Life Without a Laptop, Two Months Down

wood.tang — Wed, 13 Feb 2008 17:21:24 -0500

It has now been two months since I sold my laptop and started working with just a Mac Mini in my office and an iPhone, and I’ve more or less survived. I never expected it to be permanent, but unless my life changes drastically and I have to start traveling full-time, I could probably go on like this indefinitely. My real work hasn’t suffered, because I was doing all of that on the desktop anyway, and with Google Reader’s killer mobile version, I’ve been able to satisfy any web surfing urges away from the computer.

That’s not to say that I haven’t chafed a little with this setup. We (self included) make the mistake of assuming that using a laptop during “downtime” or around a spouse/significant other is a bad thing. This isn’t always true. At the risk of outing myself as an even more colossal tool, when I did have a laptop, my wife and I would often spend the evening after the boy was in bed, sitting side by side on the couch, watching TV and pecking away at our computers.

On the surface, that might sound like the makings of a horrible marriage, but it was really quite nice. We talked to each other. We showed each other stuff we had found online, asked each other to proofread emails, etc. It was probably more interactive than anything else we could have been doing (okay, maybe not one thing), and it was relaxing. Neither one of us was doing “work,” but rather catch up, idle surfing, or shopping.

That’s one time when I miss having a laptop. I often saved that evening downtime for personal blogging, checking in at forums, or posting pictures and links: all the random unnecessary web stuff that’s fun but not important enough to do during the day when I’m working at the big boy computer. Not a huge loss though; like I’ve said, we can all pare back our online existence a little, plus it gives me more time to read books. I still often use the iPhone during this time, but it’s not the same. I’m getting better at some of those things with it, but until it gets cut and paste or a Bluetooth keyboard, I’ll probably just have to go without.

What that’s doing in a GTD sense, though, is creating some hard boundaries between my various contexts. I’ve always struggled with defining contexts, and when you have a laptop you can carry anywhere, the lines between @computer, @office, and @home start to blur because you can theoretically do just about anything, anywhere, save housework and errands. Now those divisions are very clear. I can only do so many things when I just have the phone, and the rest will have to wait until I’m back at my desk. It also makes me pay attention to the non-computer tasks. Instead of defaulting to the fun computer stuff because there’s always a computer around, I’m often forced to make those phone calls or proofread those drafts because I can’t do anything else.

I haven’t tried any significant travel with just the iPhone though. I’ll get the first real test of living without a laptop when I go to the South by Southwest Interactive conference next month. Since I’m just going there for kicks, it’ll be okay if I can’t do all the normal things I could do with a real computer. Yet I’m curious to see how it feels not having the crutch of knowing that my computer is in the next room. Maybe this year I’ll meet a few more people because I won’t be hiding behind a screen the whole time.

”Life Without a Laptop, Two Months Down” was written by Matt Wood for 43Folders.com and was originally posted on February 13, 2008. Except as noted, it's ©2008 Merlin Mann and licensed for reuse under CC BY-NC-ND 3.0. "Why a footer?"

Life Without a Laptop, Week 1

wood.tang — Fri, 14 Dec 2007 15:54:57 -0500

When the iPhone came out this summer, I was locked into a contract with another cell phone carrier, one that I couldn’t escape on pain of a $200 surcharge. So I waited it out, and dreamed my little iPhone dreams all alone with my Plain Jane cell phone and suddenly archaic-looking iPod Video.

To be honest, I didn’t really need an iPhone. I work from home, rarely more than a few yards from a computer (we had two laptops and a Mini in our house at the time). I don’t travel for work, and when we go on vacation, I never bring work with me anyway. When I do leave the house for extended periods of time during the day, running errands, taking appointments, etc, it doesn’t matter because I’d trained myself to plan ahead for that situation. Besides, I never get any messages that can’t wait a couple hours until I get back to a computer anyway.

I was amazingly good at rationalizing away my need for an iPhone, but I still wanted one ever so badly. So last week I created a way out.

I applied the same reasoning about my working environment that I’d used to wish away my iPhone lust and applied it to my laptop. I didn’t need it exactly; I did all my real work on the desktop in my home office, and that MacBook Pro was strictly a sitting on the couch and dicking around on the internet while I watch TV machine, quite a waste really. So I decided I could live without it, hocked it on eBay, and used the proceeds to buy an iPhone and pay that cell contract ransom.

It was the worst kind of materialism, I know. When I walked out of the Apple Store that day, I felt a little bit dirty, like a junkie who just pawned his mother’s wedding ring to score. But I’m proud of myself for practicing a little budget restraint—I actually made money on the whole transaction—and for once I didn’t simply add to the gadget pile, I swapped out the old for the new.

As for the adjustment to life without a laptop, it’s going slowly but surely. The iPhone obviously fills that sitting on the couch, watching TV void, though sometimes I still feel a lingering ghost pain burning on my thighs when I want Google a bit actor on CSI. My work hasn’t suffered one bit though, because now I know that my already limited time in front of a proper computer is even more precious. Addition by subtraction, I say.

I’m sure I’ll give in to laptop envy again at some point, say, if Apple starts making that coveted sub-notebook, or when my son goes off to school and I have more freedom to move around. But for now this has been a useful experiment, and a heckuva way to justify an early Christmas present.

”Life Without a Laptop, Week 1” was written by Matt Wood for 43Folders.com and was originally posted on December 14, 2007. Except as noted, it's ©2008 Merlin Mann and licensed for reuse under CC BY-NC-ND 3.0. "Why a footer?"

Experiments

Life Without a Laptop, Two Months Down

Life Without a Laptop, Week 1