Simple Federated Compartments

I've spent a lot of time trying to find the perfect tool that will be able to accommodate innumerable facets of my life and do it in a sensible way. Well let's just say I've wasted a lot of time ...

So after wasting a bunch of time seeking the holy grail of software I realized I was being too rigid with my goal for simplicity. It isn't about the number of tools, the platforms or services chosen, it is about how they come together to provide you with a more fluid experience. The less friction we experience when interacting with these digital tools and using them to manage our lives, the better quality lives we will eventually lead.

With ease of use and efficiency steering my mindset, I felt better but still frustrated by trying to use a single set of tools for the 3 major areas of my life.

I would list these areas as follows:

1. Personal

2. Work

3. Pseudo

I want to keep each of these things isolated but also having an overlap in the tool set of each area reduces overall friction. This does create some privacy concerns and convenience considerations. For instance, I work on many things in all 3 areas that require some level of task management. However, not all 3 areas have the same needs when it comes to task management.

At work I have been using Quire.io for all my project management as well as for setting up recurring/routine administrative tasks with due dates. At home for chores, shopping lists, gift ideas, and general list/task management my wife and I use a nice little app called OurHome. And for my own personal information management I generally stick to Standard Notes.

Now, I have tried to use these tools in various combinations with limited success. This configuration seems to provide the most concentrated efficiency for each individual life area. Not one tool per area, but a very finely curated, tested and implemented set of tools for each given area.

This brings me to the title of this post Simple Federated Compartments.

And the idea is basically as described above, find tools, platforms and services for your precise needs and situation. My example has 3 life areas, but many may work just as well with only 2 areas, work and personal. Regardless of an individuals configuration the primary idea is the idea itself, not the given structure or specific use case.

Once you have determined your life areas you can drill down on the needs of each one and what tools may be applicable, where there might be overlap and how best to ensure good privacy practices are in place. Conscientious attention to the compartments across your digital footprint is key for your system.

Within each compartment match each need with a simple solution, then compare solutions that can integrate with your existing tools/infrastructure or "federate" with the system you are creating.

Federation between life areas would be pretty abnormal since most people would want to keep personal and work separate - at the very least at the account level. Compartment overlap of tools used may occur, but for the sake of clarity you probably do not want to mix information between compartments. A good example of an overlap would be like using an email client to funnel both work and personal emails to a single management tool (this obviously has numerous security and privacy implications).

Compartments may be bubbles but they aren't necessarily in a vacuum. Continuing with the basic structure of a simple federated compartment, I should establish what lines of communication each compartment will utilize.

Now here is where things can get dicey since human relationships are a bit more complex and vary from person to person. Our contacts and relationships can span beyond the scope of what I discuss here. That being said, we should be consistent in each compartment to try and mitigate cross-talk between them.

For example, it may be very tempting to seek out that singular communication app that you can (but most likely won't) convince all of your contacts to use. Much like the rest of this system structure communication apps follow the same compartmentalization idea.

At the moment my current communication configuration is as follows:

• Signal - used with close friends and family. Signal requires a phone number to create an account, so to me it only make sense to use the service with individuals who already had my phone number.

• Element - does not require a phone number for registration so I use this for pseudonymous communication with acquaintances and online friends

• Tutanota - Tutanota has been a good experience for me and the paid version is very reasonable only about $12/year. I am still trying to configure my email and looking into email aliasing services like Anonaddy to better compartmentalize my email accounts across my life areas.

• Telegram / Discord - I use these services more like social media than communication tools, and even then very passively. I mainly use telegram to get updates and info on crypto/web3 projects and platforms. I use discord to keep up with a few different gaming communities and media communities. To be frank, I don't like either of them and I really don't like that they require SMS verification and a real phone number. I use these services pseudonymously, I do not want them tied to my primary phone number.

This leads to my next point with these federated compartments, multiple phone numbers, phones and SIMs. Now this gets to be a bit overkill and cumbersome for most people, but I really like the idea of separating my real identity from my online identities. And when I say "real" I mean like "Real ID" - the legal identity. Anything to do with the government is tied to the phone number I have had for over a decade. I have recently acquired a new phone number to give out to my closest contacts and use only Signal for calling and messages - no SMS.

The new number is tied to my new Pixel 6a. After phone arrived in the mail I went through the processing of unlocking the bootloader and installing GrapheneOS. The experience has been very good this week, but I will draft another post discussing my experience with de-googling.

Moving forward, I plan to keep my old number on my iPhone 8 and use it like a coffee table device and an at home answering machine for all my bills and "real ID" communications. This way all of the accounts associated with who I actually am are isolated to the device that already knew who I was.

I really need to create some visuals to add to these sort of system overview posts as a chart or image can help a lot with visualizing what I am describing.

Now, as far as the complexity level of your compartments goes, that's up to you. I prefer to keep most elements and components of a system to 3 or less. This makes keeping track of the structure and components very easy since a good system will be structured like a fractal making operating within the system very fluid. If you start getting too "nested" consider reducing the depth of your compartment structure. This applies to many different things, but for my purposes it applies to information and digital systems.

So to recap this rambling, I separate my life into areas of focus. These "life areas" are sort of the top level segmentation for my day to day life. As mentioned before these are: Personal, Work, and Pseudo. Each of these top level areas will contain a structure of sub-compartments (these sub-compartments are what I refer to as "simplified federated compartments"). These SFCs are the core components that make up the digital structure of a given life area. The sum of all your systems and compartments are what make up your digital footprint.

Working out my own thoughts here, I am basically wanting to drill down on isolating various aspects of my digital footprint and share my progress and process through listed. Ensuring proper foundational design for your online life (and offline life) is critical for both success and longevity. Without a good structure to funnel our energy into we are destined to toil in the entropy of this life.

Until next time ...