The Pen Addict 641/transcript

The Pen Addict Podcast Transcript
Episode:	641
Title:	Tell Me About Your Shipping Lanes
Release Date:	November 20th, 2024
Hosts:	Brad Dowdy Myke Hurley
Guests:	No guests this episode
Additional Information
Official page:	Episode 641
Audio File:	Audio Episode 641
Podcast page:	The Pen Addict 641
Length:	5252 min <br />0.867 h <br /> minutes
Previous Transcript	Next Transcript

• From Relay, this is The Pen Addict, episode 641. Today's show is brought to you by Pen Chalet. I'm Retro51. My name is Myke Hurley. I'm joined by Brad Dowdy. Hi, Brad. What's up, Myke Hurley? How are you? What's up?
• I sounded very American when I did that. I don't know why that caught me off guard. You gave me a little bit of streamer energy. Welcome in, Gamers.

Social media platforms and Blue Sky

• It's my on voice. I switched on, Myke. Thank you. Are you on Blue Sky, Brad?
• Technically, yes. I'm dabbling. I like it. It's fun. The one thing I enjoy about it, and this is a very me thing, is finally getting to have some of the sports ball writers that I follow over there. So, that's, I mean, for social media, like, that's one of the things I follow is, you know, sports is pretty much a live content experience, right? And when it's over, it's over. You don't need to go back. It's not evergreen like an episode of the Pen Addict podcast. You could go back and listen and learn something from, you know, eight years ago and be evergreen. I mean, sports content isn't like that. So, I'm glad that some of them are over there because I was using, there's a service on Mastodon called Sports Bots that will mimic the Twitter feeds of some of the writers, you know, like the F1 writers or whoever, and put them in my feed. But you can't have a conversation with that. Like, it's just, I'm getting to see the feed. And so, it's like one-way traffic. So, I do like that about Blue Sky. Good fountain pen community so far. Okay. I basically, I'm really liking Mastodon. I really like Blue Sky. Like I mentioned before, I have a real problem with threads just being functional. Okay. I don't mind the content on threads. I think it's just like super non-functional for how I use things. Yeah. I mean, I signed up, started using it a little bit. I'm giving it a college try, you know? Yeah. I'll probably, I'll probably link my domain like you did. Like some people are already telling me, hey, you just go do this so you can kind of authenticate yourself. I was like, yeah, I really don't like the username system on Blue Sky. That's my main, my main frustration. Like, yeah, it's so hard to find people. It doesn't really make any sense to me. But yeah, I did the thing. So, like, Myke.social is my username, which is also a domain name. I don't understand it. People keep explaining it to me, still don't understand it. But I'm there and I'm square and I'm getting used to it. You know what I mean? Yeah, yeah, yeah. So, I'm pen addict over there. You can find me over there. Like, I'm never a big publisher on social media, but I'm a big reader and a big replier. Like, if you at me, if you at me, I'm going to talk back. But like, I will not, like, I don't self-promote all the things. Like, if we have like a really fun article, I'll share it with everyone. But I'm not like dumping my feed into there or anything like that. I just want it to have like conversations and stuff and just fun, fun. I take social media for the fun that it is and not try to, like, you know, gamify or businessify it as much as possible. So, always, always hit me up on the social medias, but I may not be like the most active feed.
• Should we start with the news of the day?

Graf von Faber-Castell pen of the year release

• News of the year, Myke? What are you talking about? The Graf von Faber-Castell pen of the year has finally been released. They've been teasing this for like a month. Like, I've had this in the show notes for I don't know how many weeks now until they finally, they just like slow played the release, you know, with just like partial images and color images and on and on and on and on and on. And like, they really drawn this out. But still, it's one of my favorite releases of the year because this is a pen that none of us will ever own. Any of these, right? We've had more than our share of enjoyment with some of the design elements of past pens of the year, which we will talk about momentarily. But this year, they have finally launched the pen of the year. And does it have an official name? Like, they call it just Ottoman culture, right? But I don't know if that's the official name. It looks like all of the pages reference that. Yeah. I mean, it's kind of, they call it the pen of the year 2024. Like, it looks like all of them are just numbered. But yeah, we'll call it the Ottoman culture. That's kind of what they're going for here. So, what they did this time is create an absolutely gorgeous, unimpeachable pen we can't even make fun of. I don't like it. They did such a good job. I see. I love it. Because I love that color. Color is great. I love the color. Well, you don't like it because there's not, we can't make fun of it. It's so good. It's just clean. I guess it's not really doing anything, is it? You know what it looks like? Yeah, it's not really doing anything. What this looks like is just, in Faber-Castell, if they, you know, ever wanted to sponsor us, they'd hate that I say this. But it looks like one of the Mont Blanc limited editions. Like, this looks like something that Mont Blanc would execute, right? And Faber-Castell has usually executed on a little bit different plane than Mont Blanc for, like, the ultra-exclusive high-end. But, I mean, this is just a straight-up great pen. Like, I can't even, I can't even, you know, it doesn't even have abs. You know, it doesn't have, like, a castle wall. Like, what is going on here? It's a completely normal, great-looking pen. I think it's great-looking. But, like, it doesn't, this is how the Faber-Castell used to be. Then they got a little bug where they really, like, tried to do, like, the Montegrappa chaos pen type of stuff to where they did some, like, little extra in there, you know, with a few of the images. And they've done some really, really neat ones in the past. So that's what I wanted to talk about. It's like, yeah, Ottoman culture pen, thumbs up from me. Like, nothing much I can say other than I think it's gorgeous. It's not for Myke, but, like, I get that. But, like, last year we had, like, big Egyptian year last year, Myke. Everyone was doing the Egyptian pens.
• So that's what we had last year. We had the Aztecs not too long ago. Of course, we had Sparta, which is the abs pen from years ago. So I'm wondering, do you have a favorite? It, in the non-abs category, okay. Was it Grotham Febbercastle put the abs on the pen? Oh, yeah, there it is. 2020. Yeah, so Sparta. So Sparta is 2020. Best thing to happen in 2020 was the abs on the pen.
• Yeah. I almost feel like it's unfair to rank all the other pens versus the abs pen. I mean, the thing is, so, like, you've linked in the show notes to their, like, website. Their website is so bad at, like, showing you all of the pens. Yeah. Let me just tell you right now. When I was creating the show notes, I worked to get that link. It's still not all of them, though, anyway. No, no. That's how bad it was.
• That's how challenging it was for me to put this all in one place that I had to work to decide which link I'm going to put in the show note and not even be completely happy with that. Yeah, so I'm not going to be able to give you a defined answer because I can't see all of them. But, like, two of them that I do really like, I like the 2008, which is kind of like the, it looks like a kind of like a, like a lattice pattern, like it's woven. Yeah. Like, yeah. So that's the classic style that I've, you know, kind of always appreciated. They did a lot of that where they kept the cap the same. The Faber-Castell, Graffon Faber-Castell, excuse me, has a very defined cap style, right? With the silver cap, the way it kind of flares out towards the top, the way the clip is in is hinged. And what they would do is kind of keep that cap design consistent for years and then change like what you're seeing, the materials there to, you know, differentiate the pin of the year model. So if you look at like something like that and something like 2011, which is like a jade one, like it's just that center barrel section. And then they kind of escalated, you know, in the past few years. So I'm, I'm obvious. Go ahead. I mean, I also really liked the Egyptian one though, because that's just my thing. I think I did a really good job with the Egyptian one. Yeah. You liked that one a lot more than I did. That would rank pretty low on my list. I like the Shogun. Shogun for obvious reasons. What year was that even? Because I'm trying to find it. I know it exists. And I'm like, look at an image of it and it won't let me click it. Let's see. I'll get it together. So if you go on, so this is for everyone listening. If you want to go to the show notes on the pin of the page, pin of the year page that I link, you click filters and it lists them by year, which is not what you would think filters would happen. So Samurai's 2019. Okay. What I think is the underrated one, I think is Aztec, which was the black skulls.
• I don't like the skulls. Yeah. So I think that one's pretty cool. What we can all agree though, is that they need to do a better job with their website. Yeah. Like this is their showpiece every year. Like they put a lot into this. I want a showpiece webpage for all of the things. Because I love talking about this. Like just like we like talking about the crazy high-end Montegrappa stuff or the Montblanc stuff. I think it's interesting and I appreciate the art. Like these are not pins like I'm ever interested in owning.
• But the idea that these pins exist and all of these companies make this really wild high-end stuff is pretty cool. So yeah. But yes, this website, boy, does it leave a lot to be desired. And it's like, how much are you asking for these pins? You know, like $5,000 and $10,000 pins. Like give them a nice home. Put them on display on your website. Maybe that tells you though that it's just like they don't need to.
• True. Yeah.
• I don't think people are buying these from like graph-von-fabic-castell.com. Like I just don't think that's happening. Right. Right, right, right. Yeah. Like this is a pin. You go, how in the world did they sell 250 of these? And it's like, let me tell you, they know. They're sold before they make them. There are lists, you know, like there are stores that have lists and they just like call the customers and they're just like, hey, do you want this one? And they're like, yeah, man.
• 100%. 100%. It's the same as watches. It's like all this luxury stuff, right? Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. So definitely kind of like out of our realm generally, but it's definitely in the fountain pen realm because we like, I like design stuff and I like interesting applications of design and how people are going to handle, you know, certain things. So I always look forward to this release, even though they made like technically a boring one this year. It's gorgeous and it just doesn't have the story. It just doesn't have the fun silliness that we're that we're known for here on the podcast. So thumbs up graph on Faber-Castell. Good job. Make a better website. You're fancy. You're fancy pants over there. Make a fancy pants website for all these pins.
• This episode is brought to you by our friends at Pen Chalet. They sell authentic, amazing roller balls, fountain pens, ballpoints, mechanical pencils, and so much more, including every accessory you may ever need. Maybe you want a carrying case, some new ink. Maybe you want a fountain pen converter. It doesn't matter. Pen Chalet, I've got it. They have your favorite brands. They run great discounts. They run great prices. They're adding new products every month. Every couple of weeks, you're going to find great discounts, new products. You should always be going back to Pen Chalet. Every time you hear us talk about Pen Chalet on this show, you should always go to PenChalet.com slash penaddict because you will see some special discounts. You will get a wonderful discount code that you can save 10% on anything at Pen Chalet, but also will give you a portal into the new and wonderful things over at Pen Chalet. And I will let you know right now, Black Friday deals start next Wednesday at Pen Chalet. Oh, nice. So there'll be some extra special deals starting next week over at Pen Chalet. Not that you shouldn't go now and check it out because we're going to have some really great deals for listeners of this show. There are free shipping on orders above $75 in the US at Pen Chalet. They also sell internationally. We're very reasonable shipping rates. They have low prices on high quality pens and they offer a 100% satisfaction guarantee. So head on over right now to PenChalet.com slash penaddict to get 10% of anything and to see some special offers because you listen to this show. What have we got, Brad? Before we dive into the special offers, I want to talk about this new TWSBI Caribbean. This is the 580 TWSBI Caribbean with Onyx trim. So I actually, I saw this and I was like, oh, another blue, you know, aluminum, you know, ALR 580. It looks like all these other ones. Oh, wait. It's kind of like a black gun metal-y trim. So that's what the Onyx name is in this. And it's really pretty. Like that just came out. So that's like a really, really neat option if you're just looking, if you're a TWSBI fan, TWSBI 580 fan, bigger pen than like the Ecos, great filling system, really fun pen to use. And then back on the deals page, the Platinum, excuse me, the Diplomat Arrow rollerballs are really, really cool. The Diplomat Arrow is one of the neater pens on the market in shape and style. I always love them and they're a really, really good shape. They have some Tibaldi rollerballs on there as well, which if you have seen like my Tibaldi fountain pen reviews, they do some nice acrylics. So those are some rollerball options for them. The Kaweco Lilliput ballpoints are still available on there, which I really like. So the stainless steel and the copper models at a price that is unmatched in the realm of that product. And then if we scroll all the way down, the Montegrappa Tarvisium fountain pens, I have not gotten to test one of these out yet, but it's a newer model with some really pretty acrylics and a really good price over at Pen Chalet. That's P-E-N-C-H-A-L-E-T dot com slash penaddict. That's where you get your hands on your special offers and the code that you need to save 10% off anything at Pen Chalet. Our thanks to Pen Chalet for their continued support of this show and Relay.
• All right. We got our shout out of the week, Myke. Shout out of the week. John Sanderson at Silver Burl Pens. Easy for you to say. Easy for me to say. Nah. Nah.

Introduction to Silver Burl Pens and John Sanderson

• So, hand up. I had not heard of Silver Burl Pens or John Sanderson before Caroline reached out to me and said, hey, this is who I want to cover for our Meet Your Maker series that Caroline does on the Pen Addict blog. I was like, yeah, absolutely.
• And then she sent me the article and the images associated with this article. And I have had my socks properly knocked off.
• It's not easy to do these days. I see a lot of pens, a lot of pen content. I am just looking at the work here at Silver Burl and of Mr. Sanderson. And I am fascinated with the craftsmanship and the style. So, a lot of, you know, acrylics, a lot of inlays, a lot of metal work within the pens. It's just basically a style, something for everybody type of style here. So, I just wanted to give him a shout out. And, yeah, I am definitely exploring the different pens that are available over at Silver Burl. So, thank you, Caroline, for bringing Mr. Sanderson's story to penaddict.com. So, y'all go check that out. And I'm definitely going to be paying attention to what he releases. Because just some of the images I've seen, I was like, I want that one. And I want that one. And I want that one. And, you know, you can't do that. But these look amazing. So, I'm really, really happy with these. Very cool.

Luddite Japan mechanical pencils and barrels

• All right. I'm also interested in, I got this link in the email. I've been following Luddite Japan for a while. They're a stationery maker in Japan. They're obviously Luddites, I guess, given the name. But they have been making some mechanical pencils with different types of inlay barrels. Or not inlay barrels. Different types of barrels, I should say. Mostly wooden barrels. You know I like my mechanical pencils. And I like my customized mechanical pencils. And people who do cool things with mechanical pencils. Hashtag spoke design. And Luddite, I've been following for a while. Because they will do these different wood barrel pencils. And I've seen some people making acrylic barrel mechanical pencils. Sleeves. Basically sleeves for the mechanical pencils that we like. Like the Pentel Sharpie 205. I got mine from, you know, Little Penco. Really, really like that one. And what Luddite has done is take them to some of their style that they use for their wood pencils. And they've done some really interesting color dyed woods. It's really hard to explain.
• But if you're a mechanical pencil person. And I guess we're getting to gift guide time of the year. I don't know how easy these are to access. I've seen them, the brand Luddite, at different retailers. So you can shop around. But most of it, I think, is direct. And I do think they ship to the U.S. And we have a link in the show notes to this Tech Draw 2 wood model. And they're just spectacular looking pencils. If you're into this type of thing. Like some of these people, some people may not be into this at all. But I like the creativity around mechanical pencils. Especially from like your non-big brands. Like Pentel. Like they're going to make cool stuff in all kinds of different product lines. But having a smaller maker focus on mechanical pencils like Luddite does. Is really tempting and interesting to me. So I'm going to look at, you know. I'm not jumping through, you know, the screen right now to go buy one. But like the next time I have the opportunity to see them in person. Like I saw them at Stationery Fest, right? So one of the shops there was carrying them. And I really, really kind of poured over them. And almost came away with one. But at some point I had to stop spending at Stationery Fest. So that one got, you know, left on the cutting room floor. But in general, that's a brand I'm watching. That's a brand I'm starting to get other people talking about. And sending me things about. So that's something maybe in 2025 I'll add to my shopping list. And see what I think. Get on there. So like this one I was looking at. They're not inexpensive, right? So like this was like an $85, you know, given current exchange rates for this one that I put the Instagram post on. The ones I was looking at at Stationery Fest. I can't remember the exact details of the barrel. But they were a very limited edition. And they were more like $120, $130. Which I don't mind spending that on a mechanical pencil. Which seems, you know, seems like crazy talk. But, you know, look at all the other things we buy. I just want it to be like really, really good. And really perfect for me. And budgeted accordingly. That would be one of those extra things that I didn't plan on. That would blow the budget. So, yeah. One to keep an eye on. And I keep seeing them pop up in a lot of places. So we'll keep that going. Speaking of wild and wonderful looking pens. I am auctioning, raffling, I guess, off the River City Pen Co. Fine View and Rainbow Shuffle that River City Pen Co. Sent me a couple weeks ago to review. So this is the Rainbow Pen that, I guess, two weeks ago I reviewed it. And in talking with Rich Paul, who owns River City Pen Co. He had mentioned before he'd even sent the pen to me. He's like, hey, I'd love if you, you know, review this pen. It's a new slimmer model, which everyone knows I like the slimmer model types of pens. So give me your thoughts on that. By the way, if you want, I think, you know, this might be a good one where we could raise money for the Trevor Project. And so I said, obviously, yes to the review. And obviously, yes to raising money for the Trevor Project. And that is finally live. I created a little charity page. We're doing this just in a straight raffle type of donation. I didn't know until someone told me. This is not a Squarespace ad. But they have a donate button to where people can just click and donate. Now that goes directly to me, right? Like I'm collecting those funds. And then people have to trust me to allocate 100% of those funds correctly, which I believe that they do. But that was a neat little feature that I added onto this page. So the Rainbow Shuffle is available for raffle to help us raise money for the Trevor Project, which is, you know, a LGBTQ plus support line. And they do a lot of phone support, a lot of in-person support for like a crisis hotline. So it's a great, great, great way to support that community, support this Pen community as a whole. And I appreciate Rich for doing this. And this will run for another, I guess it ends Friday at midnight. And we've raised several hundred dollars so far. So I appreciate everyone taking a look at this. And it's something I very much believe in and supporting the cause. And Rich does too. So I appreciate him allowing me to do this. Very cool. Yeah. All right. Let's hit a, we got a couple of kind of crossover topics today that I wanted to touch on. And the first one I wrote up a little bit for the members newsletter, which I write at PenInnic.com called Refill. About how I'm using Apple's journaling app for a little experiment that I'm running. And this is not an app dependent process that I'm doing. It just happens to be, this is the app that I've found that's kind of working for what I need to do. And what I need to do, Myke, is the thing that I've talked about for nearly the entirety of this podcast. Is have a direct line from my brain to the page, right? So how do we solve that as efficiently as possible? And I've always wanted to solve that in an analog fashion. But I know that having digital access is many times quicker for me, given the prevalence of my phone with me at all times, right? So I've gone through different processes around my daily life of always having a notebook and a pen physically on my person, right? To do this type of capturing. And what I'm trying to capture are the fleeting thoughts, right? Just like the one-off thoughts that I might have. Basically, you know, your shower thoughts, you know, or I'm cooking dinner. And for some reason, you know, I'm by myself and I'm spacing out on something that I want to think about. Or I hear something interesting in the music that I've chosen to play or the podcast. And, you know, a little quote, a little detail, a little, you know, little memory that I want to put down. Not really, I'm not looking for a journal, right? This is not any type of journal. I'm not sitting down and it's like, tell me about your day. Like, I'm not doing that. But I want to capture the little things that I've found interesting throughout the day.
• So my notebook attempts have generally failed. Because as I wrote in the newsletter, as great of an idea as that is, it's not always functional. Because I won't always keep it in my pocket. I might set it on a table, right? If I'm carrying around, like, say, a field note and a pen. Like, something as small as possible. I will still, if I'm sitting down, I might set that in a chair or a table. And then I'll get up and go do another thing. And then I'll have a thought. And I'll go, oh, yeah, my notebook's over there. I'll remember to do that in a minute. I'll go, next time I grab the notebook, I'll put it in there. Because I didn't pick it up with me. You know, I didn't have it in my hand. And eventually, the notebook just got further and further and further away. And I was like, yeah, well, we're not going to capture that. But honestly, and as sad as it is to admit, my phone is with me way more than a notebook is. Just around the house. I think it's a different concept if I left the house on a daily basis. You know, I think I would control the notebook a much, much, it would be a much better option for me outside of the house. But in the house, my phone's with me at all times. So I've also tried different capturing on my phone. To where I would take these notes, say, using an app called Drafts on the phone. But like any just notepad app would work. Where you just keep like a stream of consciousness type of note taking. That's all I'm looking for. It's the field notes tagline.

Digital journaling and Apple's journaling app

• You know. I'm not writing it down to remember it later. I'm writing it down to remember it now. Exactly. So I just want it out of my head and onto the page. And then that space is now freed up. Right. So the page in this case that I've found that's worked has been Apple's journaling app. And it's not, like I said, this is not app dependent at all. I can make a notes file and do this the same way. But what I'm finding for ease of use with the journaling app is I'll just go in and start a page for today. And I literally open the app. And in the title or descriptor, the heading, I just write today's page. Even though I don't need to write that. That's redundant. It has the date on the entry. Right. But I do it because that's where whatever thoughts I have today that I want to capture, they go in that list. And then they're just in there. And I don't refer back to this list. I just need the stuff out of my head. Even if it's a silly stuff, something silly is like, okay, I listened to a new album today. What were my thoughts on that?
• Because I sometimes, like, think about books that I read, articles that I read, music I listen to, videos I listen to, more often after I've consumed that, not to a, like, a full distracted level to where I, like, I'm obsessing over the thing that I watched or thought about. It's that I want to make a comment on what I listened to. Was it good or bad for me? Did I enjoy this or not enjoy this? Was my time spent well or not? And then I'll just write that down. I was like, hey, you know, listen to this new album today. Yeah, it was really good. And boom, now I'm done. Instead of like, yeah, boy, that album was good or that album was terrible. And then I'll think about it later. And I'll think about it later. This is just a way for my brain to continually, like, get freed up. And so far it's working. We're about a month into this little experiment. I keep the journal app on my front page, my home screen, I should say. And if I have these fleeting thoughts, I just click in there and I write it down. And I'll just continually edit today's post. And I do it pretty much every weekday. Like on the weekends, I don't need it that much.
• It's just not necessary. So I'm thinking about this and thinking how valuable I'm finding a digital tool for capturing like this that I'm not able to manage what you would think would be something easily to like physically write down. But it's more of like I'm using the tool that's available to me at the time, which more often than not is admittedly my phone instead of like I'm looking at my field notes notebook. I wrote like three pages in my field notes notebook yesterday. That's completely separate from the type of ideas that I need to capture in a digital format. So anyway, I just didn't really bring this up to have, you know, some it's not some brilliant like insight or anything, but I'm always trying to figure out how to. Help myself, if you will, for lack of a better way to put it, to make my brain work the way that I need to get through the day, because like I have challenges, you know, you know, staying on task and and trying to just, you know, work on one thing at a time or, you know, manage, you know, manage work versus play and things like that. So that's just been a good little aside. You know, I probably spend just very few minutes a day writing those things down in there. Like, I don't think I've written in any entry more than a sentence.
• Right. Again, it's like I'm not trying to digital journal.
• I'm not trying to like make this something that it's not and make it something like super intense. I'm trying to make an a way for information to get out of my head so I can allow more information in. And it's working. The digital is working for all the analog that I use for that one little thing. Digital is working for me. So I just wanted to throw that out there. Yeah, I spent a little bit of time with this app, the journal app, and I was impressed with it. It's not something that I kept up, but I do really. I kind of wished that they had gotten quicker too and found more ways to integrate third-party apps into the system. Because like if you use Apple's apps, like you get tons of little pieces of data that you can add in, you know, like listen to this podcast. Like what did I think? Here's some photos, you know, like all that kind of stuff. And I think over time more of that got, there is more availability to add stuff from third parties in, but not really to the level that I wanted.
• It is cool that other apps like Day One can draw from some of this too.
• It's an interesting system. I don't really know, like I genuinely don't know why they made this app.
• Completely agree. I like, I'm not using it necessarily as intended by any stretch. No, but they, it is at least, it's got some simple features that I think are done pretty well.
• And I've, I liked it and I like that it prompts and I like that, I like the prompts that it has inside of it. You know, for people that are struggling with journaling, I think that's also really cool.
• But, you know, of course it's beneficial to you because you always have it on you. Like that's, that is why it's good. Exactly. Yeah. So like I had to turn it into not a journal for me to actually use it, right? I turned off all the prompts. I turned off anything that told me what to do. You know, I just like, again, I'm not using this as intended whatsoever. But to your point about the integrations, like I'm on Apple Music, right? So I can just hit share from an album I just listened to and drop it right into the journal app and say, oh, here's what I thought about this. Here's my little rating. Like I have my own little personal star rating system on how I, how I think about music. So yeah, like that, those type of integrations are like what I use. What I don't use is any, any prompts or any, hey, you took a picture here. Do you want to write about it? I'm like, actually, no, I don't. I absolutely do not. But what I would like to do is to tell you, you know, how, you know, how great this pen is or how, you know, you know, how silly it is that, you know, I, I did, I did something really silly and wanted to write it down and laugh at myself. You know, that's what I wanted to do. So it's been good for that. So that's, that's one way that the, the digital writing is, is, is part of my life. I mean, obviously article writing is mostly digital for me, but that's, that's a whole different podcast. That's actually much easier and simpler for me to do than something like a little quick snippet of my brain that I'm capturing digitally. I thought analog was the only way to go for that. And it looks like I've, I'm not going to say I've solved anything. We'll see. I'm a month into doing this, but we'll see. I I'm enjoying, enjoying this little escape from my, myself. If you will.
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• So I had to go look at the Lionel trains one again. I'd seen it when it came out. I was like, oh, that's so cool how they do the trains. I don't know if you know this, Myke. I'm a big infrastructure guy. I like to know how the products move. Tell me about your shipping lanes, Myke.
• So I like the planes, trains, and automobiles type of stuff.
• So I've been a fan of the Pan Am series.
• Bought a couple of those for myself. These train ones are super cool. So yeah, I hope they keep that up. They're doing a great job.
• All right. Staying on the digital analog kick conversation today. Yeah, staying on that kick. We have a question, Myke. I'm going to let you read the question. But from my good friend, Stephen, who has helped me out with a lot of things. He sends me a lot of the games that I play and some books that I read. So a really, really good friend of mine, really great person. And he had a really kind of in-depth question that he's struggling with. And I don't know. Maybe we can help. So let's see. So this is a longer one. So we start off with the question. The question from Stephen is, I would like to integrate stationery use into my work, specifically to keep notes and hopefully improve my memory for the numerous different tasks and items that I have to track. I've tried a number of times, but it never sticks. And I end up falling back to very unorganized digital notes. Do you both have any advice on integrating a physical note-taking process into your day-to-day work? And here's some background. This is from Stephen. He says, I work in a technical position where I help lead an operations team supporting a big corporation. The nature of my job means I am heavily fatigued by context switching, performing one task, and having to immediately jump to another, then another, then another, without really getting enough time to focus on the first task. It's no exaggeration that I have to switch gears every five to ten minutes and try to quickly pick up for the new topic. Formulate a response to Eric and my team before jumping to the next task. Brad, this sounds exhausting. Yeah, it does. It does. I'm like... Yeah. I do this for eight to ten hours a day, five to seven days a week. Oh, and Stephen says, it's exhausting. Yes. This means I have difficulty staying on top of the numerous administrative tasks I also need to perform, reviewing and creating documentation, putting together reports, preparing for and attending meetings, gathering metrics and data to present to leaders, performing one-on-one meetings with my team, etc. I genuinely feel like I've developed an attention disorder because I never get the time to focus on one task very long, and it leads me to failing to follow up on tasks, forgetting to put together certain reports, or pull certain data together. As easy as it is to take notes digitally, I find I'm highly unorganized because I'll take some quick notes, change tasks, take more notes, and just pile up, and I never end up going back through to review, organize, pare down, etc. Not that I have time to do that in my day anyway. So I keep trying to go back to handwritten notes, as at least then I would be improving my memory of all these tasks I'm working on and need to follow up on. At least I like to believe those studies that show handwritten notes lead to better memory retention. My problem is that even when I take a notebook and a pen, let's be honest, I take an entire Kukuyu Hakobiz loaded with stationery items and a HitLab A5 notebook cover with two notebooks inside, I may take a few notes, but then I end up falling back to digital notes because it's simply faster for me to do. I want to slow down, I want to remember each of these tasks I need to perform, but I find that difficult. I'm hoping that Myke or yourself may have some advice or even personal experience with introducing handwritten notes or better note-taking processes into your workflow. Do you mind if I start off, Brad? Yeah, please. So I do appreciate the detail in Stephen's question. Like, it really helps, and that's why I appreciate him sending this in. But yes. So for tasks, do not use pen and paper, right? For your specific use case, I would absolutely not recommend pen and paper because it feels to me like you need another brain and the computer can do that for you, right? So like use an app. I use Todoist like this that lets you add a task from anywhere. So when I'm on my Mac, I hit like command, option, spacebar. It brings up the Todoist window, and I just type in my task, hit enter, and it's added. Because it seems like there's so much stuff going on that you need the quickest possible way to get a task loaded into a system that you can check later on. And I would worry that writing them down, you might lose them or might lose track of them. And then if you like turn to a new page or you tear out a page, you're going to, I think, too quickly get to a point where you've lost a task.

Note-taking methods: pen and paper vs. digital

• But I think note-taking, like during meetings and stuff like that, or during phone calls, this is where I would recommend using pen and paper. Because I think, I notice in myself at least, if I handwrite notes during a meeting, I am more likely to be able to think things through more clearly. So like I'm evaluating as I'm writing, and I can, and you're kind of like triaging the conversation, because you're only writing down the things that are important to you. And then you have that list of stuff. And then you can look back at those later on and pick out the things that are interesting. And I do believe that you have a better memory retention. I know this in myself. I believe those studies to be true. So like they're kind of like the two main areas. So tasks, put them all in a digital system. Notes, just like you're having a meeting, you're having a call, just write them down. I think in general, like you've got to just find the best tool for the job. So here is how it goes for me. If I need to refer to something later on, it will be digital. Either I will add it in a notes app or in a to-do app, or I will take a picture of the notes page, right? I've got to have a digital version of it if I'm going to refer to it later on. If I'm in an environment where I need to be present in the space, definitely paper. I think one of the worst things you can do in a meeting is have a laptop in front of you, I think. I think it is not good for you and your attention, and it makes it look like you're not paying attention. If you need to think things through, like you've got a big problem you're working on, pen and paper is the absolute best tool to deal with it, in my opinion. You just sit and you start writing, you start taking notes, you start writing things down. That is like the best way to think something through. If you ever have any mixed media, imagery, calculations, I don't know, always digital. And also just ultimately don't try and force it, because if you force it, it's not going to work. But that's kind of my big picture thinking on this stuff.
• So we have one huge bit of overlap here, and I wasn't, you know, what's funny is I wrote my replies down to this on paper. You wrote them digitally, but we agree with a lot of the same thing. So the comment I wrote in my notebook is that digital notes are the repository, right? Like the digital notes are not the present. The digital notes are going to be something that you need to refer back to later, whether it's a task, a reminder, a project detail that is, you know, has to live in its own space. Those are the things that get captured digitally. The note taking, the live meetings, the conversations, those are all analog to me, always have been. And to your point with the laptop in the meeting, it's like, you know, I have a college student and I have an upper high school student. And what at least I've seen in, you know, being around like students, like with laptops, want to basically take dictation in a classroom instead of actually listening and, you know, absorbing the pertinent aspects of it. They want to basically perform dictation and type word for word what someone's saying as opposed to actually thinking. And, you know, I think that there are actually some of these AI tools can help that, right? Where like I use a tool called Limitless for some meetings that I have where it records the call, transcribes it and gives me a summary at the end. So I know that I have it all if I need it, but then I take my own notes.
• You know what I mean? So like, because I know that feeling of like, you got to write the whole thing down. And like, that's also why I don't like taking notes of a computer. I think if you take notes of a computer, you're more willing to want to write every word. But I feel like with pen and paper, it's too hard to do that. It's too slow. And like you have limited like physical space. So you kind of want to get just the most important parts down. But I think if you have like a computer that can record the meeting or record the whatever, like that is beneficial in that way. Because then you don't have to worry about everything. Like you can go back and get it if you want to later on, you know? Exactly. So this isn't an ad for Todoist, but I'm also been on Todoist for years only. But that's all for things that are timed, that have a due date and a time and might need a reminder, an active alert, right? So digital like reminders and tasks, those all go in Todoist for me. So for some solutions for making the analog work, I can refer back to my IT job, which wasn't quite as intense as Steven's. I didn't have to work with a lot of different people, but I had to work with a lot of different processes like in a 24-7 data center. So the way I handled analog in like a digital environment like a data center is I always kept a large A4 pad on my desk, right? So the space had to be right because I'm always using a keyboard and mouse and either a laptop or multiple screens. You know, the layout had to be right, but I needed that big piece of paper because what I would take on that paper is today it would just, you know, I'm not keeping like a hardbound notebook where there's all kinds of notes in it. I'm having today's stuff in front of me at all times. And then I would take that page and I would block it off into whatever buckets I needed to use. This is very corporate speak here, Myke.
• You know, we're going to silo some things off and we're going to put them in the buckets. So I would kind of separate my page in blocks if I needed to for the different tasks, you know, the mundane repeatable tasks, the one-off today tasks, and then like the emergency like fires that needed to be put out all had a different kind of space. And then within those spaces, we had colors. So it's basically a colors and blocks system, but all on one page that had to be all visible at the same time. That way, even if I got off task, I could just look over without having to dig through a bunch of pages right on top of a big sheet of paper and know that the tasks without the red marks through them, they needed to keep going, right? That was more than I needed to work on. And then we're just marking things off throughout the day. So depending on the tasks would depend on the color and the completions would be, you know, generally in the same color, like a red or a pink, something like that. But I had to have, the keys were all singularly visible for today. There was no hunting through a notebook, right? So I think you actually have to minimize the amount of stationery you use, right? This could be whatever your desk notebook is could be separate from your meeting notebook. Your meeting notebook, you know, if you're doing that digitally or analog style, that just needs to be a separate piece of kit. Like I'm fine with that. Because then you might go back and structure those if you're taking analog notes in a meeting, which is what I would do. I would go back and then put anything digitally that I needed to keep for later, right? So I don't know if Stephen has time for that. Like it sounds like time crunch aspect. But again, the digital was always for reference later. And almost all the work and planning and ideas and brainstorming, anything that was coming out of my head or coming out through the day of a phone call, a meeting, someone stopping by the desk, that was going on this pad, on this open page. And with like a pilot high tech C-Kolito, that was my best friend when I was doing this job. And Rhodia A4 pads. And then I would use either that or the Doan Idea Journal, which was a large, you know, almost like eight and a half by 11 type of notebook, really large, really open page. And then every day had a new page, right? Because my tasks were so variable each day when I would walk in. And then I didn't ever want to have to hunt back through anything or find anything. So analog, open and available at all times. Color coded and blocked out as needed.
• And digital was only if I had to refer back to something later. It was kind of how I did it. And again, like so Stephen's saying he carries the Kukuyo Hakobiz around. That's a it's like a personal storage unit. Basically, it can hold a lot of stuff, a lot of pens. Like you need to you need to you need to wind that down. Like that needs to be more refined. You don't need all the things because then that just that's paralysis analysis paralysis or whatever it's called there. Like you need to limit the things, you know, have your desk notebook, meeting notebook, a few different pens, definitely a color coded pen. And then all the reminders and tasks and digital. And I mean.
• This is a little bitty basic stuff in general senses of the terms. You know, Stephen has probably like some very specific solutions that are required for this job. But yeah, I would be careful about taking notes digitally. I think there's a lot of flaws doing that in a live format that might be causing some of the missing things or forgetting things.
• Try to figure out what rules you can create for digital work and then everything else goes analog. Right. So I don't know. It's it's a tough to give like a super defined answer. We can only say what we've done in the past and what's worked for us in different different types of situations. So hopefully maybe there's a little bit of insight there.
• You know, I don't know that we've certainly haven't solved anything, but there's at least a couple of things to think about. But yeah, I think the key just reading, listening to this email is you need to you need to scale back on the different things that you're using, even just in the analog kit. Like find that down to like the core essentials. And then hopefully that'll maybe help start cleaning some of this up.
• If you would like to send in some thoughts, some questions, as always, you can always go to penaddictfeedback.com. And you can send them in to us there. If you want to find Brad online, he's at penaddict.com and he is penaddict online as well on various social media platforms. Who knows how many there are now, about 25, 40, something like that. Yeah. 11 teen. Hey, let me stop you right here. I know I'm going to interrupt your flow. Let's let's get in those questions for us for Ask TPA. I think maybe since it's a holiday week in the US, I think maybe we do an Ask TPA heavy episode next week because we already have a bunch of questions in. And so keep sending those in over the next few days into next week. And we'll try to do a Ask TPA heavy episode for the holiday week. Sounds amazing to me. Let's do it. So penaddictfeedback.com. If you want to find Brad, you go to twitch.tv slash penaddicts and spokedesign.com. I am iMike. I am Myke A.E. Or Myke. I don't know. You can find me. All right. Just find me. Fed up with this. Just find me. Where am I? Where am I? We've actually gotten to the point where you can just be iMike and I can just be penaddict in most of the places that we care about. But it doesn't work like that in blue sky. I know. Hey.com.net.co.
• Cortexbrand.com too for my products. Go check them out. And thank you to Retro51 and Penchallet for the support of this week's episode. But most of all, thank you for listening. Until next time, say goodbye, Brad. Goodbye, Brad. Goodbye, Brad.