Originally posted as a comment by esjewett on The Inquisitr using Disqus.

These are excellent points, but it only gets at half of the equation. As I see it, the two main questions when working on my personal workflow are effectiveness and flexibility. My impression is that when people are thinking about their workflows there is far too much emphasis on the stability of the platform (which is your point, and a good one) because of an inflated estimate of the costs associated with a workflow change.

The basic question is this: Is a change to my workflow that takes X hours to execute worthwhile?

The way a lot of people think about this question is by asking "Do I have X hours to spend on this or would I rather spend it on something else?"

The question people should be asking contains another variable - the number of hours they will save overall through this change. Let's call this number of hours "Y". The question is: "Do I have X-Y hours to spend on this or would I rather spend it on something else?" When the number of hours saved (Y) becomes greater than the switching cost (X), the cost associated with a workflow change becomes negative.

I actually switch tools quite often, so my estimate of the total productivity gain for a given tool is necessarily limited by a short time horizon and my tolerance for switching costs should be correspondingly lower, but I still find that a switch is of tools is justified for a pretty small daily productivity gain (even 5 minutes saved per day makes a tool a clear winner).

If Google Reader shut down tomorrow and I had to switch to a different feed reader, would I come out ahead in productivity over the last year or two as compared to the next best solution? I have no doubt in my mind that I would. As such, I have no problem "entrusting" this part of my workflow to the web, as long as the switching costs (X) are less than the productivity gain.

I find that the "web-iness" of a tool doesn't factor much in the estimate of switching costs. The OPML export from Google Reader happens to make the switching cost very low, which makes my decision to use Google Reader very easy.

Original article: http://www.inquisitr.com/15368/so-you-want-to-trust-your-workflow-to-the-web-good-luck-with-than-plan/.