Here’s a dialog (well, mostly monolog) in our internal chat today in which I explained how my Trigger-Action Plan (TAP) for Commits.to works:
First, me to @hmowilliams:
You know more about [blah blah] so I’ll shut up after this but [blah blah blah].
Then a bot chimes in, that we have programmed to say things like the following when it hears strings like “I will”, “I’ll”, “I need to”, etc:
Was that an I-will statement?
Then me again:
Oops, “so I shall shut up now”. (I’m very serious about my Trigger-Action Plan!)
To clarify “I will” vs “I shall”, I use the latter when I’m saying “I will” purely rhetorically (like “I’ll shut up now”) as opposed to actually stating an intention to follow through on. But now I have the vague intention to shut up for real…
A brief pause, and then:
Haha, j/k. The other part of the point is that to make my Trigger-Action Plan work I have to be super strict about it. So I can’t casually say “I will” and shrug it off with “that didn’t count cuz it was just rhetorical”, even if that’s true. So I’m changing my actual language instead, which helps with being mindful of the Trigger-Action Plan.
HT @mary for helping me formulate that point. Which it now occurs to me I should post to the forum. Aaand hello other Trigger-Action Plan… I Resolve Not To Resolve; Or, The Anti-Resolution Resolution | Beeminder Blog which is funny because the obvious immediate action to be triggered by saying “I should” is to say “I will”, thus triggering the action of logging it on commits.to… so… I guess I’ll do that [LIGHTNING ZAP] http://dreev.commits.to/post_about_TAPs_in_stew_forum #TAPcascade