Editing The Pen Addict 149/transcript (section)

== Hoban Cards ==


'''Stephen Hackett:''' All right. So this episode of pen addicts is also brought to you by Hoban cards. Hoban cards creates affordable, beautiful custom letterpress printed calling cards. If you haven't picked one of these up and held it, you're really missing out. Um, just go look at their website right now. It's, it's seriously beautiful. These cards are perfect for people who don't need a lot of business cards, but want a small batch for special interactions. You know, people like me at my job, I basically just burn through business cards. But if you want something tailored, something to leave an impression, this is the way to go. If you're at a conference and need to impress people or an important business meeting, sometimes you just need those fancy cards. There are 18 gorgeous pre-designed templates to choose from that are focused on topography and simplicity. The cards that you'll see from Hoban are elegant. There's, that's really just the perfect way to describe them. They're classy handmade goods. Just what every pen addict needs. Every card is hand printed on thick, 100% cotton paper with a great texture using 1500 pound letterpress from 1902. It's the real deal. And if you wanted, Hoban cards can also provide matching stationary items like note cards and writing stationary if you so desire. If you need sort of the complete package, they can really help up your correspondence game. Now there are free samples available from their website. And when you do choose to buy, use the discount code washburn, W-A-S-H-B-U-R-N-E for a free shipping anywhere in the world. If you haven't done it already, go to hobancards.com to find and see more. Thank you so much to them for supporting this show and all of Relay FM.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' You know, I've been, I keep threatening to order the Hoban cards and I keep forgetting. And now with the pen show coming up, I'm going to need some thank you cards. So I'm going to do that after the show. I'm going to order, order the Hobans that I keep forgetting to order. They have some, uh, some, uh, like stationary and not just like the business cards. They have some, uh, note cards that you can write notes on. So I'm going to do that. Um, before I get into the topic, I wanted to talk about back on your jet stream, only 0.7 millimeter and only blue for you, right?

'''Stephen Hackett:''' That's right.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah. So 0.7 millimeter jet stream is the one I recommend far and away the most. The 1.0 millimeter jet streams tend to have kind of blotchy issues. They don't write as well as the 0.7s. And then anyone who I've recommended the 0.5 to has said, Oh my God, that is way too fine. It's like a needle. And they actually make a smaller one than that. The 0.38. Most people don't like the 0.5. So the 0.7 for those who want to try out a jet stream is definitely the sweet spot. And I highly, highly recommend the blue ink. I get blue ink in all my ballpoint type inks. I just don't, don't really care for black, um, ballpoint type inks nearly as much as I do blue.

'''Stephen Hackett:''' Yeah. I mean, for me, you know, if I'm marking up documents or something, it's just much easier to spot. And, um, totally. So you have a surprise topic.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Well, no, it was, it's, no, it's, it goes along with this. We were talking about writing all this stuff down and I was listening to all this stuff that you put into your notebooks. And I know how busy your life is and how like important, like your family stuff is. Do you do any type of journaling? Like any like personal stuff? And does that go somewhere? Does that live somewhere? Or do you not, do you not do it? You may not like, I don't. Oh yeah.

'''Stephen Hackett:''' No, no, I do. It's, um, so I use, uh, the Mac and iOS app, uh, day one, which if you haven't checked out and you're an Apple user should definitely look at, um, for, for a long time, I did journal in notebooks and, uh, you know, maybe we'll circle back to this, but, uh, I wanted something that was a little more searchable and something that I could kind of have all of it with me at once. And so, you know, day one's been out a couple of years and started checking that out. And, um, uh, I'm a very visual person. So like a lot of my little day one entries, like yesterday, for instance, you know, uh, yesterday was Easter. We took a picture of the kids all dressed up in front of a dogwood tree, uh, in the neighborhood. Uh, I've taken the picture every year we've lived in our house and, you know, the kids just get bigger and bigger. And so, you know, I had the picture in there and then wrote a little bit about, you know, what we did that day and about how they're growing up and, you know, how, you know, kind of how, how I feel about that, which is, if any parent can guess, uh, makes me sad, um, sad and happy, mostly sad. Yep. Um, so yeah, so it's sort of that, I like the digital approach for that multimedia. Um, and that I can just, you know, I can do it anywhere. It's on my phone and iPad and computer. So.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah. I, I think that's, that's super helpful for that. And it, that there's a few things that I always threaten to do and then I never do. And that's one of them, um, is journaling at least in day one. I know I won't journal necessarily in paper. That just, that actually doesn't really like compute in my head for some reason is, as pen and paper centric as I am. That type of thing doesn't necessarily compute. I've never been a handwritten journal type person. So yeah, I was, I was interested to see how you, how you did that and, uh, you know, what you use for that. So that's perfect. Now you're talking about like with the digital part and being very visual and, you know, wanting to see those pictures, which, you know, that's what the digital medium's for. That's really, really perfect usage for that. But for all of our notes and all of our things that we keep in these paper notebooks, do you have any type of digitizing system that you use to kind of save and have things readily available for search later?

'''Stephen Hackett:''' Uh, I do. So, you know, like I said, I've, I've used field notes for years. I've got a current burn rate of about five weeks that used to be shorter. Um, you know, is that, that sort of how fast I fill one up depends on, of course, how busy work is and what I'm doing.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' And that's pretty strong actually. I'm, I'm slower than that.

'''Stephen Hackett:''' Yeah. And one thing is I'm in a lot of client meetings with my job. So I, I, I take analog notes, um, A, because I can sketch and like, you know, outline and kind of draw things out, but also it's, it's much less intimidating and distracting than to have a laptop or even something like an iPad in a meeting in my experience. Some people can really do it. I can't. So, um, so yeah, so, you know, I struggled with a long time of, I have all this stuff in these notebooks and I need to reference it. And for a long time they stay just bound in a big rubber band and my desk drawer at work. And, you know, someone was like, Oh, what about this thing that was six months ago? Then I'd like go hunt it down and like, try to remember the timeframe. And that, uh, didn't it scale? You know, I don't know how many, uh, actually I can tell you, um, I have to date filled up, uh, 29 field notes, uh, since, since, uh, well, and a couple other notebooks, but since, since 2011. Um, and so what, what I started doing is, is doing high resolution scans of them. So on a flatbed scanner, you know, nothing special, nothing of a flashy, just a flatbed scanner, uh, scanning them in color and saving them as PDFs just on Dropbox. Um, and that gives me the ability to, to find them. I named the files based on the date range. I filled the notebook. So, um, you know, for instance, you know, the file name might be 2014, 7, 17 through 2014, 8, 20. So I know that was mid July to mid August of last year. Someone says, Hey, what about that thing? Uh, you know, if I can narrow it down to a month or two, I can find it pretty quickly. I, I don't do any OCR stuff. So I know you guys have spoken with that in the past where you scan something in or, and the computer has to figure out what you said. My handwriting is not anything that OCR software has ever been able to deal with. Um, but again, the.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' That's, that's pretty common. Yeah. Yeah. It's a tough, that's a tough game.

'''Stephen Hackett:''' Yeah. I mean, OCR is like, seems like, like putting man on the moon seems simpler than OCR. Right. It seems like magic. Um, I mean, you know, the date range was really the breakthrough for me of, Hey, I can name these things when I filled them up. And so, you know, I can look back in 2011, 2012 at a different job than, you know, I can, I can open those up and I can see, you know, what I was working on. And, um, and because they're on Dropbox, I have, I have them with me. So if I'm in, if I am in a meeting and someone says, Hey, what about that thing? Especially if I've just changed over to a new field notes. Uh, in fact, now I carry an old one, like in my backpack, maybe for a couple of weeks just to make sure that, uh, you know. Right.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' You have like that carryover.

'''Stephen Hackett:''' Right. Right. Exactly. Cause you gotta, gotta, you're like, Oh, we met last week. You don't remember what we talked about. I'm like, no, I wrote it down. I have no idea. Um, but, uh, but yeah, so, you know, I can pull it up on my, on my iPad or phone and, and it's not, you know, super great, but it, it, again, I can sort of narrow in on what I need to find and then, um, you know, jog my memory that way.