Tools

NYT on a Paperless World

wood.tang — Sun, 10 Feb 2008 15:44:16 -0500

Pushing Paper Out the Door - New York Times

Is it just me, or is the Times tossing softballs for organizational nerds on purpose? Today's story on the ways people are purging paper from their lives gives lots of ink (digital, of course) to our friend, the Fujitsu ScanSnap, and comes with the kind of grand statements that no trend piece should be without:

[M]any families may be closer to entering a paperless world than they realize. Paper-reducing technologies have crept into homes and offices, perhaps more for efficiency than for environmentalism; few people will dispute the convenience of online bill-paying and airline e-tickets.

Not that I disagree. I like the way Brewster Kahle, who knows a thing or two about digital archiving, puts it: "Paper is no longer the master copy; the digital version is." That isn't too far removed from what Merlin wrote back in October:

When we rely on a paper document as the final, unique destination for information, we create physical and cognitive limitations that seem crazy once you’ve spent a chunk of your life living on Google. No one disputes that.

Those statements by themselves may make some of you index card shufflers sweaty, but the value that all of us have found in paper isn't as the permanent storage medium to which the Times is delivering last rites; rather, it's in that Platonic scratchpad we all need sometimes to shake out a good idea. As Merlin said, "As an intermediary medium between thinking and a final draft, I still just love what you can do with a stack of index cards and a little spare time." Even when used as part of a trusted system, paper works best when its data storage duties have a limited life span.

”NYT on a Paperless World” was written by Matt Wood for 43Folders.com and was originally posted on February 10, 2008. Except as noted, it's ©2010 Merlin Mann and licensed for reuse under CC BY-NC-ND 3.0. "Why a footer?"

Palimpsest: the guide to a (mostly) paperless life

norbauer — Tue, 06 Nov 2007 05:43:11 -0500

It seems that many of us otherwise computer-oriented geeks have a surprising and earth-unfriendly confession to make: we love paper. Notwithstanding the entirely digital nature of my own trade, for example, I'll freely admit that there is really nothing quite like the smooth glide of a mechanical pencil over a big sheet of crisp, white office paper to facilitate good writing and thinking.

I can't plan out a new piece of software—or write an essay for that matter—without first messily scribbling my ideas out as mind-maps or rough user-interface sketches onto paper. My brainstorms are too messy and flow too quickly for the computer to be able to accommodate my chaos, yet that early disorder is essential to crafting the order and structure that will follow.

And yet I used to have serious reservations about this tendency to spoodge my thought process onto tree carcasses. It wasn't until I finally learned how to get rid of paper, that I was able properly to embrace its use in my work.

You see, paper has a number of problems in addition to its environmental implications, not least of which that it tends to hang around and pile up well past its period of usefulness, cluttering offices and making one look embarrassingly Victorian in one's mastery of information technology. Paper also lacks a number of the affordances of its digital counterparts: pen and paper don't offer very good full-text search, for one thing—and the spell check is even worse. But as a medium for encouraging unbounded creative thinking and planning, nothing quite beats a hunk of the old papyrus. As Merlin and Danny O'Brien aptly put it, paper is "the purest and most durable instance of the WYSIWYG interface."

"When working with paper no longer represents a path to messy clutter, one is less likely to avoid using that medium for tasks where it is truly the superior tool."

The trouble seems to be with the shallow-minded Manichean view of paper-vs-paperlessness. Many of us 43folk like to have an omnibus "system" for our work, so we tend to find ourselves in the midst of an awkwardly ambiguous relationship with paper. We seem to want either to turn away from it entirely or to run our lives exclusively out of a Moleskine notebook. However, rather than burning all our old books and "going digital," or insisting on writing our next article solely with quill and parchment, perhaps a slightly more nuanced approach is in order.

For my part, I have recently arrived at a happy hybrid workflow that exploits the best of each medium, thanks primarily to an amazing little Japanese scanner and Amazon's new data backup service. In the process, I have found that through embracing paperlessness in the way my documents are stored, I have freed myself for a more creative and enthusiastic relationship with paper in my actual daily work. When working with paper no longer represents a path to messy clutter, one is less likely to avoid using that medium for tasks where it is truly the superior tool.

The tools of paperlessness

As many before me have pointed out, the key is to recognize that paper is all about process, whereas digital media are all about information and retrieval. One mustn't be afraid to whip out a scrap of paper when it's time to scribble impromptu notes, mark a manuscript for edits, or do some visual thinking. Equally, one must not hesitate to scan or transcribe and then throw away a piece of paper that has value only in the potential future usefulness of the information it represents, once the drafting and scribbling are done. Embracing paperless reference filing is not the same thing as rejecting paper's important role in your work.

Part of my longstanding vacillation on the question of whether or not to go "paperless" with my reference filing system was that, until quite recently, there were no scanners that made this digitization process easy, or delivered a final digital document that was worth the trouble. Flatbed scanners are impossibly clumsy and slow, such that what I always end up with is not a clean workflow for nicely scanned documents, but rather a large pile of papers on top of my scanner so that I can "do them all at once" at some future moment that will never arrive. Just as much, the post-scanning process has been a pain with all of the scanners I've owned in the past. Most scanner software either rams your document through OCR and spits out an RTF with almost all the formatting and images gone, or it requires you manually to open a separate piece of software to convert the image to something useful. Then there is the issue of what to do with the physical document once you've scanned it. I've never previously trusted my backup system well enough to shred my precious documents and trust in the permanence of their digital copies.

But a confluence of a few wonderful tools has recently turned me into to an evangelist for paperless reference filing. The workflow is sufficiently slick that bumph doesn't stack up "waiting to be scanned," the final product is a PDF document with all formatting and images intact but searchable as text (including via Spotlight on OS X), and it all gets automatically backed-up to a geographically-distributed multiply-redundant remote backup store so that if both my computer and one of the data centers where my backups are stored both simultaneously exploded, I could still hop on the internet anywhere and access my files more or less instantly.

The Fujitsu ScanSnap

The first and perhaps most important aspect of my paperless workflow is my trusty Fujitsu ScanSnap. I have been using my S500M (that's the Mac version) for a few months now and have praised it in the past. I also just recently got a demo model (full disclosure here) from Fujitsu of the rockin' awesome S510M [Amazon, Info.] I never thought I could get excited about something so traditionally mundane as scanner before, but I really, really love this device. In fact, the ScanSnap is probably my favorite piece of consumer electronics not made by Apple. (Check out the video.)

Firstly, they make a special version just for Mac users (yeah, they have a Windows one too,) which is specially designed in sleek white with a tiny footprint. When folded up, the thing is about 11" x 5" x 6". It also integrates nicely into OS X—and from my past couple days of testing, it works as smoothly on Leopard as it did on Tiger.

Here's the premise: the SnanSnap is the first consumer scanner (that I've used anyway) to truly be about information storage. It's not for ultra high-resolution photo scanning; it's all about documents and speed. Firstly, you initiate scans by piling your documents into the stacker and simply pressing the one big button on the face of the device. It then rapidly (and I mean damn fast) gobbles up your papers and spits them out at the bottom. Fujitsu says up to 36 pages/minute in duplex mode, and that sounds about right. The resulting digital document gets dumped right onto your hard drive in searchable PDF format, which every OS seems to understand natively these days. It automatically corrects for mis-aligned papers, auto-detects whether the document is color or monochrome, scans in duplex if it detects a back side to the page being scanned, and detects the size of the paper being scanned and intelligently crops the digital version to the right size. You can mix and match document types liberally and it stitches them all together into one PDF with each page automatically adjusted to its own parameters. I love that there is just one operative button: you just tell it to go to town, and it gets out of your way and makes smart guesses based on what you give it.

My only complaint is that, after a few months of operation, my S500M would occasionally start grabbing two pages together when it should be only grabbing one at a time. But this was only for documents that had previously been folded or stapled together. The new S510M doesn't seem to be doing that, which could mean that they've either improved the mechanism or I just haven't given it time to start having this problem.

Unlike some folks, I'm not especially keen on the concept of keeping multiple DevonThink databases or storing my precious papers in their wonky proprietary format, so I take a cue from Ethan Schoonover and just have the ScanSnap drop my scanned documents into an "inbox" folder on my desktop, which I process every day or so. In this way, the ScanSnap is just like any other GTD inbox for me. Rather than piling stuff up in my physical inbox, if something is scannable and is valuable to me only for its information, I remove any staples and wham it through the ScanSnap and then either act on or file each document as I in-process my digital inbox. For filing, I use a simple old A-Z filing folder in my home directory, which I call "Archive." If a document relates to correspondence, I take David's advice and upload it to the associated contact in my Highrise account.

The originals get recycled (or shredded and then recycled,) so I get to feel better about the environmental impact of the paper that churns through my life. Rather than sitting around in my filing cabinet never being looked at, the paper goes immediately off to another better use.

Nota bene: A lot of people have been linking to the S500M lately, but be aware that one-button searchable PDF creation only comes with the S510M. The S500M can make searchable PDFs, but you have to do several manual steps to run the OCR on them, which kind of obviates the whole point of the otherwise speedy ScanSnap workflow. The S510M also comes with a carrier sheet for irregularly shaped or crinkled papers like old receipts. So if you're going to be buying a ScanSnap I highly recommend opting for the newer model, which is more or less the same price as the older one.

The industrial-grade paper cutter

As if my gay credentials weren't fully established, I have to confess to an extreme affinity for Martha Stewart Living magazine. But perhaps more embarrassing is that I have about 100 back issues piled up in my library. They arrive in my mailbox; I flip through them; and then they go straight onto the shelf. I've always had this nagging feeling that I should really go through those things and get some informational value from the content. But, as readers of any instructional magazine know, it's really annoying to sift through an ad-stuffed rag just to find the three or four pages of interesting, actionable information in a periodical that you browsed a few months ago. So there they sit. They're full of recipes that I'd love to use but could never possibly find if I ever wanted to get to a particular one of them. They weigh a ton, and yet I've schlepped them between five houses in the past few years holding to this ridiculous notion that they'll come in handy "someday." (As you may have noticed, the purely notional "someday" plays a big role in my life.)

So I decided for an extremist approach to my magazine problem. I figured since I had this awesome scanner that I have been using to digitize my paper filing system, it might be worth experimenting with attacking these old magazines too. The potential payoff was great: I would both eliminate many pounds of paper that have been hanging around in my life, and I would actually start to make use of the information in these magazines that I've been collecting for so long. So I decided to spring for a super-fancy, and fairly intimidating, paper cutter, the "Come 2700" (I shit thee not.) This contraption will literally and effortlessly slice the spine off a phonebook (I tried it!) So it certainly has no trouble cleanly removing the spines from my old magazines.

With the spines removed, I sit down and leaf through the pages in my spare time. I find the three or four pages that either inspire me to actually undertake a project, or that I want to keep for reference. I run these through the ScanSnap, file them as searchable PDFs in my digital reference filing system, and then recycle every page from the magazine. Not only am I far more likely to use this information than I ever was, but I can actually search the information without having to remember what appeared in which issue. It is, as it were, a good thing.

This also works really well for all the sorta-kinda-maybe-someday-useful appliance and electronics manuals that hog space in physical filing systems. Just hack the binding off, scan, and jettison.

Just mind your fingers.

Amazon S3 + JungleDisk

Now that you have all these sublimely useful digital documents, you need to feel comfortable recycling the paper originals or you're only getting half the benefit of this whole paperlessness thing. It wasn't until S3 backup came along that I really felt OK with the idea, and to be honest, without those backups I'd would have been very uncomfortable letting go of as much paper as I have.

I use JungleDisk to automatically back up my "inbox" and "Archive" folders to S3 each night (not to mention iTunes and iPhoto.) Now it actually seems more dangerous to keep a single physical copy of a document than to have digital copies on my hard drive and redundantly backed up to S3. You can read here all about the baroque lengths Amazon goes to in order to safeguard your data on S3.

Oh, and it's really cheap.

ScanCafe

As I mentioned previously, I've also ditched all of my paper photographs by commissioning ScanCafe to cheaply digitize the negatives. I figured since I keep all of my new digital-camera pictures in iPhoto, I might as well have everything in there (with the appropriate backups in place, of course.) Photographs may seem like they have physical emotional value, but unless we're talking daguerreotypes or something, pictures are really just a way of recording visual information. So there is no reason why not to store them digitally. This is particularly the case of you use Leopard's built-in iPhoto library panning screen saver, because it means you'll be far more likely to actually look at the photos than if they were sitting in some shoebox.

Leopard (QuickLook and Preview)

The crema on this particular paperless espresso is how easily Mac OS X Leopard makes it to zip around, search through, and rejigger PDFs. Before Leopard, my biggest complaint about ScanSnap-generated documents was that if I wanted to rearrange or delete pages in a PDF I had to open Adobe's god-awful and painfully-slow Acrobat Professional 8.0 software, which I was actually dumb enough to buy a few months ago. If you've ever used Preview on a Mac, you know how snappy it is to navigate around PDFs. Acrobat is just the opposite, because it ponderously reloads the thumbnail cache every time you scroll around a document. Now in Leopard, Preview includes the ability to delete and rearrange PDF pages, and it's just as speedy as ever. Goodbye Acrobat!

Armed with these tools, I think you'll find, as I have, that paper is nothing to be reticent about. Use it when you need it to be creative or to collaborate, but then just don't keep it around. Scan in those mind-maps, or transcribe their information into a more useful format. Then throw them away (preferably into the recycling bin.) If you have neglected documents that have been lying around forever, figure out how to extract the useful, actionable information from them and then get rid of them too. Not only will you be unburdened of their physical presence, but you'll find that you're actually in a far better position to use the information those documents contain.

”Palimpsest: the guide to a (mostly) paperless life” was written by Ryan Norbauer for 43Folders.com and was originally posted on November 06, 2007. Except as noted, it's ©2010 Merlin Mann and licensed for reuse under CC BY-NC-ND 3.0. "Why a footer?"

An Ass Pocket of iCal

wood.tang — Thu, 01 Nov 2007 18:56:51 -0400

A few posts back, I professed my love for paper. That affection runs deep already, but I stumbled onto a trick this week that makes me lust after the power of a sheet of 8.5" x 11" even more.

As I'm wont to do, I returned to the Lucky Charms, marshmallowy goodness of iCal recently to organize my stuff. I know it isn't perfect, but it's my comfort zone, and after flogging myself publicly over my tendency to switch systems, I decided to stick with the ol' July 17 icon for better or for worse.

In my paper post, I mentioned that I like to jot down a few tasks at the beginning of each day, to focus my energy. It's not GTD orthodoxy, but with a job like mine, I have to make a plan of attack or else it will be lost in a pile of board books and Legos. Normally this does the trick, but on days when I have lots of reminders, or appointments with accompanying notes, it can be tedious copying this all down. So one day this week, when I was in a hurry out the door, I decided to print out an agenda from iCal.

Maybe I'm a dope for never experimenting with this, but have you seen what you can do with iCal's print dialog? Merlin has written about this before, but the ability to pick and choose which calendars to print, restricting the view to a day, a week, a month, or my favorite, a simple list, just made me reaffirm my vows with iCal. Here's what I do (in Tiger, mind you, so Leopard early-adopters may have to adjust accordingly ... I'm upgrading this weekend, promise):

I keep my Next Actions/To-Do's in separate calendars, and set tickler reminders as all-day events in the calendar. Each morning, I set a due date of that day for the items I'd theoretically like to tackle by EOB, and sort my calendars by due date so they float to the top of the list.
Next, I pop open the print dialog ("File > Print" or "Cmd-P"). I select "List" from the "View:" dropdown, then make sure all the right calendars/contexts are selected. I also check every other option except "Black and White", because I'm accustomed to the various colors I assigned to my calendars as visual reminders (if this doesn't matter to you, check that box and save yourself some ink).
Finally, I fold it up in quarters and put it in my back pocket. Throughout the day I can cross things off and use the white space as an inbox. Then, at the end of the day, I reconcile everything with the mothership. On days when I'm going to the gym, I even print my workout routine checklist on the backside to really feel the burn.

Maybe this isn't rocket science, and iPhone and mobile sync bandits may scoff at the manual approach. Personally, I hate printers too, but this little trick has given my sad little Canon i960 new life.

”An Ass Pocket of iCal” was written by Matt Wood for 43Folders.com and was originally posted on November 01, 2007. Except as noted, it's ©2010 Merlin Mann and licensed for reuse under CC BY-NC-ND 3.0. "Why a footer?"

TaskPaper 1.0 adds new features (and "fiddling" isn't one of them)

Merlin — Wed, 24 Oct 2007 13:49:12 -0400

Hog Bay Software's TaskPaper was recently released in a completed 1.0 version (previously), and if you're the sort of person who casts about for a simple way to manage projects and tasks from a Mac, this just may be your app.

But, even more significantly, if you're not looking for a simple action management system -- if you're that particularly pathetic sort of character who's convinced that features like tagging, syncing, collaboration, graph paper generation, and the introduction of an onboard artisanal breadmaker are all that stands between you and getting your stuff done -- well, you may need TaskPaper more than anybody. Because, friends, TaskPaper is just about fiddle-proof, and, frankly, I know a lot of people who could benefit from that today.

Here's what a simple document looks like in TaskPaper:

There's your projects, there's your tasks, there's your contexts, and there's your ability to see what you've ticked off. THAT, as John Hodgman might say, IS ALL.

So, first off and best off, TaskPaper is just text. Although documents created with TaskPaper will have the ".taskpaper" suffix, you'll find that you can open and edit the file with TextEdit, TextMate, or any other garden variety text app. Here's what my test document looks like when opened in TextMate:

I like the clarity and simplicity of the document's formatting, and how it virtually negates the ability to fiddle. Actually, on first glance, the magic of TaskPaper may look familiar to people who have used syntaxes like Chairman Gruber's peerless Markdown. I mean it really is just endlessly portable and mungeable text; it's TaskPaper's li'l engine that turns that formatting into the hooks that let you "do stuff" like view by context or project, and so on. This latest cut adds tabs for doing this neato functional stuff, and I have to say it's really appealing. The approach is similar to OmniFocus -- but even more obsessively concerned with keeping the system focused solely on completing tasks (rather than grooming and feeding them for months while they grow long hair and learn how to drive a stick).

Yes: absolutely -- TaskPaper will be way too simple for a lot of people's needs (including mine). But, if you're so overwhelmed with "flexibility" that you're getting close to throwing in the towel on an electronic system and are considering going back to paper, (while I'd never be one to stand in your way) you might want to give TaskPaper a whirl. If you love text and could benefit from the portability of a simple electronic document, it's definitely worth looking at.

TaskPaper is free to try, and it'll only set you back $18.95 if you decide to buy a copy. Download 'er now.

”TaskPaper 1.0 adds new features (and "fiddling" isn't one of them)” was written by Merlin Mann for 43Folders.com and was originally posted on October 24, 2007. Except as noted, it's ©2010 Merlin Mann and licensed for reuse under CC BY-NC-ND 3.0. "Why a footer?"

The Backs of Envelopes are Blank for a Reason

wood.tang — Tue, 23 Oct 2007 22:15:59 -0400

I wanted to piggyback off Merlin's post about paper yesterday because, A) I thought it was spot-on, and B) he scooped about 90% of what I wanted to write today. Nonetheless, he nailed something that sent me into a tizzy of note scribbling and bedtime brainstorming, about paper's sweet spot:

Still, for thinking, capture, and live collaboration, paper is one of the best friends you’ll ever have. And as long as we use it properly, it’s going to continue to enhance the creation of all downstream media.

This struck such a nerve because lately, I've become increasingly aware of how paper plays that role in my work. Like I said before, I'm the last person you should be listening to for advice on personal systems, but no matter what shape or form of digital doodads I'm using to hold my stuff, I always have some paper handy when I really want to get busy. Lately, it's been a Moleskine notebook, but it could be index cards, Post-It notes, or some good old fashioned college-ruled; it doesn't matter. My best work always comes out of sitting in front of the word processor with a pen and paper right next to me, ready for brainstorming, ad hoc project planning, and straight-up doodling. Sit down at Grandpa Wood-Tang's knee and let me tell you a story. Back when I had a real job, I worked on a project where I got to visit a number of clients overseas. Before I left on my first trip, my manager handed me a Boorum & Pease notebook with a Gordon Gekko-tastic, faux-cordovan binding and said, "Here, I don't want you looking like an asshole carrying some cheap legal pad around the world." I carried that notebook for the entire project to six different countries, and I still have it today. I can leaf through it now and recall specific meetings, conversations, and arcane details about the project that never would have stuck in my brain had I taken all those notes in some neutered software outliner or mind mapper.

The reasons that notebook feels like an old friend are probably familiar to long-time 43 Folders readers: the tactile experience, the creative, actively engaged act of taking notes by hand. But it's become the psychological artifact that it is because it captured my mind as it was working when I used it, not hours later when I copied my thoughts into a status memo, or even seconds later as I tried to translate brainwaves into keystrokes. The underlines, the bolded, twice-drawn letters, the double-back arrows and squished-in elaborations are still there, documenting my thought process in all its flawed, hungover 24-year-old consultant glory, with no tags, metadata, or other digital nonsense weighing it down. I turned in some of the best work of my career on that project, because I was able to work off my slick little notebook and its recurring backups of my brain.

All that information eventually made its way into permanent, digital storage in the form of the various design documents I produced, but they would have been useless boilerplate without that notebook. I'm as computer-centric as they come. I shunt every communication I can through the internet tubes and save every piece of digital flotsam and jetsam that floats my way on my hard drive. But I'm never without a piece of paper like that notebook to use as a mental scratch disk.

At the risk of sounding like some dreamy New Ager, my point in spinning that yarn is that sometimes we just need to let it go, man, and let our brains do what they will. Paper is the perfect place to do that, and if you're really rolling, for Pete's sake, don't stop to inbox-it, process-it, tag-it, and contextualize-it into some whizbang piece of software (or some formal paper system, for that matter). Save that shit for later, when the dust has settled, the bandits have fled, and you see how many horses are left to feed.

”The Backs of Envelopes are Blank for a Reason” was written by Matt Wood for 43Folders.com and was originally posted on October 23, 2007. Except as noted, it's ©2010 Merlin Mann and licensed for reuse under CC BY-NC-ND 3.0. "Why a footer?"

Making friends with paper (again)

Merlin — Mon, 22 Oct 2007 10:03:07 -0400

Information R/evolution

I really enjoyed this video presentation by Michael Wesch on how we make, find, and share information in a world where we've shed the idea of paper as our sole medium for storage and communication -- where ideas can munge and mix freely, thanks to digital collaboration.

Gorgeous.

Now, of course, as a fan of paper for certain kinds of work, I always feel like jumping in at this point to defend our pulpy little friend from what sometimes turns into a blanket party.

See, the key is to use paper for what it's great at and to avoid relying on it for what it famously sucks at -- the second part of which I think this video does handsomely.

Still, for thinking, capture, and live collaboration, paper is one of the best friends you'll ever have. And as long as we use it properly, it's going to continue to enhance the creation of all downstream media. Even the shiny, embeddable, Web 2.0 kind.

Danny and I did a column about this topic for MAKE a while back, and I still feel like it's a point worth underscoring (again).

Friends, we’re here today to unveil the august secret that we hope will save potentially dozens of Important Technology Writers from needing to produce another wide-eyed report on how very odd it is that all these geeks seem to love paper so much. The trick is that there is no paradox, no more so than suggesting that people who buy screwdrivers must necessarily hate drills.

Geeks rely on paper for the same reason that the normals do: paper — along with conceptual cousins like whiteboards and magnets — is simply the most efficient tool for completing certain kinds of cognitive work. And no amount of enhanced technology will likely diminish this anytime soon.

And, I have to say, I still love that line I'd quoted from Malcolm Gladwell's The Social Life of Paper. Wraps the central point up with a bow:

It is only if paper's usefulness is in the information written directly on it that it must be stored. If its usefulness lies in the promotion of ongoing creative thinking, then, once that thinking is finished, the paper becomes superfluous. The solution to our paper problem, they write, is not to use less paper but to keep less paper. Why bother filing at all?

And ain't that really the heart of the matter?

When we rely on a paper document as the final, unique destination for information, we create physical and cognitive limitations that seem crazy once you've spent a chunk of your life living on Google. No one disputes that.

But as an intermediary medium between thinking and a final draft, I still just love what you can do with a stack of index cards and a little spare time.

No content types. No taxonomy. No typefaces. Just you and your ideas -- in a bunch of little piles that make sense to you.

Final funny thing: As the putative "inventor" of The Hipster PDA, I still get the odd phone call from some doofus journalist who wants to write yet another penetrating piece on how people decide between paper and digital as The Way to run their world.

And somehow a special irony is almost always lost on these folks. Who use a mobile phone to call me. To ask about paper fandom. Who record our conversation to a digital device. While taking notes on a sheet of paper. Who then type the draft into a PC. And then proof a paper print-out before deadline. Who then submit their completed story to a multi-bajillion-dollar networked CMS. And who then finally get to read their clever work the next day at Starbucks -- thanks to the papery dead-tree edition that has filled newspaper boxes throughout their city.

I'd call that a blended approach to media that -- while showing much potential for streamlining and improvement -- perfectly illustrates how paper spackles the cracks between cognition and creation and dissemination.

Paper's not perfect, but it's perfect for what it does.

[video link via Boing Boing]

”Making friends with paper (again)” was written by Merlin Mann for 43Folders.com and was originally posted on October 22, 2007. Except as noted, it's ©2010 Merlin Mann and licensed for reuse under CC BY-NC-ND 3.0. "Why a footer?"

Psychotherapy for the Chronic Switcher

wood.tang — Tue, 09 Oct 2007 11:22:29 -0400

There's an obscure rule in baseball for a situation that rarely occurs, when an ambidextrous pitcher faces a switch-hitter. The pitcher has to declare which arm he's going to throw with before the at-bat and stick with it, else the batter could keep jumping back and forth to either side of the plate in an endless game of one-upmanship that would make Tony La Russa's head explode. The intent of the rule is obviously to keep the game moving, but it also saves the pitcher from himself; it forces him to pick his weapon given the challenge he faces, and just go with his best stuff.

I need a rule like this when it comes to picking the tools I use to manage my system for getting things done. I know my last post gave the impression that I'm almost proud of changing my system more often than Barry Bonds changes hat sizes, but deep down I'm rather ashamed. I need something to force me to go with my strengths, and just throw strikes the best I can.

Someone suggested that I think about what causes me to monkey around with my system as much as I do, and what, if any, elements stay the same. Then maybe as a means of public psychotherapy, the hive mind can help me identify my best pitch.

To start, let's look at the reasons why I switch:

I'm an impressionable lad, and I desperately want to fit in - When I read through the forums here and see someone describing their system, especially some magnificent homegrown index card job, I can't help but think that I'm missing the boat. And because I fancy myself as a writer, I have a weakness for those damned Moleskines. Those guys knew what they were doing when they used Hemingway's name in the marketing copy; they hooked a whole generation of black-rimmed glasses-wearing, wannabe aesthetes like me. Any excuse to carry one around is good enough for me.
My work lets me get away with it - I call myself a writer, but my real job is taking care of my son. I need a system for my freelance work and household duties, but most of the time, the only tools I need are patience and a high tolerance for hearing "Old MacDonald" 400 times a day. Plus, my senses, not a formal to-do list, usually tell me what needs attention: the smelly diaper, the telltale thump and screech from upstairs, the mysterious red liquid seeping from under the couch. Thus, I only ever have a dozen or so projects and tasks that need to be moved at any given time, so it's not a major undertaking to switch.

Now with that in mind, here are some of the pieces of my myriad systems that always stay the same:

The paper inbox - No matter how I process them, I always have a paper tray on the corner of my desk for catching all the receipts, mail, and stray pieces of paper that flitter into my life. Whenever I'm feeing overwhelmed by my work, emptying this baby is the quickest way to Margaritaville.
Some sort of paper for capture - Even if I'm committed to a Byzantine, quadruple-syncing, all-digital solution, I still use paper for capturing ideas and jotting down new to-do's. It's quick, easy, and eminently flexible, which is what usually leads me to try a full-on paper system. These usually fall over after about a week though, because my fierce minimalist streak hates having to shuffle through piles of cards and rewrite messy notebook pages.
iCal - I know a lot of people have serious beefs with Apple's default calendar, but I've always used it for keeping my appointments. It's easy on the eyes, and it's good enough for my less than hectic schedule. In the systems that I've stuck with the longest, I also used iCal for my to-do lists, but they seem to fall apart when my writing workload gets too busy and I have trouble matching projects and actions.
An in-your face set of reminders or daily agenda - I always build in an obnoxious series of chirping and blinking alarms, or an easy way to produce a short list of things that must get done on a given day. Usually the best method for this is to sit down every morning, look at my whole list , and write down the 3-5 most important ones on a piece of paper.

So there you have it, a list of symptoms and the few tried and true potions and balms that always seem to soothe them. Now I ask you, my internet shrinks, to help me figure out the best way to put my shifty ways behind me. After writing this, I think I see a way out, but I want to hear which patterns and behaviors really stand out to you.

”Psychotherapy for the Chronic Switcher” was written by Matt Wood for 43Folders.com and was originally posted on October 09, 2007. Except as noted, it's ©2010 Merlin Mann and licensed for reuse under CC BY-NC-ND 3.0. "Why a footer?"

Confessions of a Chronic Switcher

wood.tang — Sun, 07 Oct 2007 18:06:11 -0400

My name is Matt, and I'm a chronic system switcher. Read through some of my old forum posts and bear witness to my shame. You'll see me talking about using text files and Moleskines; Treos and Pocket PCs; index cards and Hipster PDAs; iCal, kGTD, Backpack, Gmail, and Mail.app. There have been stretches when I made so many wholesale changes in how I Got my Things Done, shifting from digital to paper and vice versa, that I never needed to do a weekly review because I was picking through every scrap on my plate so often.

This is highly ill-advised behavior, I know. You're not the one who has to look the Staples clerk in the eye every other week when I pay for that armload of binder clips and gold star stickers ("They're for metadata," I say). And yet while I've tried every combination of bits and black ink known to man, I've never once felt like I was letting things slip through the cracks.

Before I read Getting Things Done, I used to manage my life out of a Palm Pilot. I kept my to-do list in the built-in app, occasionally breaking things out into separate "Business" and "Personal" categories or assigning due dates if things got hairy. It fit my lifestyle; it was portable, low maintenance, and comfortable like sweatpants on Thanksgiving.

I was happy with this system. It helped me through three different jobs, feeling relatively organized and productive. So I read GTD as a curiosity more than anything else, to see what all those nerds were talking about and doubting that I would make any major changes to my tried and true system. By the time I finished the book though, I rolled my eyes at my passe little to-do list and clucked, "Oh no, this will never do." I embarked on a search for the perfect system that continues to this day.

I've escaped major catastrophe though, because while I fixated on the fun stuff, the fetishistic notebooks and the whiz-bang programs, I also managed to internalize that collect, process, organize, and review process. I'm religious about the Sunday evening review. I'm never more than five feet away from pen and paper to capture ideas. I'm downright aggressive about decluttering. And I kept a clean inbox when clean inboxes weren't cool. It's these habits that keep the ball rolling, not the various pieces of paper and software where I outsource my short-term memory.

Let's be clear: I absolutely, 100 percent do not recommend swapping out your set of tools as often as I do. You need to live with a system and put it through its paces to really make it hum (or so I've heard). Minor tweaks and changes are perfectly acceptable, even necessary, but my version of productivity promiscuity is insane. I think this self-awareness has saved me, really; I know I'm being ridiculous when I delete those iCal groups yet again, but I also know that I've kept my ducks in a row well enough that I can indulge my inner Adrian Monk.

I make it sound like this is some dark secret from my past, but I actually fell off the wagon again last week, switching from a homegrown Moleskine system to OmniFocus, which I really know is just a stopgap until I shed my odious Sprint contract and buy an iPhone. I'm in denial, I know. But as long as I can still be a functioning switcher, I'm willing to live with it.

”Confessions of a Chronic Switcher” was written by Matt Wood for 43Folders.com and was originally posted on October 07, 2007. Except as noted, it's ©2010 Merlin Mann and licensed for reuse under CC BY-NC-ND 3.0. "Why a footer?"

David Seah on wall-based productivity pr0n

Merlin — Tue, 28 Nov 2006 06:30:18 -0500

David Seah : Gifts for Hardcore Productivity Nuts: Magnatag Visible Systems

David Seah explores a treasure trove of lo-fi productivity pr0n, as provided by the vertical-surface-loving folks at Magnatag. A couple of the items he covers:

I like the name of the Do-Done StepTracker, and I love the idea of “flip the magnetic button over to switch from to-do to done” functionality. Elegant and effective!

Ok, I listed this one before, but now there’s a video showing just how the RotoGraph® Long Range Daily Line Item Planner actually works. It’s one continuous scrolling surface that you can write your schedule on, kind of like a real-world version of Excel with locked sheet cells.

Very sexy. I wish I had more walls.

I've been having my own one-man whiteboard renaissance lately with my new Pinnacle II Magnetic Dry-Erase Communication Board. I picked up a couple of these at Costco for only 20 bucks each (which is about half what these kinds of things usually cost). Combined with some fine-tipped dry erase markers and a stack of Post-it Index Cards, you have a powerful brainstorming tool at your disposal.

Got some lo-fi productivity pr0n you've been loving lately?

”David Seah on wall-based productivity pr0n” was written by Merlin Mann for 43Folders.com and was originally posted on November 28, 2006. Except as noted, it's ©2010 Merlin Mann and licensed for reuse under CC BY-NC-ND 3.0. "Why a footer?"

Hawk Wings: 10 Mac GTD tools

Merlin — Fri, 14 Jul 2006 05:26:24 -0400

Hawk Wings » Blog Archive » Ten Mac tools for Getting Things Done

Tim Gaden summarizes ten tools with which Mac users can do GTD.

Tools to help Mac users with Getting Things Done (or “GTD”), David Allen’s work-smart philosophy, fall in to three camps:

email clients, where most of the stuff that needs to get done arrives in the first place, tweaked to do the job.

Dedicated GTD apps like kGTD or Easy Task Manager offer more focussed collection and processing buckets.

Web-based solutions offer platform-independent tools for getting things done, especially good if you use a Mac at home and a PC at work.

Includes Backpack (in conjunction with the Quicksilver plugin), Kinkless, and Gina's Todo.txt. Definitely worth a look -- especially if you've recently switched to a Mac and want to see what all the fuss is about.

”Hawk Wings: 10 Mac GTD tools” was written by Merlin Mann for 43Folders.com and was originally posted on July 14, 2006. Except as noted, it's ©2010 Merlin Mann and licensed for reuse under CC BY-NC-ND 3.0. "Why a footer?"