Tools for thought should give the user agency

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Applications are designed for authoring not thinking

Tools for thought enable different workflows

Everyone takes notes differently, some have structured systems and others spend hours sketching in their notebooks. Through paper and the physical environment we can design our own workflow and system for thinking and producing. But computer systems are not flexible in this way, individual users are not given broad agency to design their own workflows and must work within the systems and integrations built up by programmers and application developers. The ideal digital Tools for thought should give the user agency to design their own workflows and representations for information and Tools for thought should blur the line between users, designers, and programmers.

Tools for thought should blur the line between users, designers, and programmers

Tools for thought should give the user agency over their workflows, which are currently designed and implemented by teams of programmers. Each user is unique in their needs and requirements and thus there is no one software fits all solution. By giving users the tools they need to design their own workflows, you enable whole new emergent possibilities and opportunities and free up those who make programming their profession to work on more interesting problems than building yet another todo list or note taking app.