Do you sometimes get tired of digital life?

I adore my fountain pen, so I couldn’t go full-on digital, even if it’s the better choice for most things. There’s something about gold nibs, good ink and fine, textured paper. I think I must have been a scribe in a previous life. :smiley:

2 Likes

Yes. I still maintain some analog in my life.
I have about 8 Fountain Pens
I write some good quotes I find using my pens.
Every year I get one pen from pen shows
I hand scribble notes during meetings.
My watch faces are analog.

At the same time I have a Digital PKM in Obsidian. Roam, Ulysses and some other.

My son stated to use Fountain Pens since 8 years. :grinning:

1 Like

I mostly do not. I carried a paper day planner in my pocket all through high school in the mid-nineties, and was totally lost anytime I (temporarily) misplaced it. My freshman year of college I bought myself a Palm Professional, and it has been all digital ever since (some of my contact entries on my iPhone to this day date from 1998; the legacy of Palm, and later Apple’s, tremendous sync/backup software.) Everything is digital, and accessible everywhere I go.

I keep paper and nice pens around for quick sketches or doodles, but anything important that happens there gets transcribed or photographed into a digital format.

2 Likes

Nope. 40 years ago I had tons of bookcases with books and magazines. That now fits in my iPad. I do use pen and paper for sketching, quick notes, and doodling. My watch uses an analog face but with a bunch of complications.

  1. I can’t write with a pen to save myself! Filling out a form that’s a whole side of A4 is agony by the end.
  2. There’s a bit of a theme here with the ‘intrusiveness’ of tech. The trouble many (most?) of us have is learning to dial it back.

I wear an Apple watch 22x7 (only taking it off to charge) but very few notifications make it there, and of those that do, most are set by me to make sure I don’t miss things - like drinking enough water!

I’ve not yet finely honed my Focus Modes, but very little disturbs me at certain times of day and even during those times a lot more gets through, any app has to earn the right and I will frequently have a moment of “I’ve had enough of these. Goodbye!”

My Mac tells me to stand up every 45 minutes so I do not “lose myself” for too long at the expense of my health.

In the end, I enjoy my tech. It has been my hobby for over 40 years. But I have learned how I can control it so I don’t end up suffering from health issues (learned the hard way).

Then moving further in the positive direction, I don’t think I would get out for my walks nearly as often nor as far if I didn’t have a podcast playing in my ears. And my watch also tells me how hard I should push and how hard I did push.

1 Like

You describe my approach perfectly! I’ll add that though I like the idea of writing nice script using a good fountain pen, it would be a wasted effort. My hand writing is terrible and writing for any length of time is literally a pain. I much prefer typing and using the Apple Pencil for quick scribbling out of “hand written” notes.

1 Like

Thank you so much for such insightful comments.

I guess my main problem is “redundancy”: I keep my office (I’m a psychoanalyst) in Apple Calendar AND paper planner.

I take notes on Apple Notes AND I handwrite because I love fountain pens.

I guess I’m getting old and grumpy, but I thinks so many thing are more difficult nowadays. For example, in the 00’s, when I wanted to watch a soccer game, I just had to sit in front of my TV and put in the sports channel (2-3s). Now, I have to open the terrible TV app, browse the channels and, then, play the internet connection is stable enough to what the same game.

That’s one example, but I guess I have some more…

2 Likes

I have stopped bringing any distracting tech to meetings, and I love the results. I spend most of my day in face-to-face meetings and I don’t miss having a screen and keyboard in front of me.

I do use a Remarkable, but I treat it just like a paper pad (with the advantage that it OCRs all my writing after a meeting and can store PDFs).

The difference has been startling, especially in how much I remember from meetings (much more!) and the fact I never get distracted by email or playing around with settings.

Typing definitely reduced the amount I remembered when taking notes and even the Apple pencil was nothing like a real pencil - I tried using an iPad but I write so much it gave me crippling wrist pain, as well as being full of distractions like the Web.

5 Likes

Reducing digital clutter is a good thing. My iPhone and iPad home screens are nearly identical, in that, I have only the apps to operate my business (plus two widgets) on the home page, and then the remainder of apps are in the App Library. I am driven only by what goals I have, and the apps that are in front of me should complement that. All of the Facebook filler, etc can wait until I feel the need to check in on friends/acquaintances or play a game. I also use a certain paper/pen brand exclusively, and love the feel and quality. My writing has improved in the last 2 years thanks to this.

1 Like

Hard nope. Here’s another digital net positive to add to the list: Tax preparation software. (Hmmm. What might have prompted that thought?) Let’s add the other digital tools that make tax filing orders of magnitude less difficult than it was back in the analog days when we had to do it all by hand (and by hand, I mean writing numbers into a form with a pen after adding up said numbers by hand with a pencil because hand-held calculators were still too expensive), put a form in a big manila envelope with 20 stamps on it, and tote it to a mailbox, or, if you were a procrastinator, race to the Post Office before it closed to get it postmarked on time.

So, in addition to tax preparation software, let’s add filing and paying online, the various forms of digitized documents that aid preparation (scanned receipts, downloadable W-2s, broker 1099s, etc.), searching online for guidance re the rules, downloadable IRS forms and instructions, our digital filing cabinets, and CALCULATORS and SPREADSHEETS.

And that’s just the personal stuff. If you’re running a small business or non-profit the benefits of digital tools to aid in tax preparation and filing are huge.

Did I mention CALCULATORS and SPREADSHEETS? Game changers. My professional life would have been unimaginable without either of them. (I use the same HP-12C I bought in 1986 when I was getting my MBA every single day. You will pry it out of my cold, dead hands.) Again, that’s just on the personal side. Another game changer? Mathematical software like LINDO (It’s an Excel add-in now, but I first used it on a mainframe.)

I would tolerate my devices beeping at me all day every day if it were the only way I could have spreadsheets.

2 Likes

My three 10Ks a week turned into three or four 5 mile walks a long time ago :grinning:

This may be the only way I’m like @MacSparky, :slightly_smiling_face: my digital devices do not distract me. Perhaps because I’m blessed to be able to focus, perhaps because I’ve configured my devices to limit distractions, perhaps because I don’t use social media, perhaps a combination; I’m not sure. But, I’m grateful that I’m able to use the digital tech and remain its master rather than being mastered by it.

This is probably corny but here are two of the slides I use in my graduate course where I deal with technology best practices in the private school. I make a big point of emphasizing that for both instructors and students technology is to serve us, not the other way around.

1 Like

You’re ahead of me, I’ve never done a 10K! :man_running::grinning:

1 Like

I too am a walker, often doing a ‘walk around the block’. Now here in my neck of the woods, and it is woods, if I make four consecutive turns, 8.5 miles later I’ll be back at my driveway. :slight_smile:

I’ve never enjoyed running.

3 Likes

I balance the digital and analogue by putting short-term things on paper and long-term things digitally.

For example, I have a paper planner where I fill in all the appointments I’ve scheduled that week on Monday, so I can see what blocks of time I have free in a way that feels less distracting than Outlook or Fantastical.

I use a paper planner (sometimes a Full Focus Planner, sometimes a Happy Planner, sometimes just a bullet journal) to write out tasks I want to actually do that day instead of looking in Todoist, and I check everything off in Todoist at the end of the day. I also block schedule on paper using a spreadsheet I made and print out on a daily basis (the spreadsheet has a formula to fill in the blocks of time, that way if I show up to work at 7 instead of 8 or 9 instead of 8, it auto-fills the workday based on when I actually got to work).

As I take calls, I write notes on post its - if its kind of important I can just scan the notes in at the end of the day, if its super important I’ll rewrite the notes as a memo (I’m a lawyer). If that call didn’t have any action items, I just toss it.

This way I don’t get distracted by the digital when I’m just trying to jot notes down/manage the workday, but I do put new things immediately into digital so they’re safe, less I forget a doctor’s appointment/deadline.

1 Like

I agree with this. I had stopped taking my computer into meetings, likewise I used a pen and paper and remembered more. I used to have a major IT company as a client, they also recognised this and had what they described as “lid down” meetings.

All changed since zoom/teams and the pandemic.

Nick

1 Like

No.

(:slightly_smiling_face: twenty characters :slightly_smiling_face:)

1 Like

I remember fountain pens, but I switched to ballpoints around the time I ruined a second “good” shirt. I hope they have improved since JFK was elected. :wink:

2 Likes

This is the one area where I am conservative. I have started a modest collection of mechanical watches, both chronographs and divers. Today wearing a vintage Tissot from 1972 with remarkable timekeeping precision.

1 Like

Not really, to be honest. Digital information is searchable which is indispensable. It is also easy to reorganize, so that my data collection evolves along how my brain and methods of doing things evolve. And, it is faster to capture than writing. The only benefit I’ve found to pen and paper is that the extra mental processing required for it helps retain information better. But, I have been able to replicate this benefit in its entirety within my digital notes by training myself to phrase whatever I’m typing in my own words rather than copying or transcribing mindlessly.