Editing The Pen Addict 414/transcript (section)

== Digital vs Analog Product Confusion ==


'''Brad Dowdy:''' So that's the guidance I was looking for.

'''Myke Hurley:''' It has a lot of sections, this notebook. And if you were thinking it was a digital product, you would think, oh, I'll just tap the section and go to the place. It doesn't work like that. The sections are merely to just indicate to you visually where you are. Right. So like when Idina saw this, she was like, why don't they just make an app? Right. Because then all of that stuff will work. Right. So like if they made an app version of this, you would tap on the meal planner pages and it would take you to the meal planner. Right. In theory. But like I personally wouldn't want them to make an app because I know that Zoom King, because they're a company, they don't do this. They would not make as good an experience, honestly, as it would be using it in an app like GoodNotes. But you have to keep your mental model on the idea that this is exactly the same as if it was pen and paper. You do not get digital features from the PDF itself. Right.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yes. So that's the mental crossover challenge that I have. Right. I want this to be, let's say, interactive. Yes. Somehow. You want it to take advantage of the fact that it's on a computer. Right. Yeah. But it's literally a background that I will now write on top of. Yes. A piece of paper. So let's talk about the background. So in my, I got the week, which it seems like it has more content in it than the week. It's a two month. In the week. Yeah. It's like a two month trial.

'''Myke Hurley:''' I think that the product is called One Task Weekly Planner. Like it's, that's the name of the product. So it's a weekly planner, but they give you when you buy the one euro, a two month span. Now, you know, because I would love to see them do a different thing. But you sent me some screenshots of the one that you have. They gave you May, June, which is kind of pointless now. Yeah. Halfway through June. But like, you know, it's like they would have to be cutting up and chopping the thing. It costs a euro. The point is that you try it before going in for the 55 euro version.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' We're going to get to that. Yeah. But there are several different calendar options. There are some tracker options, habit trackers and different things. Things you like to see in a planner, right? Like, you know, you have your particular things you like in a calendar. Or I have my particular things I like in a calendar. And then you get to what to me is the core of any calendar is your weekly, right? Either your daily or your weekly. However, you like those layouts. Me, I like one week per page and those weeks have different blocks in it. Do you see the problem I'm seeing with this page?

'''Myke Hurley:''' Over 50% of the daily entry is taken up by the number.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' I think it's two thirds. It's wild. With the day and the date. There is one third of the block left to write your notes in. Yeah. I would like to propose. It's absolutely ridiculous.

'''Myke Hurley:''' The middle ground that they decided not to go for. I know why they've done this, right?

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Well, yeah, because so they can have those quotes.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Well, when I look at the daily page, right? I don't even know what they call it. But like the journal itself, right? It isn't like the actual weekly planner portion. And you've got like the large number. And you're supposed to, I guess, write things in there every day, whatever you'd write. They've put the large numbers on there because it is very visually appealing. Right? Oh, it looks awesome. It looks awesome. Now, if they would have just made that a very light version of the colors, you could write over it. But the colors are too dark. So all you can use is the dotted stuff underneath. Like, it's not efficient in any stretch of the imagination. And then you end up back in the problem that we're in before of like, if this was a printed product, you would be annoyed about the fact that they're taking up so much space, right? On the page. Because it's a digital product, you get that idea in your mind where you're like, oh, maybe like I can do something about this. But you can't because it's just like paper. Right? Right. Because if it was digital, you could imagine, oh, I will just tap this and I'll get a bigger field to write in. And it's just going to show me a condensed version. But like, that's not what this product is. So I think that there is a very definite to me form over function here, which I would just like to point out is the exact opposite of the iPod. Because the iPod was very functional. It was beautiful, but it was very functional. And one could argue as well, the same being for the T3 transistor radio thing. Yeah.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' And I'll argue against their analog planners, which I found to be extremely efficiently designed. Yes. And why I love them so much. This was the planner, if you recall, that I fell in love with. And then they decided to make my format in 2020. And that's when I got into the William Hanna because it had the format that I liked. So, yeah, I definitely think this is form over function, which leads us into the price point.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' I get it. Like, I don't want to crush this product whatsoever. Like, I like what they're trying to do.

'''Myke Hurley:''' And I appreciate that they are attempting to adapt, right? Like, this product, I would assume, exists because they're having other issues in their business, I would expect. Sure. And look, if me and Brad make planner product, well, I'm more than you. Like, you make notebooks, but I make a planner, right? So, like, I understand the desire to want to have a product because you can't get your shipping right. But, you know, like, people have asked for digital versions of the theme system. But it's not the product that I want to make for reasons like this because I just don't believe in the trade-offs. And if you want a digital product, you could probably just use, like, a digital notebook. Like, I don't think that I can offer a product which is good enough as a digital product. Right.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Right. What I think we're at is I think we've written down the recipe, but we haven't given it enough time in the oven yet.

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

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Right? Like, they have some good ideas here. But I think the execution was built around marketing over functionality, like you were saying earlier. Mm-hmm. Right? It's super good looking, right? It pulls your – it makes you go look at it and say, wow, this is cool. Then you open it up and it's like, where do I even write things?

'''Myke Hurley:''' Yeah, there's too many sections. I believe that they've tried to do too many things. So they have a homepage, which is hilarious, self-care journal, key date slash gift list, meal planner, workout log, habit tracker stickers, sun keen book. And then the actual daily and monthly pages that they have, like a monthly calendar and then the daily calendar that they have. Yeah. It's – in my opinion, it's not focused enough. Mm-hmm. And when I see these planners that have these million sections in them, I get overwhelmed. I get daunted because I feel like it's too much that you're asking me to do. And then I feel like, how much should I be filling in every day? Am I doing enough of this? Like I've found that those products to be too much for me. So I – it's the reason why I went ahead and made my own layout, which turned into a product that I like because it's more simple and flexible. And I'm really not – I mean, I can – there's no point in me – I'm not trying to sell the theme system to you here because you can't buy it right now. Like it's merely just talking about like where I come from with this and I just think that there's way too much going on in this product to make it something that I would want to use because there would be too much stuff that I wasted but I spent 55 euro on it.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah. That's a big barrier to entry. So let's talk about these price points real quick. So I think the 55 euro is your individual annual planner. Okay. And you would get the full month of what I'm seeing in the trial, the full year for what I'm seeing for the month in the trial. And then the two other, I guess, price points, I think that's like – is that like – I'm reading it more as like, hey, this is the corporate version, right? Yeah.

'''Myke Hurley:''' So the 200 and the 500 euro versions. For the 200 version, you can get colors and your own brand put on it. I don't really know why because like are they then thinking that you would give it out to your entire company and then if that's the case, 200 euro isn't enough money? I don't really understand that. Yes. The 500 euro version also includes custom layout options that you could choose. Yeah.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' And I think some of it comes with a physical planner too, like a paper planner. I don't think this thing is fleshed out yet. I think this is like an alpha type of thing that they're putting out there to me. Like they have all these – like a bunch of the notes on the product descriptions page are like coming soon things. Like it's a big ask.

'''Myke Hurley:''' But like that tells me more about the idea that this is a company that is attempting to adapt to the current geopolitical place that they're in, right? So they're trying to adapt their business to be like, okay, well, if we can't – I don't know if they're having shipping problems, but if they conceive of that or they're like, all right, we've had this idea. We think we can make more money than we're currently making, which could be a good thing right now. Then go for it. But I think that this product, I believe, requires more thought in it.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' So let's wrap this up on a little bit of disclosure. I'm talking to Fyodor Sumkin in the background as of this morning because when I ordered my trial, the file did not show. And the page was getting an error. And then I retried it this morning and I got the same error. So I sent them an email saying, hey, I can't get the file. And then the file magically appeared before they replied. I don't think – I think it was just like a coincidence. I don't think that they pushed anything. So I got the file and then Fyodor started emailing me.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' And in the end, like we were just going back and forth. I'm like, yeah, I'm trying to figure out this calendar. You know, I like how it looks and we're going to talk about it. I told him we're going to talk about it on the podcast today. And he sent me the full version of this calendar, like the unlocked, like the 55 euro version right before the show. So I haven't had time to look into it. But like I think a lot of pen addicts would have a tough time like figuring out how to efficiently use this. But I could see like more digital, like, you know, iPad for everything type of people maybe getting into things like this, which other people also make. So anyway, I'm talking to Fyodor in the background. And mostly we're going to be talking about maybe making some paper planners in the future, but not a digital one.

'''Myke Hurley:''' I'm sorry if I've torpedoed your business deals. Oh, no, no. With my deep to Rams opinions.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Oh, no, I agree with the opinions. I just think it's funny. It's just like all of a sudden we started this conversation. It's like, hey, I couldn't get the file. Can you help me out? And then the file showed up. And then all of a sudden we're on an email chain, which is cool because I want to talk about the paper stuff because it's so good. Sumkin paper is fantastic. I just didn't use it this year because they didn't have my format. So there you have it. I wanted to bring this. I put this topic in not because of the screenshot you sent me, but because I wanted to pick your brain because this is not a realm that I dabble in at all. Like how to use the iPad for planners and tasks. Like I get it for notes and, you know, work type of stuff. But for a setup like this, I was very confused. So I appreciate you humoring me with your insight on this. And I think it's like an even bigger topic we could explore. I just don't know the questions to ask right now because it feels so foreign to me.

'''Myke Hurley:''' For me, it's just like this is what my pens and my paper are for. Like the digital tools don't work for me in this regard when I'm just drawing on a PDF. I would want it to be actually taking advantage more of what the digital platform can do for me as opposed to trying to replicate the pen and paper experience in a digital way. Because I just think that that is it's not really the best of any world.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah, I think that's perfectly said. All right. I got a bunch more new products I want to talk about. You know, every now and then we get kind of a rash of things or I get a backlog of things I want to talk about. Myke, and the latest from Tactile Turn is the Side Click. So it's a sort of bolt action idea of a pen. And if you pull this up in the link in the show notes, these are actually just going on sale today. This is a coincidence. Will sent me these pens a couple weeks ago knowing that he was going to launch them soon. And he asked me, you know, if I wanted to review them. I said, of course, I want to review them and send me one to give away, which he did. So I'll be doing all of that soon. It just happens to be that by the time you listen to this podcast, these pens should be launched on Tactile Turn. But what this is, Myke, is he designed this button mechanism. And it cracks me up here. Listen real quick. That's pretty solid, right? I think you could hear that. So that was me retracting the tip of the pen. So you click it down like that. And then you unclick it with the button on the side. It's a cool mechanism. And that's difficult engineering for a pen to get that to work correctly. Like, and he goes through. Will does a great job of getting into the weeds on this post. We'll link into the show notes if you're interested in this style of pen. The funniest part is he mentioned his idea came from a pen called the Mitsubishi Boxee. Which I think a lot of people might be familiar with. I'm familiar with it. I've reviewed it on the blog before. It's essentially the entry-level ballpoint for uni Mitsubishi. It's like a $1 or less pen or the pen you buy, you know, in dozens for your office. It's like a cool barrel, poor writing ballpoint pen. Like, exactly what you'd expect from an office cabinet. But it has this really unique mechanism where you click in the knock on the top. And then you retract it by hitting this button on the side. So Will's taken that idea, turned it into a tactile turn style pen, and it came out great. So I'm going to review the titanium. There's three different sizes. I'm going to review the titanium short. And then I'm going to give away a copper standard, which is the full size. So the full size one fits like the G2 and the Pilot Juice refills, those longer refills. And the shorter ones fit the Parker style refills. So I think it's really good. I love what Will does. He has really stepped up his game over the last few years. I'm a fan. And just, you know, keep an eye out on these pens if this is something you're looking for. And then I'll be giving away, I'll probably do the giveaway next week for the copper one. So stay tuned for that. But I just really like the explanation and details that Will went into on the creation of this pen. It's pretty cool.