contains.

Three categories: Tagging, Capturing, and Monitoring. Just as items have a life cycle, so do collections - you don't realize the first time you see a topic, you don't realize that it will be a project (or collection), so maybe you tag it. But later, when more items come in on the same topic, you want to change that tag into a collection without having to go back and find all those items and create a folder and drag them into it.

In response to a question Mimi brings up the idea of collaborative triage of a shared mail list - an intriguing concept.

- Update - Mimi's slides are online here.

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