Editing The Pen Addict 468/transcript (section)

== Hobonichi Techo Usage ==


'''Brad:''' Yeah, so let's say, like, eight lines. Yeah, eight lines. Okay, or seven or eight lines, whatever it is. I don't even know. And we'll put a link in the show notes so y'all can see what I'm talking about. But yeah, like, five centimeters. So, like, Monday, horizontal across, and then I can put in these little tasks in this day. Okay, and a few months ago, I felt like this wasn't doing my workday justice. Okay? So, what was happening was when you lay it out like this, what I discovered is when I lay out my planner like this with just, like, a task and a checkbox that I'm saying every task is equal. It could be time, it could be effort, it could be, you know, amount of work, whatever. But, like, every checkbox is equivalent in this layout. So, it was only ever getting, like, the basic tasks. Like, well, it's like, I need to answer, you know, a bit. For example, I've been off on vacation for about a week and kind of ignored my email. So, I need to set some time to work on email. Like, that's part of my job. I need to spend an hour or two going through the four email accounts that I have to make sure I'm caught up on everything. Well, that, you know, checkbox would be equivalent to, you know, the podcast prep checkbox, which happens every week where we have to, you know, have to spend some time, like, putting together the show notes. And that would be equivalent to the shipping. Well, how many orders do I have for shipping? Do I need two hours today or do I need four hours today? So, this layout was falling short. And it's been, like, I've been on this layout for years now. It's my favorite because I could have these tasks and then I could have an open space for notes. And what I realized recently, and I've been sharing a bunch of this on Twitch and kind of working through what I need, is I'm going to switch into a page per day layout. And on the left-hand side of the page, say one-third of the page, it's going to have basically a 24-hour schedule. I guess it's probably less than that. I don't even know. Yeah, it's like 6 a.m. to midnight, right? I don't need that whole thing, but that's just, that's what is, fits efficiently on the page and that's more than enough for me.

'''Myke:''' A 24-hour schedule makes no sense. Yeah. Nobody needs that.

'''Brad:''' Yeah, like, I'm good at 2 a.m. It says sleep. Yeah. Yeah. That's what goes there, sleep. So, yeah, so what I'll be able to do now is to have a singular day go, oh, email, you know, I should do that from 8.30 to 10. And then podcast prep should go from 10 to 11. Or, you know, stream should go from 2 to 4, whatever these times are, and not have all these equally weighted checkboxes. This is me overthinking the whole thing, right? And I've also been taking more notes on the extra page. So I've been running out of space on the 7-day-per-week in the single blank page. I'd be filling up that page of notes on the blank side. So now I have, like, two-thirds of the page to explore notes. Like, I could be taking, like, today as I go, a lot of times as I work, this is also why I'm switching to this mic, I'll be working on whatever task. And my brain is wired such a way as that triggers two more tasks that I need to write down. And I never do. And having this layout would give me that space to kind of lock in all of these thoughts and all of these ideas and all of this movement that's going on in my head and going on at my desk. So I was able to get this layout. I assumed this layout I'm moving to is pretty normal. And I was assuming William Hanna had it, and sure enough, they did. So I went and ordered them. And I had to pick a date to start them on. So I figured July 1st, that's a good date. So I'm excited I get to start this new planner tomorrow. And I'm way into figuring this out. Because I don't know how your days go, and you can explain it a little bit. But I tend to get lost out to sea a lot of days. You know, I'm efficient right up to the point to where I'm not. And then I start paddling out, and I can't get back into the workflow again a lot of times. And this is going to help me with that. So I'll be able to lay out my day each day or even partially the day before, because some things are fixed on the time schedule. So I'll be able to go ahead of time a little bit. But yeah, this is an effort to keep me swimming along the right path. A lot of ocean metaphors here, Myke.

'''Myke:''' It's because you've just been on vacation.

'''Myke:''' I have a lot of questions and thoughts about this. Oh, interesting. So I think it's probably time to take a break and then come back to this. Because I don't know how long we're going to be talking about this. So let's take a minute to thank our friends over at micro.blog. If you're a pen addict who wants to share your love of pens, ink, and stationery, join micro.blog where you'll find kindred spirits. Micro.blog is an easy-to-use blogging platform where you can write short or long blog posts, share photos and videos, and even host a podcast. What I really like about micro.blog is it is something modern from a different time of publishing on the web. So like back when it was much more of like you owned your own stuff and it was yours, and you could also share it with people. So we talk about it as a blog here, but it's also a social network. But the posts that you write are distributed amongst other people so they can see them in an app or on a website of like, here's a bunch of stuff together. But they also exist separately on a blog that you can control. And that's why you can share so much mixed media. So it's more than just that place to post your stuff. It's a friendly community of people with a wide range of interests who can share and comment via micro.blog's social timeline. And this is backed by a strong community guideline that is enforced by moderation. Micro.blog is different because there are no ads and there's no algorithm choosing which posts appear in your timeline. If you follow someone and choose to follow them, you see their stuff, right? It's not being like kept from you. If you've always wanted to share your love of pens or anything, honestly, but have felt lost or discouraged by bigger social media sites, check out micro.blog and meet fellow enthusiasts and the rest of the community who share things that they are interested in and things that they love. Micro.blog hosting starts at $5 a month. You can use your own domain name and you can even cross post this content to Twitter, Tumblr, if you want it to reach other audiences. You can use your own domain name. Your posts reside on a blog that you control and you can use micro.blog via your Mac, iOS, Android and the web as well. So basically everywhere. If you're ready to try a different blogging and social media experience, head to micro.blog slash penaddict where you'll be able to sign up for free and try all of the features of micro.blog for two months. Micro.blog have doubled the trial period for all penaddict listeners. Go to micro.blog slash penaddict for a two-month free trial. A thanks to micro.blog for the support of the show.

'''Brad:''' So I'm literally just getting into micro.blog. When they decided to sponsor last week, I told you about my background with them. And then I was waiting until vacation ended and I kind of got back in my flow. I'm going to start using this a bunch. And one of the coolest things, Myke, is if you go onto their Discover page and you click, it says some recent post from the community. It's a lot of emoji-based links, which is pretty cool. So you go to that little Discover link. You hit pen and ink. And there's all kinds of people writing here.

'''Myke:''' And they just created that recently in advance of we were talking about it last time. So you can select from the little drop-down. You can select pens. And you can see all types of fountain pen and pen-related content. It's awesome.

'''Brad:''' Yep. So I'm going to be leaning into this a little more going forward. So, yeah. It's very, very cool. So I posted my planner, my circle excitement day picture on micro.blog, Myke. Thursday, July 1st, is circled. And I'm excited because it's a new day. Yeah.

'''Myke:''' Okay. So I'm not about to tell you you're in trouble, right? I know.

'''Myke:''' Okay. So you said that one of the reasons you wanted to change from this system of these, like, little boxes for each day and then some notes on the side is that you were finding that the box, the kind of the small boxes meant that you had to give an equal weight. And I can see it from the micro.blog post that you've put in the notes. And I'll put it in the notes so people can see, right? It's just they're smaller. You can maybe fit five tasks and you can put a box around each of them unless you want to, like, start writing them next to each other or something. And you were saying that you were concerned that it gave equal weight into everything. So what you want to be able to do is put them on a calendar so you can block out time, right? Mm-hmm. These are two different productivity systems fundamentally, right? Mm-hmm. You have gone from a task-based system to a time calendar-based system. Mm-hmm. I just want to make sure that you're aware you've done that.

'''Brad:''' So I think maybe to continue what I was saying, and I wasn't going to mention this until you mentioned this, or it didn't cross my mind that this would be a thing, the tasks are not going away. They're now digital and always have been.

'''Myke:''' Okay. This makes more sense to me.

'''Brad:''' Yes. So everything that you see that has a checkbox next to it is in Todoist.

'''Myke:''' Yep.

'''Brad:''' Okay. So now, but what I'm finding is, okay, like we were talking before the show that like I'm working on printer stuff, right? Mm-hmm. Well, I need to organize specs and get paper types and get dimensions and all these things so I can get quotes. So the checkbox would be get printer specs.

'''Myke:''' Yep.

'''Brad:''' But what I need for my day to actually survive is from 1030 to noon is to work, collect all the printer specs.

'''Myke:''' Mm-hmm.

'''Brad:''' So both of those things will actually be working in conjunction. I'm just taking the task list.

'''Myke:''' I think this is a smart way of doing what you were doing because this was always the thing that we would talk about is that you handle all of your tasks in Todoist and then you'd write them out in the planner and then you check them off in the planner and then go check them off in Todoist. And that always felt a little bit redundant to me. Mm-hmm. But like I understood it because it's like, well, you just want to use your pen and paper products, right? But you also don't want to forget anything.

'''Brad:''' Well, you want to think about it. Yeah. You want to think about it. Yeah. You know, you don't want it to be stuck behind a screen when you're not looking at the screen for a couple hours. And, you know, it's just like a duplicative. Yeah. I see that it's a little bit extra, but like it just, it's the way I think about it, right? Like if I write it down, it's real.

'''Myke:''' Yeah. But I think having these two systems makes a lot of sense because now you have the tasks, but you don't have a plan for the day for them. They're just a set of tasks. But now you can sit down and be like, if I'm going to actually, you know, you can do it in the morning. You can look at what your tasks are and you can be honest with yourself and be like, before you even start the day, I'm not going to do all this today. So let me just talk, like look at what I can do and what I think I could do. Now, of course you could also do this like somebody, anybody could do this with another digital tool, a calendar app, right? Right. But you don't have to do that. I actually think that this is a, I think honestly, like for me, I think like a paper calendar for time blocking makes more sense than digital calendars for time blocking. Like I know some people that do this and I just think that it could be more effective to actually do this stuff on paper. Like I don't really, the only thing that goes on my calendar is appointments. Yeah. Everything else goes in task lists.

'''Brad:''' Yeah. Digital calendars are literally the worst set of productivity apps.

'''Myke:''' Interesting.

'''Brad:''' They just are. Like tasks, task managers are great. Productivity managers are great. You know, all your omni focuses and things and all that stuff. Like calendars are like good for appointments and they're just not as good for time blocking.