Notes & Writing

Back in my temping days, I wasn’t what you’d call organized. I may have been in the top tier of the temp-pool, but my assignments rarely required exceptional organizational skills. I was a geek, typed fast, and did my my job. That was enough. Sure, I was good.

But, I keep this in perspective. Kelly Services was generally content when workers showed up on time, sober, and wearing pants. The bar was set pretty low.

Well, this job requires organizational skills at a magnitude I never would have predicted. In the beginning, I didn’t have them. I was years into my job and nearly halfway into my thirties before I finally figured it out.

Focused on Words

Do this: Think of some important thing. It’s happening next week. It’s a thing you need to write down. In any complex job, there are hundreds of things like that. Sometimes, long-form writing or editing is the important thing. It all amounts to a few words you need to capture.

All our whiz-bang technologies can help. Smartphones take dictation, allow you to manage calendars, keep up on email, and blah, and blah, and blah. But, unless you have an expensive smartphone (likely built by Apple), expect delays, crashes, and general frustration. Notebook PC’s are great, too. But, even with an SSHD, they’re slow to start and besides, now you have to deal with an Operating System. I hate those things. 

I have to get my thoughts down, like, now. I don’t have time for booting things, and…what the hell is this dialog box? No, I didn’t want that.

I would prefer to write with a stick on wet beach-sand before using my netbook or android to take down notes. I don’t have much time. Too much can go wrong. All I have to worry about, with the former, is the rising tide.

But, the main reason to avoid my smartphone and netbook is that they provide instantly accessible distractions. Games. Internet. Mucking around with an interface. There’s too much to do other than write.

Capture and File

Assuming I don’t want to live only with a yellow tablet and a pen, I ask three questions when considering any new tech:

1. How easily can I capture my thoughts?
2. How simply can I file them?
3. How basic is the tool?

For a while, nothing passed the test. My Moleskine and favorite pencil were just fine. However, two technologies insinuated them into my life that I can no longer do without.

Livescribe Smartpen

The Livescribe Echo and some accessories. Very quickly, it's become a fixture of my professional life.

In the brief time I’ve owned my Livescribe Echo smartpen, it has become an invaluable tool. Why? Because now I can take notes, capture audio, and everything’s synchronized. Those notes can be digitally saved, and I can even create a PDF that embeds everything inside. It’s a little hard to fully appreciate without seeing it in action, but check out this video.

If you attend meetings, I can’t stress just how powerful this tool is. You never need to bring a laptop again. Just write down the keywords, capture everything, and then produce notes after the fact. There’s no racing to keep up with things because it’s all recorded.

Sure, you say, it can do all that. But, there’s got to be a lot of work on the backend to make it look as easy as in that video. Nope. At least, not yet. I’ve encountered no problems extracting data from the smartpen. I can even cut the audio (it’s in simple MP4 format) if that’s my desire. It’s stupidly easy to select the pages I want, and then save it as a PDF. It integrates with Google Docs and Evernote, too. The key here is that you don’t get caught up in snags after using it.

Alphasmart Neo

The future as I never imagined: A glorified typewriter that runs on AAA batteries, and it ROCKS.

I used to type on my netbook when out and about, but then I started to feel like a sucker. Remember all that talk of mine about distractions? Oh neat! I can get on the internet! I should check my email. Now Facebook. Ooooh, it’s Windows. I wonder if I can get DOSbox to work…

To hell with that. The Alphasmart Neo can’t do that. It has no 3G. It has noWiFi. It has no games. It has only a lone USB jack and an infrared comm port (that I’ve never used). All you get are a few lines of LCD text to view. You can’t bold. You can’t italicize. Shit, man, all you can do is write.

The keyboard is almost full-sized and has a pleasing tactile response. It runs on AAA batteries that last longer than your Kindle. If you need to write something…say, after taking all those cool notes, there’s no better option. Other Alphasmart models let you do more, but avoid them. The point is to finish that paper, not play solitare.

Screw Convergence

Convergence is the word everyone talks about. A little thing that goes in your pocket, that does everything? Meh. What gets me excited are dedicated tools with a single purpose, executed beautifully.

When the objective is to remain on task, the last thing you need is a piece of technology that does everything. It’s a bug, not a feature.