Over the last couple of years I’ve been extremely rude to friends like Jeremy Wagstaff and Marc Orchant (to name only two) who have told me how they had partially abandoned technology in their search for productivity and had regressed back to using a pen and paper. Not just ANY paper mind you. The infamous Moleskine. In certain geek circles, using a Moleskine is almost as de rigeur as having a Mac notebook. Secretly I’ve always wanted to join their ranks (on both counts, but for now we’ll discuss the moleskine) but I bravely fought the urge because I wanted to force myself to develop a strategy for using technology that worked.
Well, as listeners of The Productivity Show already know, I finally broke last week and have abandoned technology as my primary productivity tool/s in favour of a Moleskine. The one I’m using is a large lined notebook. And okay, there is something strangely primitive-yet-seductive about writing, with a real pen, on real paper. You got me. It’s just like a Tablet PC but strangely different. It doesn’t take ten minutes to boot. I don’t need to calibrate the book each time I use it. The battery life is pretty good, the fan is quiet, and it doesn’t get too hot on my lap. It doesn’t make any loud booting up noise when I open it in a café. The screen resolution is pretty good in sunlight. And I don’t need to synch it between multiple PCs and PDAs. I won’t get separate out of date versions of my task list appearing in multiple folders scattered across my PC.
Of course if I lose it, I’m screwed. Which is why I moved away from my Franklin planner eight years ago. It got stolen out of my car and I lost ten years of important shit. After eight years of using PDAs, I’ve decided – ENOUGH!
Now I’m becoming addicted to reading blogs with Moleskine hacks. And all of those annoying pens which people have given me as gifts over the last ten years when I speak at conferences, I can now finally put to good use. I apologize to all of you for being rude as well.
Now, I need a Moleskine system. That’s part of the seductiveness of the book I think. You can create your own mods without learning AJAX. I need a system that will allow me to capture and process. Is there a Moleskine hack which stops you from reading blogs about Moleskine hacks and makes you get back to work?