Crisis in Lichtenbergianism?

I've been working with real live people using the Precepts of Lichtenbergianism a lot recently, and it has precipitated a philosophical crisis, to wit:

Should GESTALT come before SUCCESSIVE APPROXIMATION in the lineup?

What am I talking about?  If you look at the Nine Precepts menu in the navigation links at the top of this page, you'll see that they are numbered.  That's for ease of listing, and of course that's the order they'll be presented in the book.  At the moment, SUCCESSIVE APPROXIMATION is #4, and GESTALT is #5.

Because it's a framework that the Lichtenbergians came up with to explain why procrastination works for us, we don't really think of the Precepts in any order, and since I've codified them and been writing about them, that order seems completely natural to me. 

So why change?

On the one hand, it's more logical.  After you make your ABORTIVE ATTEMPT, you have to step back and take in its GESTALT before you can move to make a SUCCESSIVE APPROXIMATION, right?

So even though the Precepts are neither linear nor hierarchical, I have found that in presenting their core ideas it is helpful to explain the ABORTIVE ATTEMPT/GESTALT/SUCCESSIVE APPROXIMATION loop in that order.  Does it not make sense to make that official?

On the other hand, it's a pain in the butt.  I did this before, moving WASTE BOOKS up to the #2 slot from #4, and I had to go through this entire blog and change all the links by hand, because changing the name of the page they link to does not automatically update them.  That was a couple of months ago, and now I have all these other blog posts I'd have to deal with.

Also, I have to redesign the image that goes on all the t-shirts and mugs over at CafePress and then update the products, and CafePress is really not user-friendly in that regard.  Ugh.

To sum up: I can either avoid doing all the cranky little tasks that go into making a successful online presence for my venture, or I can make the entire philosophy more coherent and presentable as part of the SUCCESSIVE APPROXIMATION process.

Might as well get to work.  TASK AVOIDANCE can only take you so far...

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