Archive for ‘Tech’ Category
The Pareto Principle, the Internet of Things, and Paper: A Printer to Make You Smile
Do you hate your printer? OK, hate is a strong word, but let’s talk.
My first printer, a noisy dot-matrix Imagewriter II, was part of my first Mac purchase in December 1985. It had a sleek white housing, took continuous-form feed (or fan-fold) paper (which, at the time, we likened to paper towels), and took black ink only. It had a few simple lights and buttons that didn’t require reading a manual to understand. It was sleek, did what it was told, and aside from being incredibly heavy, fit well with my student life requirements.
I’ve had a few printers in the past three decades, but none as pleasing as that Imagewriter II. Epsons and Canons and HPs, oh my! They’ve frozen, their drivers have mysteriously failed, and they have crankily refused to print with black ink when the cyan (that’s yellow, y’know) was not tippy-top. My current printer, since it was about six months old, refuses to print unless I unplug it from the power supply and plug it in again before printing. Every. Darn. Time.
You’d think there would have to be a better way! Well, one 27-year-old German industrial designer thought so, too.
PAPER
Ludwig Rensch had an idea. What if printers weren’t horrible, awful, frustrating pieces of technology that we depended upon for providing tangible representations of information, but were instead easy to use and nifty to gaze upon, and did what we needed?
His prototype? Paper: A Printer You Actually Want
In Rensch’s words:
Paper is a machine that can print, scan and copy in a pleasant way. It communicates its function, provides clear feedback and uses physical controls to operate the key functions with ease.
Seriously? No randomly blinking lights that are reminiscent of Morse Code but have no clear meaning?
No refusal to print in black and white unless three other color inks are full?
No ugly metal and plastic blob that makes your kitchen or living room feel industrial?
Well, that is a breath of fresh air.
THE BASICS
Instead of the black and grey boxes we’ve come to know, Rensch’s Paper is a brightly colored, lightweight, all-in-one printer/scanner/copier.
Imagine having a traditional flatbed printer or scanner but then turning it on its side. In lieu of a traditional stack of copy paper, Rensch’s Paper prints or copies to a continuous sheet (sans tractor-feed holes) on an upright paper roll with pages cut one slice at a time, much like Berg’s Little Printer, which I wrote about in Indulgences, Unitaskers and Paper Doll’s Take on the Little Printer.
Instead of black or grey plastic and metal that’s suited for office space, Rensch designed something that adds some quirky color. (Although Paper Doll, herself, has a lifelong history detesting the color orange, this blog will not hold that against Paper.)
The revised design makes it more compact, space-saving and mobile. There’s just one switch to select “scan” or “copy,” the LEDs let you know the status of Paper’s ink levels, and there’s a handle on top so you can pick it up at a moment’s notice without feeling like you’re carrying all your worldly possessions like in the closing scene from Fiddler on the Roof.
THE PRINCIPLES
As a professional organizer, I was delighted to see that Rensch developed the user interface to follow the Pareto Principle: 80% of your success comes from 20% of your effort. In organizing, we usually take that to mean that 80% of the time, we wear 20% of our clothes (wearing and washing, and storing them for easy access and wearing them again), while kids play with 20% of their toys, and so on. We focus on that to show how, when we discard some subset of the 80% were rarely use or touch, we regain space without regretting the loss of what we’ve donated or tossed.
Rensch says:
This is where the paradox of technology kicks in. Devices become incredibly complicated. Microwaves, Remote Controls, TVs, Cars, Ovens, Printers, Coffee Machines – they all have features that the majority of the owners never use. That is because they don’t know how or why, and they’re not willing to spend time and energy to learn how to use something. Especially in the days of streamlined services and apps, that make life so easy without instructions or efforts, it seems ridiculous that one has to read a user’s guide to heat up some food.
Rensch applied the Pareto Principle, considering the likelihood that 80% of the time, we only use 20% of the features of office appliances like printers, copiers, and scanners, so why create bulk and disarray with more than is needed? To achieve his goal, Rensch started at the beginning: he defined a printer’s key functions, analyzed the required procedures and simplified everything until he had created an easy-to-learn, simple-to-understand, aesthetically pleasing, and minimalistic product.
THE INTERNET OF THINGS…USED BY REGULAR PEOPLE
Rensch designed his Paper printer/scanner/copier as part of his graduate thesis Interacting with Things, which looked at how machines can be used more intuitively, and he asked three basic questions:
- Is it possible to transfer the quality of a digital user experience to an everyday object?
- Can we use physical feel to improve digital experiences?
- Are we able to make the information and the opportunities of the internet more tangible and experience them in physical things?
Then, he applied his concepts to three designs: Paper, PostPoster (an interactive graphical poster that uses a specialized conductive paint to generate sounds), and Musikbox 1188 and its app, a Bluetooth loudspeaker that lets you listen to music from your friend’s phone, tablet, or computer even if your friend (and her gadgets) are on the other side of the world.
The ever-expanding concept of the Internet of Things, upon which Rensch’s work is predicated, is key to understanding his designs. The Internet of Things, or IoT, is like where your Nest programmable thermostat or your “fridge of the future” can talk to your phone or computer and to one another to make your life more enjoyable. The thermostat can increase the A/C on a hot day so it’s just perfect when you walk in the door, but also send you an alert if your furnace is acting weird and the pipes might burst in winter. Meanwhile, your fridge can detect when you’re low on milk, your ingredients are about to expire, or you’re lacking what you need for the recipe you programmed in for Saturday — and then auto-order more groceries!
While most designers are eager for this Rise of the Machines and are welcoming our new programmable toaster overlords, the rare detractors are usually concerned with the security of IoT. Rensch, however, is more concerned about the humanity of it (per his thesis):
It’s the age of the smartphones. Like no other technology in the recent decades, they become part of our lives. Services offered in the internet allow us to do really complex stuff in no time, with no effort and in pleasant ways, for instant [sic] sell a bike to someone, find directions in foreign places and do business on the go. Static information that was bound in books and maps is now fluid and accessible from everywhere at everytime.
But these developments also must be viewed critically.
Even these miracle-machines have their down-sides. We all know people who are sunken into their Smartphone screens, absorbed by virtual worlds. And from time to time, we’ve been that person. All the Apps and Services are good and useful on their own, but to take care of everything only with our phones is distracting us from the outside world and our environment. Interactions with screens demand an enormous amount of concentration and leave the human motor functions and haptics unused.
Paper looks a lot like a throw-back to the days of mechanical buttons and dials, making use of the user’s fine motor skills to tune in the desired solution with basic physical controls and verify them with simple light signals. In that way, it reminded me of an old radio, where you turned the dial and when you hit upon an AM or FM station clearly, the tiny light would shine brightly.
Paper could work manually, only, but Rensch designed it to operate as an Internet of Things device — but better. According to Rensch, the device is meant to be seen as more of an “aesthetically pleasing creative tool that brings together the analog and digital worlds for transferring content from one to the other.”
Paper hasn’t left the virtual world behind. It can be operated via its own app on your mobile device or at a website in your computer’s browser.
To really appreciate the experience of using Paper, which to me, harkens back to my first experience with the design of Apple products, check out the video.
IN THE REAL WORLD
Of course, and I’m sure you expected this, there is sad news for those of us eager to try Paper out. You see, Paper is not-ready-for-prime-time because of the economics of the Office Supply Industrial Complex. Your frustrating HP or Epson is frustrating because it’s cheap, and it’s cheap because the companies know they can hook you with the low-price printer and weigh you down with printer ink made only for your style of printer, forcing you to come back time and again for a cyan you don’t really want or need.
Without Big Ink money to subsidize the development, manufacturing, and distribution of Rensch’s Paper, this pretty little thing won’t be on desks (or kitchen counters) anytime soon. We can only hope that the big guys will take Rensch’s approach under advisement, and give us a printer/scanner/copier we’d actually enjoy using.
Paper Doll Post:
The 2016 NAPO Organizers’ Choice Awards
Organizing is about losing (getting rid of things that no longer serve your goals, whether that’s clutter or bad habits) and winning (freeing up space in your home and office, time in your schedule, and peace in your thought processes).
Every year, the attendees of the National Association of Professional Organizers’ NAPO Conference and Expo vote for the best of the best among exhibitors. Categories in the 2016 NAPO Organizers’ Choice Awards include the best residential and business products, the best residential and business services, and an overall “Best In Show” award for whatever really captured the attention of the professional organizers and productivity experts in attendance.
And the winners were…
BEST RESIDENTIAL PRODUCT: Time Timer (modeled by Heather Rogers)
Few time management products could be considered more of a classic than Time Timer, which was already a beloved tool when I started my professional organizing business more than 15 years ago. At that time, back when dinosaurs roamed the earth, I owned one of the original Time Timers, an analog timer with a patented thick, red, circular “fanning-out” disc-like covering that diminished in size (from a maximum of 360° coverage for an hour) until time was up, and the red portion disappeared (hiding behind the clock display).
It was obvious that Time Timer provided a superlative way to explain the passage of time in a variety of circumstances — for teaching children the concept of time, for giving all participants in a discussion group equal time speaking (without needing an orchestra to “play them off”), for keeping meetings on task and on time, and for helping clients with ADHD and other time-related challenges master their appreciation of the passage of time. Let’s let Time Timer tell it:
The Time Timer product line has expanded in a variety of ways. From the original boxy Time Timer, there are now six varieties:
- Time Timer PLUS, with a quick-grab handle, a rugged case, and a durable clear lens to protect its patented red disk, measures 5.5″ x 7″ and requires one AA battery. It’s whisper-silent.
- Time Timer 3″, tiny enough to be tucked anywhere
- Time Timer 8″, perfect for your desktop, bedside, or anywhere you’re working
- Time Timer 12″, ideal for an office or meeting session, so you can see it from across the room
- Time Timer MOD is a 3.5″ x 3.5″ version that adds a little color to your productivity. The MOD features a colorful, removable, silicone cover for an extra layer of protection, like a thick smartphone skin. You can purchase the MOD with a Sky Blue, Charcoal Gray, or Lime Green cover, and there’s a Berry cover available separately.
- Time Timer MOD Sprint Edition ties in with the Jack Knapp book, Sprint, and comes with a Quick Start Guide highlighting the key principles of the “design sprint” framework developed by Google teams.
These Time Timers range from $29 to $39 on the Time Timer website.
Over the years, the Time Timer line branched out to include watches for a personal approach to managing time, from staying on task at work, home, or while doing school work to remembering to take medications or transition to the next location or task.
- Time Timer Watch PLUS Small — The small watch comes in Berry, Sky Blue, and Lime Green, with clock, timer, and alarm functions, vibrating and audible alerts, repeatable time segment settings (for interval training, Pomodoro productivity, etc.). The small watch has a soft silicone watch band designed to fit wrist circumferences of 4.75″ to 7″.
- Time Timer Watch PLUS Large, for larger wrists, has all of the same features, but measures 5.5″ to 8.25″ and comes only in Charcoal Grey.
Both styles of watches are $84.95.
Finally, because the need for time management doesn’t just live in the tangible world, there are Time Timer apps for the iPhone, iPad, Android phones, as well as Mac and Windows apps, offering customized timers. Prices range from $0.99 to $19.95.
BEST BUSINESS PRODUCT: Fujitsu ScanSnap
Longtime readers of Paper Doll know that good paper management sometimes means determining which information should exist in digital form, and that means mastering the skill of scanning.
Two years ago, in NAPO2014: Wirelessly Scanning the Horizon — What’s New in Scanning?, we looked at the Fujitsu ScanSnap iX500 Desktop Scanner. With an output resolution of up to 600 dpi for black and white (and 300 dpi for color), the ability to scan single-sided or duplex, a 25 page-per-minute scanning speed, a 50-page automatic document feed, one-button searchable PDF creation, and wireless scanning to Mac, PC, iOS or Android devices, the iX500 is still the belle of the scanning ball as far as professional organizers and productivity experts are concerned.
But the iX500 is only one member of the ScanSnap family, which also includes the mobile, handheld Fujitsu Document Scanner ScanSnap iX100. This little guy is only 14.1 ounces, so it lets you scan receipts and contracts on a business trip, school notes from the library or college dorm, or recipes and plastic ID cards from anywhere to your PC or Mac as well as well as your iOS or Android device. Via USB or Wi-Fi, the iX100 lets you scan to PDF (or even searchable PDF, if you’re using your computer), JPEGs, editable Word and Excel docs (again, on the computer), and send your scans via the ScanSnap Cloud feature to your Dropbox, Evernote, Google Drive, and other cloud services.
Paper Doll has often covered the best ways to decide if and what to scan, in classic posts like in Get Organized Month: Paper Control 102–Advanced Topics & Office Hours and Paperless vs. Less Paper: 6 Ways to Reduce Paper Consumption. However, I recognize that when it comes to the intricacies of the technical side of scanning, I am definitely not the ultimate expert. That’s why, on your behalf, dear readers, I rub elbows with someone who is. (Actually, in this person’s case, he’s super-tall, so his elbows would probably clock me in the ear, but you get the idea.)
If you’re new to going paperless, you definitely want to become familiar with Brooks Duncan of DocumentSnap. Start with his blog post, Going Paperless in 5 Easy(ish) Steps, and move on to his website for others of his gems:
- DocumentSnap Blog — from scanning into Evernote (and exporting out of it) to creating your own private cloud to document search, Brooks is your guy.
- Sign up to get his Paperless Cheat Sheet (linked from the front page) so that you can approach scanning in the right way.
- If you’re going to go the ScanSnap route, look into his Unofficial ScanSnap Setup Guide ($5 each for Mac or Windows, $8 for both.)
- And finally, if you’re thinking of scanning to the cloud, check out Brooks’ Paperless Security Guide, which, at $7, is a steal.
In addition to Time Timer and ScanSnap, the two big productivity stars, other winners of the 2016 NAPO Organizers’ Choice Awards included:
BEST BUSINESS SERVICE: NAPOSure
NAPOSure offers customized professional insurance for practitioners in the organizing and productivity fields. This includes coverage for property, loss of income, professional liability, auto, and employee bonding.
Because the federal government is slow to assign new NAICS industry classification categories, many professions that have existed for multiple decades (including professional organizers and productivity experts, coaches, ADHD specialists, and a variety of technology-related professionals) lack aAICS categorization, which makes it difficult to ensure appropriate professional insurance. For years, professional organizers were categorized by insurance companies as interior designers, even though that coverage approach was, at best, inappropriate. NAPOSure was the first insurance designed and customized for professional organizers.
Metropolitan Organizing’s Geralin Thomas has an excellent short post on How To Get the Best Insurance Coverage for Your Organizing Business, including selecting the appropriate types and levels of coverage.
BEST RESIDENTIAL SERVICE: 1-800-Got-Junk
We know that even if our clients are comfortable with purging the excess from their homes, not everything can find its way to a logical and useful next “home” via consignment or donation. Sometimes, stuff is broken, too far out of date, or otherwise too damaged to be of use to anyone, and that’s when 1-800-Got-Junk comes to the rescue. If you’ve got something non-hazardous that “two strong, able-bodied crew members can lift,” then they can get it out of your space.
This full-service junk removal company offers the upfront pricing, convenient pickups, and responsible disposal services that make professional organizers and our clients feel confident using. 1-800-Got-Junk was voted Best Residential Service, because they’ll pick up your household detritus, including old appliances and TVs, mattresses, furniture, carpets — even hot tubs! But they also service businesses, and will remove “junk” and recycle computers, monitors, and printers from your office space.
BEST IN SHOW: Lock & Rollin’ Flooring Solutions
I’m a generalist, working with both residential and business clients, but I specialize in paper and information management. So, I’m not often involved with garage and attic organizing systems, or other “heavy-duty” tools. However, clients are often looking for recommendations, and it was interesting to learn about Lock & Rollin’s Flooring Solutions.
Designed to help turn attics and crawl spaces into safe storage options, Lock & Rollin’ uses 32″ lightweight slats which slide together to form adjustable lengths of roll-out flooring that fit between attic joists. The creators state that it holds up to 250 pounds per square foot while being lighter than typical attic flooring, like plywood, so it should be easy enough to lift and carry, and they say it’s resistant to mold, mildew, and termites.
Lock & Rollin’ was surrounded by crowds throughout the conference, so all I could see while craning my neck was something that looked like a seriously heavy-duty Transformers-style yoga mat. At the risk of associating myself with an annoying “As Seen on TV” late-night commercial, as someone who fears falling through an unfinished attic floor, I found this video to be both explanatory and intriguing.
Congratulations to all the NAPO2016 Organizers’ Choice Award Winners!
Disclosure: Some of the links above are affiliate links, and I will get a small remuneration if you make a purchase after clicking through the links. The opinions, as always, are my own. (Who else would claim them?)
Paper Doll Post:
NEET & Cozy Cables: A NAPO 2015 EXPO Organizers’ Choice Award Winner
Everybody complains about cable storage. You can’t swing a lightning cable without hitting a blog post or video or Pinterest page on keeping cables untangled, separated, and safe, whether via retail products or DIY methods. For example:
- Paper Doll’s Cable Conundrums & the MOS: Magnetic Organization System
- Organizing the Cords Under Your Desk! by Helena Alkhas
- Cords and Cables and Labels and Controlling the Cables: 3 Novel Solutions by Jeri Dansky
- 10 Ways To Get Cables Under Control by Gina Trapani
- Organize, Store and Buy Computer Cables Wisely by David Caolo for Unclutterer
- How To Tame Cable Cord Chaos (video) by Lori Marrero
- Untangle Your Life: Living Organized With Cables and Cords by Apartment Therapy
- 61 Clever Cord Organizers
However, most of the standard stabs at keeping cables and cords organized seem to focus on cables that stay put in your home or office. Other than Paper Doll-recommended Grid-It!, a past NAPO EXPO fan favorite, we rarely see much about how to corral cables in transit so they don’t get tangled in our book bags, purses and when we’re on the go. Happily, the NAPO 2015 Annual Conference and Organizing EXPO had an exciting new entry in the world of cable organization.
NEET Cable Keeper
(©2015 Julie Bestry. Peter Chin, founder of NEET Products.)
Winner of the 2015 Organizers’ Choice Award, the NEET Cable Keeper is the equivalent of a tea cozy for your cables, if your tea cozy were crossed with a hoodie crossed with a corset. Each long, colorful strip of cloth material — NEET calls it a “shell” — isolates a single cord or cable from any other, and then includes these essential features:
Zipper — Here’s where the hoodie action comes in. There’s no threading your cable or cord through a complicated maze of plastic molding. (If you’ve ever tried to replace a drawstring in a pair of sweatpants, you know how frustrating that can be. Yes, you can attach a safety pin to guide the string, inch by inch, but ARGGGGGHHH, just recalling that makes Paper Doll grumpy.) Merely lay the cord or cable down across the NEET Cable Keeper and zip it up!
The bottom of the shell is flared, which allows you to encase larger USB ends, and it has ample space for multiple cables to be enclosed.
Structured Wire — Sewn into the length of the cloth strip is a bendable wire, much like the stays in a (modern) corset, that provide support stiffness and support. The structured wire services two purposes:
- It protects your cables and cords from damage. There’s no chance you’ll repeatedly fold your cord so tightly that the plastic coating will wear away, or accidentally crush it in a slammed filing cabinet drawer, damaging the delicate internal wires.
- It provides support for the whole cable or cord, making it suitable for wrapping neatly around your wrist as a bracelet, turning it into a loose necklace, or otherwise, bendy, gooseneck-lamp-style, making it beautiful as well as useful. NEET’s website even shows how to bend it into a stand for a smartphone.
Colorful Wardrobe — The NEET Cable Keeper comes in a variety of colors, so you can tell at a glance from across the room whether the cable you’re spotting is your Kindle charger or your Apple Lightning cord. The NEET Cable Keepers come in black, blue, gold, green, light blue, pink, red, purple, silver, white and yellow.
After you zip your cable cozily into the NEET Cable Keeper, like a toddler into a snow-suit, you’re set. It becomes part of the cable itself, so you have no additional pieces to carry or potentially lose; there’s no reason to take it off, unless you’re one of those people who likes to change the colors of your accessories on a daily basis. (Really, stop that.)
Take a peek:
You can get the Keeper two ways, both designed for mobile device cables measuring 3 feet (or about 100cm) or longer and 1/4″ in diameter. If your cable is longer than 3 feet, the width of the Keeper will accommodate you gently folding it before zipping it up.
- NEET Cable Keeper M, with just the Keeper, is $12.
- NEET Cable Keeper M with either a Micro USB cable or an Apple Lightning cable is $18.
It’s available directly from the NEET, and via Amazon, The Grommet and a few other retailers.
Although they are not yet available for purchase, NEET is developing a line of cable organizers for ear buds, laptops, home entertainment, and professional use such as for DJ’s and audio/visual work.
If you own a business and think it would be cool to brand these NEET Cable Keepers for your own customers, NEET founder Peter Chin says, “The NEET Cable Keeper is customizable! We can customize NEET for you to promote your company, event, and brand. Great for corporate giveaways, employee retention programs and brand awareness. Send us a message and we will gladly connect you to our authorized customization partners.”
Zip, wind and organize. Neat (I mean, NEET), eh?
Paper Doll Post:
All About That Place (Where You Write Things Down)
To improve something, you must first observe & document it. Pen on paper once a day is a sufficient start.— Garrick van Buren (@garrickvanburen) November 17, 2014
Life and the internet have been conspiring recently, causing me to think about the issue of organizing one’s thoughts, and particularly, organizing them with pen on paper, as van Buren describes, rather than by typing.
Over the course of a few weeks, in addition to a speaking engagement and regular client work, I was involved with helping organize Chattanooga’s Second Annual Diabetes Expo. For all of these projects, there were little tasks, insights and just plain blobs of information coming up on my horizon. I encountered information I had to share with others (immediately as well as on delay), and had to juggle oodles of swiftly changing logistics, with not a lot of time to capture, let alone massage and manipulate, the data.
Before and during the expo, I was on my feet, running the length and width of a room the size of a high school gymnasium, plus up and down two short flights of stairs. (My Fitbit loved me that day!) Trying to walk and talk and type on an iPad just didn’t work, and I quickly gave up and went back to my beloved purple legal pad and pen.
A page for problems needing solutions. A page for the mapped layout of all of the vendors. A page for checking off received door prizes. A page for changes we want to make to improve the process next year. You get the picture.
Was my handwriting abysmal and probably illegible to anyone but myself? Absolutely. But when my arms were full, I didn’t fear the budget-busting consequences of dropping my legal pad as I would have with my iPad.
After the month’s early hubbub, as I plowed through all I’d missed reading from my email and RSS feed and Twitter favorites, I eventually noticed the synchronicity of multiple open tabs in my browser. To borrow from Meghan Trainor:
It's All About That Place (Where I Choose to Write Things Down) Share on XFirst, I came across professional organizer Carrie Peeples guest-posting on Monica Ricci‘s blog, Your Life. Organized. Carrie wrote about The Secret To Shutting Up Your Busy Brain, and mentioned that:
The act of writing tells your brain that you’ve already processed that information and don’t have to worry about it. It frees your brain to do other things like focus on traffic or solve the next problem. The more you spend time trying to remember something the more time you’re NOT getting other things done.
This is known as the Zeigarnik Effect. Unless we rehearse or repeat things like phone numbers, or the beloved “a loaf of bread, a container of milk, and a stick of butter,” little details disappear from our short-term memories.
And a bigger deal, over the longer term, is that we tend to worry about the things where we’ve failed to achieve closure.
So, Carrie hits on the essentials: get it out of your head and down on paper (or the digital equivalent of paper), and your mind can go from the basic “what” and move on to more robust “why ” and “where” and “how” of the issue. When you write on a sticky note, it makes the information stick. Except, longtime readers know that I don’t want you to write on a sticky note or any other floozies (AKA: loose scraps of paper). I want you to have a notebook (paper or digital) that suits your capturing style. But do CAPTURE the information or ideas before they seep out of your brain and into the ether.
Next, Patrick Rhone of The Cramped, an entire blog dedicated to the analog writing experience, discussed a question of great importance: Why Analog? He delved into just a few of the reasons why handwriting something (vs. using your opposable thumbs to text it, or telling Siri to remember it) is advantageous. Rhone talks about the depth of history of the written language vs. digital data, the siren song of our personal notations, and the way a written draft shows the step-by-step thought process (including messy strikethroughs) that tend not to be visible with what we type. But my favorite of his points is this:
Writing by hand helps me retain more information. Countless studies show that the act of writing by hand is better for both retention and comprehension of ideas than typing them digitally. It engages the senses and synapses by a factor more than digital. I write by hand because it is the best way for me to remember and learn.
The Cramped also pointed me in the direction of Sienna Craig’s Huffington Post blog from earlier this year, entitled Reasons to Love Writing by Hand. Craig, a Dartmouth College professor, expresses surprise when her students report handwriting as creating an obstacle between the self and the expression of self. She writes:
One particularly eloquent student described handwriting as a kind of out-of-body experience: “It just doesn’t feel like it is me writing if I am not on a computer,” she said. This floored me, because for as long as I can remember, writing by hand has felt like an essential way for me to not only grapple with the world, but also to try, as the ancient Greeks remind us, to know thyself. My love for writing by hand takes many forms, and like most love affairs, is bittersweet, twisted in places, not immune to paradox and contradiction…
The entire essay is definitely worth a read (once you’ve finished this post, of course), but it’s her comment about paradox and contradiction that especially struck me, though I wasn’t immediately sure why until DocumentSnap‘s Brooks Duncan retweeted his The Paperless Conference from earlier this year. In it, Brooks — Paper Doll friend and resident expert on going paperless — included various references to my own blog post, NAPO2014: Taking Notes–The Paperless Experiment. That post includes citations of the research Rhone mentioned, above, about the superiority of writing (vs. typing) for comprehension and retention.
But it also gave me some stylistic insight.
Like Sienna Craig, I’m quick to note that I’m not a Luddite. (I hope my techie posts on digital signatures, Evernote and digital photography attest to that.) But I finally realized where the contradiction lies for me: between creating and capturing.
When I’m attending a class and taking notes, or working with clients, when I am doing a consultation on the phone or trying to understand a doctor’s instructions, my instinct is always to capture information on paper. However, when I draft my Paper Doll blog posts, when I write a set of complicated instructions or a delicate email, my fingers itch to reach out for the keyboard.
And certainly when I wrote 57 Secrets for Organizing Your Small Business, the words and phrases made their debuts in Microsoft Word, Evernote and drafts of emails. (My publisher would want me to note that Secret #4 in the book is Be Faithful To Your Information-Capturing System, and explains how to ensure the preservation of important thoughts and information, no matter your preferred capturing style. Y’know, like if you wanted to buy a holiday present for someone with this issue. Just sayin’.)
In essence, I’ve learned that for me, I hand write to take information in, to help my brain process it. But when I create, handwriting is an impediment — it slows me down. Perhaps it’s because I honed my typing skills in December of my freshman year of college, with a friend’s Mac and three term papers to type in one weekend, and now mfffflpffffl years later, my typing speed can keep up with my thoughts while my spidery, aging penmanship cannot.
Before these last few weeks, I hadn’t thought about when and why I choose to use analog vs. digital, paper vs. screen. I only knew that I do, and that it was instinctual. Dear readers, what about you? Are you like Patrick Rhone, all about the pen? Do you emulate pretty-much-paperless Brooks Duncan? Or are you more like Sienna Craig and myself, somewhat self-aware of your contradictory capturing relationship?
Wherever your incoming and outgoing thoughts live, it’s all about the place where you capture them so that you can set your mind free.
Paper Doll Post:
Organize Your Reading: A Customized Digital Newspaper…That’s Actually Paper!
Are you a reader? Organizing the form of information flow can be just as important as squaring away the content.
Previously, we’ve discussed how handwritten notetaking correlates better with learning and improved cognition than typewritten notes. Also, a recent Scientific American piece, The Reading Brain in the Digital Age: The Science of Paper versus Screens, reviewed the current research. It found that there was at least some indication that “by limiting the way people navigate texts, screens impair comprehension” and that “screens and e-readers interfere with two other important aspects of navigating texts: serendipity and a sense of control.”
Leaving behind the science of the matter, sometimes, you just want to read things on paper. Perhaps you want to scribble something in the margin, or highlight it, or circle a portion, or post it on your mirror for inspiration or your office door to make a statement. You want to clip it out and paste it on your high school locker door, or dorm room bulletin board, or office cubical half-wall. You want to share it with your great-grandma.
But GamGam may not want to log in to Facebook or Tumblr. And you can’t post your iPad on your mirror or your door, and even if you could, some goofball would come along and change the screen. The web is great, and there’s amazing stuff out there just waiting to be absorbed. But…sometimes…paper is ineffably better.
However, as you probably know from experience, indiscriminately printing things from the web is generally a no-go. Sure, you can print directions or a recipe, but usually you end up with excess: ads, navigation links and junk; you use up the color ink disproportionately to how much you care for the things that print in color. And yes, previously, we’ve talked about options to make your online reading simplified, and that can help reduce the waste of ink and paper. But, sigh, sometimes, we miss newspapers.
The UK company Newspaper Club, which helps consumers design and print their own newspapers, has come up with an innovative approach for just such moments. They call it Paper Later. (Not to be confused with the creativity app Paper. Or Facebook’s app called Paper.)
At first glance, Paper Later works similarly to other ‘read it later’ services like Instapaper, Pocket, Flipboard or Readability. As you’re reading along, click the “Save for Paper Later” button in your browser while you’re standing in line at the grocery store or waiting for the dental hygienist. Whatever you’re reading, click on your phone or tablet and select those really good bits of the web, particularly what’s come to be known as “longreads” from stellar sources like the eponymously named Longreads, Medium, Hazlitt (Canadian and oh-so-cool), ProPublica (for public interest journalism) or The Classical (for sports fans).
But instead of coming back and reading them on the web, you get to read them on paper. Real paper. And not like printing a PDF on your printer, but in a newspaper. So, click to save, and when you have enough articles, hit “print” and Paper Later will lay your newspaper out, print it and ship it to you, and it should be delivered within 3-5 working days. It’ll come in a card-backed envelope and should fit in a standard mailbox or through a standard letter slot.
You can save anything from the web, but articles and blog posts work best. Obviously, this is not for saving and printing hot news stories. It’s not for reading quickly and tweeting out to your followers. It’s designed to let you take the more thoughtful approach, to read on a long train or airplane ride, or while you’re enjoying those last few sunny, crisp days in the hammock. Pick stories that are a little closer to timeless — or at least those which will have meaning to you once you’ve collected enough to read.
Paper Later is printed on 55gsm newsprint, with a high recycled content. It’s FSC– and PEFC-certified, and sourced from Swedish forests (because apparently those Swedes grow the best newspaper trees). I was curious about the length of a typical customized Paper Later edition, and got a quick reply:
@ProfOrganizer you can order anything from 8-24pp, and many people hit the maximum, which works out to be 30-40k words, typically.
— PaperLater (@paperlaterhq) August 18, 2014
Paper Later reports that the end-result looks and feels like a traditional newspaper, but is a tad thicker than typical newspaper, and is thus less likely to tear.
Unlike the Little Printer, which (even with its recent advances) I still think is mainly good for a lark, I can envision a number of reasons why you might want to invest in a subscription to Paper Later.
- You love the experience of reading the paper, but find your daily newspaper mostly pointless because you’ve read it all on Twitter already.
- Paper is less distracting than digital. With Paper Later, there’s no advertising (which makes it better than a traditional newspaper). And you don’t have to worry about tilt-lock, or losing wi-fi, or dropping it on concrete.
- You’ve been trying to learn a new language, but digital just isn’t conducive for you to unravel the nuances of longer pieces. With your Paper Later in one hand and your favorite whatever-to-English dictionary (digital or otherwise) in the other, you can explore.
- Artistically archiving a project appeals to you. An expectant couple might be blogging about preparations for the baby-to-be, and a newspaper archive of those posts provides a touching and tangible record.
- You want to curate fabulous pieces of writing for a loved one who is not digitally adept. Great-Grandpa’s brain is still sharp, but perhaps his hands aren’t so steady, and a tablet or keyboard just doesn’t work for him. A newspaper filled with writing that satisfies his intellect might be just the ticket.
Unfortunately, Paper Later is only available in the UK for now, so only Paper Doll readers on the other side of the Atlantic, like Jacki Hollywood Brown (Canadian professional organizer and blogger on extended stay in England), can report in on how well it works, but there’s an option to write in to let them know you’d like Paper Later to expand to your locale.
At £4.99 (about US $8.28) per issue, it’s a small indulgence. Much like taking quiet time, sitting in a hammock and catching up on your reading.
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