

A Plea for the Horizontally Organized (1995) - RiderOfGiraffes
http://www-csli.stanford.edu/~jperry//plea.html

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gjm11
Horizontal. But I don't like the terminology; this has much more to do with
how well your memory works than with anything spatial. I'm "horizontal"
because, like Perry, I find that if I put something where I can't see it then
I tend to forget about it and my memory fails to prompt me about it.
"Vertical" surely means some combination of having (1) an effective
"prompting" memory and (2) some separate system that compensates for any
shortfall in #1.

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gdp
Definitely horizontal. I have a basic algorithm for garbage collection though:

When there is no more room for new stuff to be laid out (i.e., it would
introduce structural unsoundness into the heaving mass that covers my desk), I
sift through and make two piles: things I recognise, and things I don't.

The "things I don't recognise" are usually papers I printed and have never
read (having long since abandoned whatever the project is that I printed it
for), brochures and leaflets I'm handed as I walk across campus (which I
deposit on my desk as soon as I reach my office), and things which are so out
of date as to be irrelevant (e.g. a library notice for a book I returned
months ago). All of this stuff goes into the recycling bin. The stuff I might
considering looking at again forms a pile and gets pushed to one of the back
corners of the desk.

Naturally, I dismantle the "keep" pile occasionally while looking for
something, which redistributes things onto the desk so that they get re-
considered during the next garbage collection run, so I find the pile is
usually remains reasonably "fresh".

Stating it this way makes it sound like I've put a lot of thought into this,
but I really haven't. It's just a natural way of working for me. My desk looks
messy and disorganised, but I rarely have trouble finding things - it's either
spread out on my desk, in the pile, or gone forever.

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cturner
The obstacle with vertical organisation is that you need to optimise things
for lookup, and this is a learnt skill. One of the neat things about vertical
organisation is that you can keep your head more free. I used to have a
tasklist that would grow and grow. Recently I've moved to having projects I'm
committed to and a project plan for each. I can easily now vet whether I
should accept or pass off a new incoming task. It also allows me to dump stuff
from my mind that relates to projects other than the one I'm working on at the
moment. This doesn't work for all modes of work.

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RyanMcGreal
I'm more of a supine organizer, myself.

Incidentally, I followed a link to Perry's other essays, which led me here:

<http://www.structuredprocrastination.com/>

to which I'm compelled to respond, _Yes, yes, a thousand times yes!_

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jacquesm
Horizontal to an embarrassing degree, I plan on hooking up a very large number
of monitors to sort of 'work around' the problem of limiated screen space
where the same issues seem to appear that I have on my desk.

Retrieving anything on my desk is an exercise in archeology, this sometimes
has very bad effects (electricity bills going unpaid, stuff like that).

It's weird, because on my harddrive things are about as organized as you could
possibly get.

Somehow 'surfaces' seem to bring out the worst in me and things start piling
up.

~~~
randallsquared
_I plan on hooking up a very large number of monitors to sort of 'work around'
the problem of limiated screen space [...]_

I find that virtual desktops work for this, though the interface matters a
lot; if there's an actual miniature representation of the virtual desktops,
that helps much more than having a list of them, and it took me a while to get
used to Spaces (on OS X) because it doesn't have a good miniature
representation, where the virtual desktop program I was using in Panther and
Tiger did.

~~~
jacquesm
I hate that switching around effect that changes the whole screen layout just
to get a look at some other screen for half a second, it is almost painful
that _flash_ of all those windows being replaced.

I like stuff to have it's place and to not move unless I tell it to. I found
out just how much I like that when on a lark I tried playing around with xdmx
and got it to include the 'guest' machine here and a mac. It was quite
amazing. No more switching desktops all the time it just became more quiet.

~~~
randallsquared
"it is almost painful that flash of all those windows being replaced."

I agree that it would be, except that the transitions are pretty smooth with
the system I'm using, so there's no flash/blink effect. I haven't used xdmx.

~~~
jacquesm
What window manager do you use on what os ?

I've played around with a tiling window manager for a few weeks and I liked it
but too many applications didn't like it so now I'm back to kde.

~~~
randallsquared
Right now I use Aqua and Spaces on OS X Leopard. There's an application called
"Desktop Manager" that looked and worked more like I wanted, but the developer
gave up on it after Spaces was integrated into Leopard, and Spaces is not
unusably bad, just not as good.

This video shows how it works: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c7MHup6kXbU>

I'm sure there's some VM program that works like this in the X.org world,
though.

~~~
jacquesm
thank you!

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chrismear
I cannot for the life of me understand what this person is talking about. I've
read it twice now.

Isn't this less about being 'horizontal' or 'vertical', and more about the
fact that we display information on flat areas, and about different
disciplines relating to segregation of 'in-progress', 'pending', and
'archived' material?

If I have five pieces of paper relating to a task that needs to be done, but
which I'm not working on _right at this moment_ , I'll stack them up simply
because that leaves more space for the task I _am_ working on right at this
moment. Now, that stack may be 'horizontal' on the desk, or it may be
'vertical' in a filing cabinet. But it's simply a space-saving measure.

His main problem seems to be that when he files pending stuff away, he forgets
to look at it again. But this isn't about vertical versus horizontal thinking
-- it's just about bad document management. If you just have a monolithic
filing cabinet that contains both ancient archived documents, and material
relating to pending tasks, then yes, you're going to get confused and forget
about things. If, on the other hand, you have one file as an archive, and one
file that you know is for pending material (or an in-tray; or just a special
pile on your desk), then you'll remember to check it.

~~~
randallsquared
_I'll stack them up simply because that leaves more space for the task I am
working on right at this moment._

My guess is that the author of this wouldn't do that, unless the five pieces
are all related to the same task. Instead, he'd stop working on the previous
task, optionally move those papers to a free spot on his desk (but maybe still
spread out as though he were working on it), and put the new papers on top of
whatever's left in front of him, and work on them there. One organizational
system I've seen that works well with this is the "sheet" system, where you
periodically spread a sheet over your desk, first saving out anything you
expect to need very quickly, and then after you haven't gone under the sheet
for anything in some time, archive everything under the sheet. The "sheet"
might actually be one of those plastic desk covers you can buy in an office
store.

I do this on my computer, leaving dozen of windows and tabs open until I get
back to them, rather than closing them and writing notes on what I need to do.
It's easier to resume a task that remains in progress than to start up a task
that was stopped, so we arrange to have any interrupted task continue to seem
"in progress", even if we haven't worked on it for a while.

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cousin_it
I hoped it would be a poll on whether your startups deal with horizontal or
vertical markets - something I'm thinking about right now.

~~~
edw519
Good idea. Start one.

~~~
cousin_it
Um... could you do it? I feel I'm over my quota of "Ask HN" for today.

~~~
edw519
Done.

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=800189>

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bbuffone
Being left-handed, the foldup desktop weren't really a problem. I would take
up two seats, the one I was sitting in and the one I needed to write on.

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scotty42
Definitely horizontal. Sometimes I feel like the only one who can't use the
fruit and vegetable bins in the fridge because I immediately forget about
anything I've put in there, and it rots.

However, like other commenters, I wonder if it's less an issue of horizontal
versus vertical, and more a matter of "out of sight, out of mind". If I can't
physically see something, I have a very hard time remembering it's there.
Thus, storage systems like drawers, filing cabinets, and to some extent
cupboards are pretty ineffective for me. Shelves and table tops are much
better, and see-through closed storage devices are somewhere in between.

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jamesjyu
I'm vertical (seems like the only commenter who is, at the moment). I like to
keep my desk spare; a cluttered desk tends to clutter my thoughts.

But, in general, I despise any paper to keep track of anything.

My desk consists of laptop, 30" monitor, and a moleskine. I keep notes in
Evernote, keep track of lists in Google tasks, and in general, try to digitize
everything.

In a digital world, it's less relevant if you're vertical or horizontal. I
keep all my thoughts a click away, which does away with the "out of sight out
of mind" syndrome.

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edw519
Horizontal. And I never even realized it until just now.

But I don't have OP's problem. Why? 2 words: wall space.

 _Everything_ is mounted on the wall somewhere. I'm a nut for those flipchart
pads from Office Depot with the sticky strip on the top. I also have one wall
completely covered with brown packing paper. I use lots of scotch tape and
push pins. I rarely forget about anything; after all, it's all right in front
of me all the time.

Artwork and window treatments, while astetically pleasing, are a total
functional waste of valuable and limited wall space. I'd rather look at specs,
notes, flow charts, and yes even source code mounted on my walls.

~~~
maggie
That's awesome. I might reorganize my work space so that I can take better
advantage of wall space.

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cschick2317
I am definitely horizontal. Though I wouldn't say I'd forget a project if I
put it in a filing cabinet (unless I had a bunch of projects and didn't have
reminders written down somewhere). I just don't see a point to going through
the work of filing something that I'm going to come back to eventually.

To me, file cabinets are for important documents you need to keep around and
reference very infrequently (tax documents, birth certificate...etc) and not
for things you'll be looking at multiple times during the week.

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diN0bot
how many horizontal people are programmers? i am both. being horizontal, to
me, is less about thinking differently and more about being a lazy efficient
programmer. i get by with what i can get by on and i focus as exclusively as
possible on the real meat of the project, which in this case is life.

i always viewed finishing what i work on and putting things away as things to
strive for. i've noticed improvements over the years. i've never felt like i
thought differently and 'oh others don't understand.'

thinking that 'vertical' people are magically able to put work into filing
cabinets rather than layer half-finished projects on their desk is like
thinking that i was magically born knowing biology and history. i did well in
school because i worked hard. i was encouraged along that path because i had a
good memory and enjoyed reading and reasoning. maybe those same things are
helping me slide on the horizontal track, whereas vertical folks quickly have
oh shit moments where bills don't get paid and freak out.

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RiderOfGiraffes
Poll created at <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=800047>

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10ren
I have a couple of manila folders of stuff I'm working on (5-10 sheets in
each). These sit on the floor next to my desk. My desk top is clear (apart
from pc, speakers, kb, phone etc).

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warpstone
Horizontal!

Holy crap. I never realized it either, but this would explain how I never seem
to mesh well with the vertical systems most administrators use.

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adamc
Horizontal. I think of my stack as a priority queue. If nothing ever makes a
note important again, it sinks to the bottom.

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diiq
Horizontal; thank God I'm an artist --- I can fill the studio with incomplete
work and no one bats an eye.

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RiderOfGiraffes
Horizontal. Definitely horizontal, but trying to be more vertical.

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oink
I'm not sure. I'm quick to toss stuff out.

