Yodo the Pitch and Demo
- For a briefer overview of Yodo, see: yodo, the application.
Background
I started recording demos for Yodo for a few reasons. See: Why the Yodo Demos?
I hoped that it would:
- hone Yodo's pitch
- hone Yodo's feature set
Some side effects have been:
- Clarity in direction and vision
- Removal of unused features
- Explicit definition and sharing of my process
Overview
> Pitch should be 10 minutes, tops.
The first few, recordings ran about 30 minutes.
Pitch 4 was just under 20, because I 'winged it'
> Topic: Intro to Yodo
Cover introducing Yodo from scratch, as if the viewer has never heard of it. Once this is honed, we can figure out the next video topic. Until then, repeat this topic (re: evergreen demos )
Hopefully this file is reasonably up to date to match the current application's feature set. Otherwise, stop here to see what this mind-garden is all about.
>> Assumptions of audience's familiarity
- Capture, GTD, James Allen
- Some emacs/org-mode
> Agenda
- What is Yodo?
- Influences
- Yodo's Vision
- Current State of Yodo
- Request for Thoughts/Feedback
What is Yodo? "Yo, Do 'This'"
Yodo is an over-engineered TODO list.
A small play on 'Todo'.
It's about
Suggestions
and automating parts of your
decision-making.
The name 'yodo' comes from the desire to have something else tell me what to do. Especially if it's Past Me doing the deciding.
History of Yodo's Name
Decision-making fatigue is real!
Yodo wants to give suggestions from your goals, or your threads of work.
Influences
> 'Getting Things Done' influence (David Allen)
- adding a wayward thought to an inbox
- supports staying focused on the current task
- requires a process for reviewing your inboxes trusting that process is important, otherwise you follow every rabbit hole
> Emacs and Org mode
Org as the best way to let thoughts flow while staying organized.
> Pomodoros for healthier work days
Take breaks! Improve focus!
> Hammock-Driven Development
Problem Solving in your Hammock
> The Artist's Way
Morning Pages
Artist's Date
> Meditation and Mindfulness
Zen, TM, non-reactivity
> Digital Gardens and Tools for Thinking
Roam Research
Working with the garage door up
Spaced-repetition
Self-organizing/discovering ideas
Vision
Yodo is an over-engineered TODO list. A Productivity/Project Management Tool.
> Work/Life Integration -> Balancing Suggestions
Yodo integrates many things in your life:
- journals
- commits messages
- todos (low level tasks)
- goals (high level aspirations or habits)
- external blobs (strava runs, lichess moves, blog posts)
Then it provides tools for high quality reviews of your past work and suggestions of future work.
>> Nuances
How to balance energy across your day, your week?
Avoiding burnout.
>> Time and goal-aware suggestions
Suggestions differ in the evening from the morning.
Suggestions differ based on your goal-progress.
> Quality, automatic Review and Planning
Right now, review only means processing inboxes.
It should present daily and weekly reports with useful at-a-glance charts.
It should also walk through a thorough evaluation of the good, the bad, and what's next.
Reaching for self-improvement and feedback mechanisms.
How are these reviews automated (how to keep overhead low)?
>> Self-Organizing items (sort of)
Connecting things with tags and direct links eases context and encourages discovery.
Suggestions encourage taking items to a useful level of connectedness, and ensures pieces don't get lost.
>> Relative comparison
Rather than give an arbitrary estimate on a task, you can instead compare it to others. This should result in a much more useful ranking, as the relative value and efforts should be more accurate.
Think Priority Queues.
^ Quality
>> Making assumptions
Pomodoros as a unit of work and a cap on each day. Pomodoros as a currency we can spend on each day, or week, or on each project. Pomodoros as a minimum expected effort per todo.
>> Spaced-repetition for accumulating a design or an approach
Rather than an hour-long sitdown, accrue thoughts at capture-, review-, prioritization- time.
> A smart work assistant
While working on a task, Yodo will manage your pomodoros, focuses, wins, and breaks.
Yodo will fetch relevant data based on the current task and linked project and repo
Examples:
- documentation
- cheatsheets
- `doctor` commands
- available commands
- suggested fixes for error messages
- summary of changes
> Write-first UI
Web forms have their place, but Yodo should primarily gather information and
input from external writing tools:
- text-editor (emacs?)
- mobile journals (Drafts app)
- commit messages
Working in plain text (or something that exports plain text) gives you the most freedom to work with your ideas before needing to structure them.
Structure can be enforced too soon, and the wrong structure isn't often useful or helpful.
Personal process
> Capture things in inboxes
Highly dependent on capture integrations.
capture tools:
- journal.org while working, currently an i3 scratchpad
- drafts mobile writing capture
- beorg capture urls on mobile (basically pocket)
- commit messages
integrations:
- google photos
- slack
- headspace/calm
- lichess
- browser searches/resources
Leads to inbox build-up.
> Inbox Processing
Convert inbox items to:
- a full todo
- a goal
- an idea
- etc
Linking to relevant projects/goals/blog posts.
> Todo Processing
Input:
Existing todos and new ones from inbox processing
Todos can be added at any time
Output:
A prioritized todo list
Supports prioritizing todos across all projects.
Currently uses a priority-queue-like approach.
> Todo Execution (Pomodoro time, Focus Queue)
Current Implementation
> Integrations
See yodo domain objects.
- journals
- ideas
- todos
- goals
- projects (todo-parent)
- repos (git repos)
- commits
- pomodoros
- notes (digital garden)
- screenshots
- prompts
> Global Elements
Things on every page.
>> Items List
>> Item Modal
>> Suggestions
>> Pomodoro and Focus
> Pages
>> Home Page
- Suggestions
- Last 3 days activity (new events)
- Last updated items (latest updated)
>> Current Pomodoro Page
- Suggestions
- Wins
- Commit Summary
- Linked/Related Items
- Concurrent Items
>> Todos Page
- Suggestions
- All Todos Used for todo prioritization
>> Goals Page (WIP)
yodo pitch: a tool to keep up with ALOT of capture
yodo pitch: a tool to keep up with ALOT of capture
to keep up with 100+ todos
define and add to yodo pitch - daily routine, meditation routine, morning routine
promote principle: write right away, write-first UI, drafts
promote principle: write right away
a place to write right away
drafts ios app
journal feat in yodo
when i come in here, i can write a journal, a todo, a plan, a story, a line of
dialogue, a prompt
all about converting from this nice, vim-based bucket into something more useful
ideas, from capture to executed
yodo demo thought: writing vs editing
Backlinks
Yodo is a project I've been working on for a few months, but have thought about for years.
It's a project management tool for developers, writers, todo-list fanatics.
It helps me run pomodoros and prioritize todos across projects.
It's focuses are:
- Wide net for easy capture
- inbox processing
- daily planning
It is influenced heavily by:
- emacs
- org-mode
- Getting Things Done
- journaling every day
For the intro demo pitch and latest feature summary, see: Yodo, the Pitch.
Capture promises everything! Write those ideas down, we'll process them later. But how much does it cost to process it all?
Is a huge list of inbox items a good problem to have?
How do you decide what to work on, what to focus on?
Too much capture can lead to problems like Decision-making fatigue. Solutions might include things like Yodo, an application that tells you what to do.
Related: Is Yodo worth the overhead?
A place to link to other entry-point cards.