With a lot of our relationships with technology becoming a lot more tenuous how do you balance Analog vs. Digital in your life? Both in terms of productivity (Bullet journaling, Notebooks etc…) and for fun. What is that line for you?
Recently I have gotten into bullet journaling and the habit is starting to stick. For fun I have a Polaroid camera, collect vinyl records, and I love traditional analog watches. I am working on getting the computers I carry with me down to a MacBook Pro so that I can be more present for the “Analog” moments in life.
I’ve led a binary life straddling digital and analog since my older brother brought home TRS 80s and Apple IIs from work. My academic specialty, studying Medieval literature, requires that I read and replicate Medieval handwriting. I have worked in software production and mostly Apple technology since the 1980s. I write technical documentation for a living now. I draft in long hand. I take notes and transcribe and write translations with pencils and fountain pens, though many notes end up in HTML. I annotate printed books. I write letters and postcards. I still play phonograph records and use a film camera.
I’ve been slowly going to analog planners. I currently have a RoteRunner planner, which is more than just a planner. It covers a lot of areas. I also use paper flashcard to study and have been taking notes via a paper notebook. There is always a new course or class I have to take, along with staying up to date on what I need to know everyday, for my job and I’ve come to realize I take better notes with paper and pencil.
And yes, I did buy the fancy Blackwing pencils David talked about in a previous episode.
As for media, I am also buying vinyl records and buy blu-rays with digital codes from time to time. Knowing that streaming and digital rights can be taken away at any time, I like the idea of actually owning my media.
I am trying to get off my devices as much as possible.
With Blu-Rays that is one area I went full digital since a Blu-Ray is a digital file in a less convenient package. But I concede the point about actual ownership. My rule tends to be “does this “analog”thing give me a unique analog experience?” Books and vinyl do, movies less so.
I grew up analog and was an adult when I used my first “personal computer”. So I’ve always “mixed and matched” analog and digital. For example, if I’m using a physical keyboard I usually type my notes, otherwise I take notes on paper. Either way they end up as a digital file.
I retired all my digital media players and stream everything. But I’ve kept several of my surviving vinyl albums, the oldest of which turned 60 in January. I haven’t played any of them in decades, they are just memories to look at now.
And I’ve recently quit wearing watches but on special occasions I still wear my father’s self-winding analog.
My wife is staunchly analogue. Insists on writing stuff in various places as it’s “easy”. Also insists it is not important when she cannot find something she wrote.
Me, I’m digital all the way. I do still own a large CD collection and for those “must have” new releases from my most favourite artists I will buy new ones, but otherwise my life is solidly digital.
It’s interesting that a CD is being considered analogue in a sense. I guess there are different levels beyond simply analogue and digital.
Object — it is what it is, e.g. a model or sculpture.
Analogue — no bits involved, e.g. an LP, but has digital equivalents.
Physical digital — bits, but on something physical like a CD or Blu-ray.
Logical digital — bits, ephemerally stored on some kind of rewritable storage.
There are also digital processes which can span from “highly automated” to “craft level”. My photography is digital, but craft level, whereas most people are in the highly automated camp for that.
I love fountain pens, both writing with them and as beautiful objects, but I type faster than I can write with a pen or pencil, especially if I need it to be halfway legible later, even to me. And I struggle to manage, organize, and store paper. Paper is also easy to misplace and hard to back up.
Given a choice, I’d rather read paper books and magazines than the digital versions, but often end up reading on my phone when I have random bits of time.
I also love analog watches, but my Apple watch is so useful I almost always end up wearing it. I could wear both at the same time like some people, but never seem to bother.
I’ve pretty much accepted the tradeoffs of digital and streaming music, movies, etc. and welcomed their advantages. To me the most meaningful devision is between recorded and live music, rather than different recording technologies.
I’ve been slowly converted over to notebooks for work notes and tasks. I follow a pretty loose Bullet Journal plus I’ll occasionally time block in it (this has not happened lately). I actually just finished filling a notebook for the first time ever which I’m pretty proud of(it was the official Bullet Journal by Leuchterrm 1917).
I have a lot of physical books even though I’m a Kindle reader primarily. I’m excited for the hardcover of Wind and Truth by Brandon Sanderson this winter, he’s one of my few buy physical authors.
For fun, everything physical you’d expect in a lively all-ages household. Plus, some that integrate tech unobtrusively (software in 3D printers, model train controllers, digital pianos etc.)
For family organization, laminated checklists and a big chalkboard stand out.
Digital is for things I need to search, like my work diary and saved technical information (Bear) and todo list (Apple Reminders) It’s also easier to keep digital for personal information, saved webpages and quotes lists, especially when you want to copy and paste it. Locking notes digitally is much more efficient than having a locked diary.
Upon reflection, I could keep my personal information which does not change too much as analog.
Analog is for the ephemeral stuff: when the appointment is, when I started a job, how long it took. I don’t usually need to refer back to that kind of information. It’s also much faster to write it down in a traveler‘s notebook than to put it into a digital calendar. I have so many jobs each week and I usually keep my books for many years. I probably would overwhelm a digital calendar.
I’ve been reading “the notebook: A history of thinking on paper” by Roland Allen and he talks a lot about waste books where you write down rough drafts and raw information and then at the end of the day rewrite it into a more formal commonplace book or daily journal. I would have to have many of those notebooks for all of the quotes that I’ve collected over the years; one notebook per subject.
The only time I use pen and paper is when I’m developing a coding algorithm (I prefer to write out pseudocode as then I’m reasoning about it as I write it out). Anything else I create is digital and goes into DevonThink so I can index and search it.
Not a single tape, disc, record or even CD in the house! The most analogue thing I have is my Denon A/V receiver, but that now uses Atmos codecs so you can barely call it analogue.
But when sketching passengers in Tube I use Freeform on iPhone because he or she can leave in seconds, so that I need to be ready in a second, although fingers are not as good as Apple Pencil.
99% of time I write digitally including journals. There is also a rare time I write in a small notebook (something related to mental wellbeing) that I never show to others, and I don’t scan them.
At work I use a modified bullet journal method in a Leuchtturm notebook. I experimented with the ring systems but kept coming back to a more solid notebook. And because of that I have work notebooks going back probably a decade or more. These notebooks have mundane things in them, of course, but also notes from meetings I was in between some important folks including some US Senators no longer alive…pretty neat to be able to look back on that.
While I’m behind, I do try to keep these notebooks scanned, as well…just in case there is some kind of physical disaster. Also, as OCR gets better it’s nice having my notes searchable.
I would like to get back into making these notebooks kind of a mix between work and personal, but just haven’t gotten there yet.
As in looking at our tech and taking seriously some of the ill effects like smart phone addictions. Which is one of the reasons why someone might take on analog practices to begin with.
Apps like Obsidian, NotePlan (my favorite), or Agenda allow me to do my version of a Bullet Journal with the tools and capabilities I always wanted back when I was writing on paper.
thinking of doing a perpetual notebook for more permanent information, but the allure of digital is “it’s so easy to re-order the information on a page”.
Almost completely digital now. No attempt to balance! I went from a DayTimer™ to a PalmPilot in the mid 90’s when it first came out. My last physical notebooks went away when I got Circus Ponies Notebook on the Mac and OneNote on Windows. Tablets have shrunk into sticky note cubes. I still use the nice Zebra pen I got for my DayTimer (they don’t make nice pens anymore) to write on the sticky notes.
My handwriting has always been terrible, so being digital is a big relief.
I’m more inclined to make a distinction between “IRL” and “virtual” than “analog” and “digital.” Looking at a painting on a museum or gallery wall is, for me, almost always a richer experience than looking at a copy in a book (analog) on a website (digital). Both the analog and digital versions are virtual as far as I’m concerned, and the analog version isn’t necessarily better. Similarly, listening to acoustic music in a concert hall or someone’s living room will almost always be richer experience than a recording, whether it’s on vinyl, a CD, or bits in a stream—often even if the IRL performance isn’t exactly tip-top. I’m happy enough with bits in a stream, my audiophile spouse prefers vinyl, but we both prefer live music, given world enough and time.
There are some tricky cases: I prefer seeing a play in a theater to watching a filmed version on a screen, but what about a blockbuster movie that’s intended to be an eye-and-earful? Is watching it in a movie theater with a crowd (IRL in its way) preferable to watching it on a TV in your living room?
How about photographs? A thoughtfully composed, artfully processed, and carefully printed photograph hanging on a wall in a gallery or held in your hand is something special. So is a fine art photographer’s carefully sequenced, printed, and bound photobook. So is a lovingly compiled family photo album or scrapbook. But a snapshot of your lunch or a colleague’s birthday get-together after work? My phone is absolutely the place to look at it.
When it comes to knowledge work, task management, or reading any kind of text, even for enjoyment—I’m digital all the way. (I want to weep every time I remember trying—and failing—to write a dissertation with only notecards at my disposal, or trying to get my hands on an important journal article that someone else had sequestered in their library carrel. Or, in my subsequent corporate career, trying to get things done via telex, snail mail, hard-copy memos circulating via buck slips, and an HP 12-C calculator supplemented with thirteen-column accounting paper.) I do still take meeting and lecture notes by hand, but mostly out of habit than any conviction that it’s better.
Always analog: thank-you notes, and notes of gratitude or condolence.
Plus, some that integrate tech unobtrusively (software in 3D printers, model train controllers, digital pianos etc.)