Editing The Pen Addict 43/transcript (section)

== Grocery Shopping ==


'''Brad Dowdy:''' And you want to start with your first item. You get in there. You get your cart. You go. You're in the produce section.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Because that's where all grocery stores shop internationally, by the way. They start in the produce section.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' And what do you have to do? You have to take it out of your pocket. Okay.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Turn, hit the home button or the power button. Swipe the lock screen. If you've got a passcode, God forbid, da, da, da, da, da. And, okay, great. Now you're ready to shop. You go, you know, you pick up your few things or whatever. And whatever your sleep time is set on it, five minutes, ten minutes, whatever, I can guarantee that thing's going to go to sleep. You're going to have to perform that action all over again. You're going to probably have to perform that action at least a dozen times throughout your shopping trip. If, you know, it's a, you know, kind of regular size grocery trip. Right? Probably half a dozen to a dozen times. How much time is that taking?

'''Brad Dowdy:''' With that piece of paper, you're going to pull it out of your pocket. That's the only step. Right? There's no lock screen. There's no, you know, there's no, maybe you folded it. Maybe you put it on too big of a piece of paper. Use index cards next time. And you can save yourself a couple of seconds from having to unfold it. But that's about it. You know what I mean? I mean, paper is always on. That's exactly right. That's exactly right. So, yeah. And so you don't, you know, and I'm sorry. And maybe it's me. When you get to a certain age, and I'm of a certain age, I'm older than both of you. I'm probably, you know, I'm probably older than most of the people listening, actually. Because I'm an old guy. Hey, I'm right there with you. Don't give me too much credit. Well, then you know. When you, you know, when you're in your 20s, you think, oh, I've got all the time in the world. I'm going to live forever. And you get to be about 40, 45, you start to realize, I don't have much time left. And I'm certainly not going to waste it trying to open some app in the middle of a grocery store. I'm going to pull out a piece of paper and get the job done. Because I don't have, I'd rather be spending this time doing something else, like having a beer and watching football or something. I don't know. But, you know, there's better things to do with your life than, you know, monkeying around with apps all the time. Yeah.

'''Patrick Rhone:''' I mean, it sounds crazy, but it was really kind of a jarring thing for me that when someone said it, I was like, absolutely, I'm going to go get this app. And it really hit me like someone threw a brick against my head, like right in the middle of searching for this app. I was like, what are you doing? It's ridiculous.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' You have the right solution. And that's not to say the apps are never the best solution. There are certainly times when the app is better, where it makes more sense, where it saves you time, where it saves you money. What have you. But the other thing that you bring up, and I think is an interesting one, is for some people, paper would never work. All of the fiddly work of having to, you know, first of all, capture the grocery list and then sit down and reorder it. I mean, basically, you're trading your time. All the time that you would be spending monkeying around with the app, you're trading monkeying around with the paper, right? Sure, sure. Including that time you spent with the app in the store. And when you add it all up, who knows? The paper might actually take longer. But that's only one metric. That's only one part of the equation. The other part of the equation is you just plain enjoy it, right? I enjoy the act of writing out a good list, a good grocery list, or a good to-do list, or that sort of thing, right? And that's the pleasurable part for me. Not the, you know, not the, you know, the capturing of that stuff or the ordering of that stuff or the messaging, but just simply the writing of that stuff. To write with a nice pen and a good piece of paper or to sit down with a nice notebook. And it's one of the reasons why, you know, as much as I've tried to use, you know, things like Day One and, you know, online journals and things like that, I keep coming back to my Levenger Five-Year Journal. Because it's just such a nice experience to pull out a good pen and to write on great paper. And, you know, it feels honest to me. And that's, you know, I just think that that's something that a computer will never replace for me. Right? And that's the way that I work. And that's kind of, you know, the best way for me. And no matter how many other things I try, and I do try the other things, I try the computer things. But paper remains my sensible default. Pen and paper remain my default. Those are the ones I fall back on when everything else stops working. Because that always works for me.