Simplicity Symposium: Part 1
Simplicity Symposium: Part 2
I made a quick screencast of how to use the SLIP tool. It is useful for organizing the various junk inside your head when you are confused. For me, this is often. The e-mail feature is useful as you can e-mail the list to a friend so that they can do the work for you by virtue of away.
20 Responses to “How to SLIP”
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When I leave the office at night, physical post-it notes on my desk are still there in the morning. But when I navigate away from SLIP, I lose my data. Many things carry over to the next day - I need them to stay! Is this possible? Maybe with a simple log-in?
When I’m done with a physical post-it I throw it in the bin. Is it possible to add a feature to permenently delete things from the thrash?
(P.S. nice tool - and one of the most inspiring books I’ve read in months)
I tried SLIP, following your little instructional video, and I was unable to create more or fewer than three groups. Am I missing something?
1/ I kind of wanted to stay away from a login. What you can do is e-mail the SLIP-ped list to yourself and what you get is a link to the edit session so you can keep on going. The system doesn’t keep track of e-mail addresses so it won’t come after you (smile).
2/ Regarding more or fewer than three groups, the pull-down menu (that says “3″) should let you select more groups. There’s some Javascript stuff there that I’ve never trusted so please let me know if the menu isn’t behaving properly. Thank you.
regarding #2: what happens for me is that the drop down list opens (showing 1-6) but then closes immediately. if i try to quickly scroll down to select, say, 5, before it closes, it will close before i make my selection.
It’s a bit of Javascript that works on some browsers and doesn’t on others. I’ll come up with a fix this weekend. Thank you for pointing this out.
It should be fixed now. If not please let me know.
Don’t be offended, but this tool wastes more time than it is saving (Too much clicking. No Simplexity!). If you want to SLIP things up for (maybe) a project, why not to use Excel? U can share entered excel data also very easy via e-mail.
If you still think your program is a good idea, why not to integrate Drag&Drop interface? The application you present is so needless.
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FYI. Today is the 24th,Sep. 2006
Thank you for pointing out the bug in the comment dating. I’ve fixed it now. Regarding drag-and-drop and Excel, I see your points and they are valid.
Having lived with RSI for over ten years now, I know that there’s nothing more painful than dragging your mouse while holding the button down. Clicks are bad enough! So I guess the SLIP tool here is one that befits my own handicap — which of course isn’t everyone else’s. But if you click and drag as much as I have done in the past, you can perhaps forgive my slip.
The “SLIP tool” link in “how to slip” box takes me to a “Error 404 - not found” page.
It seems like the server is case sensitive so typing in lowercase:
http://lawsofsimplicity.com/slip
instead of the current link destination:
http://lawsofsimplicity.com/SLIP
did the trick for me.
Just thought I’d let you know of a dead link.
P.S. Interesting tool.
Thank you. I fixed that. I just can’t stop slip-ing I guess (smile).
John
Enjoying your book (it’s a sunny dry SUNday in Brisbane Australia. Took an interlude to log on and try SLIP.
I tried to SORT U out by looking at your picture, hearing your voice but am foxed. You’ve SORT of got a Spanish surname, but U like sushi so you could be a hybrid Japanese from your picture. Being a tad narcissistic (my wife’s a psychologist)I talk about me to put it into some pattern: I’m Chinese (mother)/Irish; my three offspring are 0.25 Chinese, 0.25 Irish and 0.5 English but one was born in Belize and two in Gainesville Florida where I “did” my PhD in the late 60’s.
So finally: what’s UR ethnic mix to account for your creativity (I believe it’s correlated with hybrid vigour)?
Kind regards
Bill
I’ve been to Australia once for a conference. It’s quite a beautiful country. The ethnic and cultural diversity is tremendous, but I’m sure it depends upon where you live there. In the States we often deal with the question of racial stereotypes with often complex and unfortunate means of expression. This is something I’ve written about from time to time.
Thus I wouldn’t put one’s creativity as a function of ethnic mix or heritage, however I would put it on one’s immediate environment. Which if it is diverse in experience, either wonderfully vibrant or extremely dark, a difference in opinion from the norm can emerge. That difference, might matter. It might not.
I’m just a fellow that is “1.0 Human Being” like us all. Nothing more. Nothing less. Thank you for your comment.
You mentioned RSI - the simplest solution I’ve found is to learn Dvorak. It’s a keyboard layout that greatly simplifies your keystrokes, and amount of “finger travel”, on the order of about a 1:12 ratio (the 12 being what QWERTY typist have to deal with).
It saved me. (And, it’s easier to learn than you think.)
And, I’m looking for the directions for the SLIP tool, but not finding them…
I’ve been suggested to learn DVORAK many times. Looks like it will become a new future hobby. As for using the SLIP tool, I have a Quicktime screencast up here: http://lawsofsimplicity.com/slip1B/slip1B.mov
I used SLIP 1.0 for the first time a few minutes ago right after reading about it in your book.
I easily went through the SLI steps.
S: I listed all tasks to be performed (reduced to 13)
L: I labelled them by topics (only 3)
I: I didn’t need to integrate and was glad of this simple representation
But then came the P - phase, and I could not establish priority because my groups (semantic sorting) contain multiple tasks which have different priorities and different time constraints.
What would be your advice to me?
Hi John,
I’ve been enjoying your book very much, and reading it in conjunction with Creative Code, the focus of which gave me a deeper appreciation of both the simplicity factor and the creative enjoyment factor of SLIP. I tested it out and got the following result from using all the steps:
MAIN
•tree
SUB+APPLICATION+RESULT
•branch
•leaf
•flower
•fruit
•nut
OTHER
•ardvaark
I was pleased with the tactile response of the program, better than post-it notes for the satisfaction of seeing pieces fall into place without losing them. Better still, I was interested to find that what started as a hypothetical To-Do list of random items resolved itself (particularly in the second category) into an understanding of the interrelationship of all the items (except for the ardvaark, still working on that one, although it might represent Law 5: Differences).
Hi Em and Folks, I regret that I haven’t had time to tweak the SLIP tool. I should have more time available after my London exhibition opens April 30. The SLIP tool is a simple tool that helps me; I’m glad that it’s helpful to some of you as well. Regards, John
Um, can’t open the .mov on my machine. Do you have a more common format of this, perhaps an mp4?
Hey John, I’m trying something new with your SLIP tool.
In order to work with co-workers in another state, we are SLIP-ing away on our team blog at http://tinyurl.com/6fw2jg.
Basically, we start off with an initial pass at SLIP and then follow up in the comments section. Oh, and when URLs get too big, we SHRINK them with tinyURL. Perhaps incorporating a tinyURL submit field directly into the SLIP tool(?)
Thanks again for all the inspiration!