Hunting The Muse

Categories

When we try to understand or keep track of a large number of items, we eventually reach a point where we can't remember them all at once.

So, we start to categorize. When things are simple, we can split every item apart into categories so that:

• Most categories have at least one item (otherwise what's the point?)
• Every item is in only one category

What's bad is that when we do that, we make internal compromises. "Buy Gift For Mom" has several possible categories. "Errands", "Purchases", "Family", "Stuff To Keep Mom Happy So She Doesn't Send Me Bitter-Tasting Fruitcake", etc. The category we choose actually ends up depending on the other items, not on the qualities of the item itself. "Well, it looks like a bunch of these are Errands, which leaves these other ones over here, so I'll make an Errand category."

The problem is it doesn't scale. Say you have an Errand and a Do At Home category. One of your items is that you want to hang pictures, which requires fasteners that you have to go and buy. Well, it's an Errand, but you also want to do it At Home. One of your other Errands was to buy a new lamp. It occurs to you that with the new items, it makes more sense to reorganize everything into Home Improvements, Buy Gifts, and Hobbies. You shuffle everything around.

That's the danger of making the items dependent on each other. It doesn't scale.

Eventually you hang your pictures, but still have to buy the lamp. You also have to buy a gift for your niece. You find the categories too limiting. You have the bright idea of using subcategories. Buying the gifts for your niece and mother are both in the Gifts categories, but they are also Errands. So you make Gifts be a subcategory of Errands. Now if you want to see what Gifts you have to buy, you can just look under "Gifts". And if you want to see all of the Errands you need to run, you can just look under Errands, and see both your normal Errands AND the Gifts you need to buy. Groovy!

Except... one of the gifts for your niece is going to be a dolly that you make. You make dolls in your spare time. You have all the materials at hand, you don't need to go out and buy any. You just need to make the damn dolly. That's not an Errand. It's a Gift.

So you pull Gifts onto its own level so it's not a subcategory of Errand anymore. But... now the other Gifts aren't Errands anymore either.

So, you get the bright idea of using multiple categorization. This is awesome! Now you can specify that some of your Gifts are Errands, and some aren't, even though they are all Gifts. Now when you look up under Errands, you see everything that is marked as an Errand, even if some of those items have multiple categories.

You find out you have an allergy to nuts. You mark it as Doctors Appointment, and also as Groceries. You ding your car - mark it as Insurance, Auto, and Errands. Everything's great! Now whenever you are in the mood to work on your garage, you can just click on the Garage category and do everything on that list. Let the categories think for you!

Except... now you have so many categories that you feel kind of like you need to start categorizing them. Plus, you forgot to put your Allergy To Nuts item in your Stuff To Keep Mom Happy So She Doesn't Send Me Bitter-Tasting Fruitcake. She sends you fruitcake, you eat it, you get deathly sick. If you had had Health as a subcategory in Stuff To Keep Mom Happy So She Doesn't Send Me Bitter-Tasting Fruitcake, then you wouldn't have had that problem.

So what do you do now? Is this where you just start to think your life has gotten too complicated and you whine for someone to take it away? Will someone help me file my papers in my filing cabinet?

Posted by Curt at May 8, 2003 07:42 PM