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<i>The historical to-do lists that worked.</i>

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Today, each of us individuals are so specialised into very narrow fields, that one barely does know something about things remote from one's own field. A single individual has less and less ability to understand how the modern world works as a whole, and that's what this project is about to change. Please, watch this video to understand what problem this project tries to address:

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(The video is a quotation from TED presentation by Matt Ridley.)

The idea is to reverse-engineer our civilization. It is based on the observation that no matter how complex a project, it can be divided into a small number of definitive steps (major tasks, milestones, phases, stages, chapters, divisions, macros, subunits, procedures, subroutines,..) which are necessary and sufficient to accomplish a project, and the fact that nearly everyone is able to keep about 7 ± 2 different things simultaneously in their mind (short-term memory span).

It means that if someone asks you: "How did you build the Space Shuttle Columbia?", and you can come up with a list of 7 definitive steps, you are able to explain it to a six-year old child, like Einstein would expect from someone who really knows how to do it. The child would likely be interested in having you subdivide these steps again and again, until he or she knows what step to proceed with to begin building one. The key observation here is that it is enough to uncover only a handful of correct steps to make someone motivated in digging deeper, because even a child would understand the value that the knowledge that these steps carry.

However, it is inefficient to try to answer the questions like 'how to make a car' in general, because this question has millions of answers depending on your current situation, and the goal conditions. It is better to ask 'how was a particular car successfully created, and under what conditions?', because the answer to this question is unique and existing.

The goal of this project therefore is to approach the creators of various wonderful projects, and ask for these steps, because knowing these steps for large number of all kinds of projects would effectively let us despecialize (rather than specialize), and let everyone of us start having a great deal of that missing understanding of the modern world.

You are invited to contribute.

See the example for editing examples.
We are working on enabling you to post to-do lists here directly from commonly used task manager apps.
Contact the author of this website, if you are interested in cooperation.

If you are curious in knowing how something was planned and done, list it here:
{{Certified}}*← {{Complete}}← {{Draft}}← {{Empty}}

See the the example for editing examples.

If you are interested in suggesting features for me to implement, or problems to solve, you may use the issue tracker below.

[add] View Issues

ID Type Title Status Assignee Date Action
# 11 Doc Add New Unassigned 01-12-2010
# 10 Doc Compose something like "We are hiring" section to search for motivated members to be. New WikiSysop 01-12-2010
# 9 Improvement Enabling easy downloads of the wiki database. New WikiSysop 27-11-2010
# 8 Improvement Add New WikiSysop 27-11-2010
# 7 Improvement Choose or develop appropriate content license. New WikiSysop 27-11-2010
# 6 Doc Add about page New WikiSysop 27-11-2010
# 5 Improvement Make a Mailman mailing list New WikiSysop 27-11-2010
# 4 New Feature Create the <htn></htn> tag New WikiSysop 27-11-2010
# 3 Doc Write help page New WikiSysop 27-11-2010
# 2 Doc Write page on Copyrights New WikiSysop 27-11-2010
# 1 Bug The lists don't update immediately. New WikiSysop 27-11-2010

Type
Bug New Feature Improvement Doc Feedback Test
Status
New Assigned Resolved Closed

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