Hi there,
(p.s. I got ‘to-many’ and ‘to-one’ backwards at first.)
So a few of us have talked about transclusions in the past. Some products like Obsidian and Affine have these built-in.
I have found a way to gain the value of transclusions with only minimal shortcomings - in fact, shortcomings that don’t bother me at all.
My use case is that I’m always tracking things from many angles - in other words, an action-oriented “thing” (really a task) of some kind gets associated with many other things: (e.g. build, app, entity, etc.) - so there are like, say, five current “things” that are established in a way that is intuitive to me, and they all share a common set of next steps.
I know that you can simply have a task list of steps (e.g. 1-5 next steps) - but for me - and others I’m certain - a task list can:
- lose it’s meaning
- become way too big or require way too many ‘modifiers’
- just not be what you want to use
- subtly communication “blech”- task lists, task lists.
- become something you learn to ignore like noise when always used
So I created a database called “Next” - with 2 columns:
- Name
- Description (rich-text field)
Hands-down my favorite characteristic of Fibery is viewing “tasks” - blech - visually - in different ways - especially as parts of rich-text documents that provide tons of context - and also as whiteboards.
By having each of my spaces have a to-one relationship with Next, and then putting Next description (rich text field) above the description of whatever entity I’m viewing - and even sharing that Next description amongst many - I now have that same visually-satisfying(!?-is that the right word) way of viewing things - without resorting to just another task on a task list that I always manage to ignore.
Things in my world (business and professional) are organized in a way that’s intuitive to me, at a high-level.
The moment I stumble across a ‘task list’ it’s like being asked to spend my time in the most awful, un-interesting way possible. So simply having task as the go-to simply doesn’t work for me.
That said, when I “seek-out” the task list - it works. In other words, if my week is going by and to gauge how it’s going I have to view a big-ass list, it’s a fail. But if I want to view the “list of things to do” for Dr. X, then it’s a different story. I sought that, so it’s not so off-putting.
(Keep in mind traumatic brain injury, ADHD, visual learner.)
So if you look at this image, transclusions are doable and easy and (for me) ultra-helpful.
What does that show?
- Title of entity at top
- Assignee/People
- Tags (I make heavy use of Tags)
- The to-one NAME relationship with Next (as a field)
- The to-one Description lookup with Next (visually)
- Description of my current entity.
I have around 4-8 different entities sharing this ‘Next’. It could be tasks, bullets, numbers - I chose checkboxes for this one. Other times callouts. etc.
In order to modify the “translclusion” I simply go to (4) above and alt-click - and it opens to the right - every bit as simple and straightforward as Obsidian.
At any rate, I find this wildly helpful and perhaps you can benefit from it too.