Editing The Pen Addict 194/transcript (section)

== Notebook Usage ==


'''Myke Hurley:''' Good stuff. Yeah. All right. So next up, we are going to address my notebook usage stuff.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah. I've been waiting for this. We keep putting it off, but we usually because we've had full shows or interviews or whatever, but it's also given you some time to think on it. Right. So I'm anxious to hear, you know, how you've gotten into or if you have gotten into actually using your notebooks more because you were having a dilemma not too long ago.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Yeah. So I wanted to run through some of the suggestions, some of my favorite suggestions that I receive from people and kind of talk about why I think it could or wouldn't fit in my life. So Brandon wrote in to say, once a week, pen and paper out for a 15 minute coffee. This is a great suggestion. I just wish I had the ability to do this more. There are no, there's no good coffee shops where I live. Yeah. So with these sorts of things, like I'm doing this when I'm going out for the day. So then I'm going to have my laptop with me or my most likely now my iPad Pro. And that makes it a little bit more difficult for me to disconnect because I'm going to be sitting in front of the device.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' You could always not bring it.

'''Myke Hurley:''' But then I'm not doing work.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' I know. Or you could have it at home with your tea. Yeah. Yeah.

'''Myke Hurley:''' So that's when I could do it, right? Is taking it downstairs and having it with my coffee in the morning. Where instead what I'm usually doing is reading Twitter whilst I'm having my coffee.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yep. That's the same here. My coffee time in the, my morning coffee time is usually my catch up on digital stuff time.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Yeah. But let me, let me tell you, one of the biggest problems for me is when I am doing this kind of thing and I have the notebook is I don't know what to do with it. Like what do I put in the notebook? Right. So that there are some things in here that address some of those problems, but that's, that's part of it. It's like, yeah, that's a great idea, but I would just be sitting and looking at the notebook. You have no idea what to put in there. So Kathy suggested a time diary. Now this is really interesting. Tracking what I do all day so I can figure out what only I can do and what I can outsource. Now Kathy is also referencing some discussions I've had on other shows about thinking in the future, the not too long future of what could I hand away to an assistant? Because that's something that I'm thinking of maybe within the next year or so. Is it possible for me to try and hand away some of my work to somebody else and or just working out the things that I should and shouldn't be doing? And the idea of something like a time diary is very interesting. So I would like to ask Kathy if she is able to provide me with an example of what this type of thing looks like. I'd be quite interested in that as a thing.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah. So I don't do this either. I love the idea of it. Our friend, Sean Blanc, just put out a post recently where he kind of front loads the time diary, if you will. He gets up in the morning, has his coffee, breaks out his notebook and basically minute to minutes out the day. Right. So the time diary is one shot in the beginning of the day, if you will, as opposed to breaking it out as you go through your day, if that makes sense. So that's something to consider also. I mean, it might even be, I didn't totally look at the specifics of Sean's picture where he showed it, but I bet it's down to like five minute increments.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Yeah, he does that. I don't know if I could live like that. That's just not the way that I work. Like my day goes into wild places I never expected. All right, next. All right. So next up is a suggestion from Thomas Hall. Of course, the lovely Mr. Hall. So he said, try to do some reflecting journaling or brainstorming first thing in the morning or the end of the evening. Just you, coffee, pen and paper. Anything that is good, you can photograph and put into Trello, Slack or email. Anything that isn't can be scrapped. Best of both worlds. This is probably the type of thing that I should be thinking about, especially at the brainstorming aspect. But my my issue is like scheduling these things, forcing myself to do them. I need it. It's the routine aspect of it, which I think I struggle with the most. And I don't know why that is.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah. So I think we'll talk. You put down a note towards the end of this that I think I'll elaborate on what's working for me, but it's close to this. So I'll save that to the end.

'''Myke Hurley:''' But what I like is the idea of being able to take pictures of these things. Yes. Work with them that way.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah. And let me throw a shout out for our friend Dave Ray and indexed. I haven't been using it, but that's been the simplest one that I've found to to capture and save like stuff you put in a notebook.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Yeah. Yeah. So that. Yeah. I remember that. That's a good thing. We'll have to get that for the show notes too. Yep. Can you find that for me? Sure. I'll put that in there. Sarah suggested, don't be afraid to write your lists and appointments out first and then transfer them over to digital later. Yeah. I know people that do this type of thing and I can see how that works. But one of my things is I'm, I would just be writing out what's in OmniFocus and then writing it back in again. You know, like that, that's the way that it would work for me. And I don't feel that one making sense to me personally.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' So, yeah, I, I actually, if I do that, I do it the other way around. I have my appointments or tasks digitally, then I will break them down for the day in a notebook.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Yeah.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' That's how I do it. I don't, I don't do a back and forth, but most everything, I, I, I need to have stuff in a digital calendar. I like alerts and reminders and things like that. But then I'll look at today, for example, and then that will go on paper. I do that a lot.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Okay. I understand that. I don't think this one works for me so much. Sure. Because I would feel like I'm just duplicating the work. It feels, it would, for me personally, it feels strange to open my task management app that's meant to help me do things and then waste time writing it out. That's how I look at it for me personally. So it feels kind of counterproductive.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Dave suggested maybe try some structured writing, a doctor format, maybe borrow from Sean Blanc. Again, he comes up. I didn't see that. Write down three things you're grateful for every day. Maybe good things, bad things, quotes, thoughts for yourself a year from now. Some regularity and repetition can get you putting pen to paper and the first few words will beget more words. So I started to write some of that, this type of stuff in my field notes book, like things that were interesting, things that happened. And then realized that I want this stuff in day one.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' That was coming out of my mouth. This sounds like how you use day one. I know you're an avid day one user. And one of the best tips you've ever given, which I haven't implemented because I'm a dummy, is how you just put down people that write nice things to you. If they send you a nice tweet that you really, really appreciate, you'll copy that over into day one. I think that's a great idea.

'''Myke Hurley:''' What goes in day one for me is people making me feel good. Right. And interesting things that have happened in my day or like, so for example, there's been this whole big thing over the last few days about the Apple Pencil. And we've been talking about it on a couple of shows and it's a whole, it's a whole thing. I'll put a couple of links in the show notes. But basically what's happened is, and I believe it's through the work of me and Gray and a couple of others, Apple have kind of changed direction on something. So this has gone in day one because that's an achievement for me.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah, exactly. This has come full circle all the way back to hashtag Myke was right. I don't want to say that, but yeah.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Yeah. So it's like, it's just been one of those things that like, this has been really interesting for me. This has never happened to me before. So now I, you know, I've wanted to record that and that's the type of stuff for me that goes in day one.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah. Shout out to Glenn HK in the chat room, Arctic Monkey lyrics. Yeah. That totally needs to go down.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Yep.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' I'm sorry. That's hilarious.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Maybe I could do that. Kate wrote a great blog post at Pandora's box, which is a great URL about everything that she uses her notebooks for. Now, even Kate says in the post that maybe this isn't so helpful for me because a lot of the stuff that she talks about is meeting notes going in notebooks, right? Which is exactly what my main use was before. But she mentioned a couple of other things like for art and quotes and one that she mentioned and she called me out, right? She, she practices Chinese characters. She's trying to learn how to do this stuff. And she suggested that when I start learning Romanian to write some of the words out that I'm using.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Ah, that's a really good idea. Yeah.