Impulse Buying
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Notes on Flickr.
Via Flickr:
Thinking about impulse buying, note taking, and the trappings of Things
I gave into temptation recently and bought the Evernote Moleskin. It is beautiful and “designed” to “integrate” with the Evernote camera function to allow you to write notes out long hand and stil keep them with all your oter notes.
I love the idea of hand writing notes, something about the trappings of pend and paper gets me jazzed but the practical side of me is screaming,
**WHAT THE CRAP ARE YOU ACTUALLY GOING TO DO WITH THS DAMN THING‽”
It’s a reasonable question.
Of late, if have been most up impulsive with my purchases as @Alyska and I hae been sorting out our finances. We have a decent system in plae that we are saving good money every month and don’t feel like we are depriving ourselves. The trick is, essentially, to stop and ask yourself, “Do I need this?”*
No really. Stop. Ask. Think and don’t lie to yourself about how it will totally revolutionize X thing. Because you’ve been living without it for a significantly longer time than you’ve had it in your hand. So really: do you need it
Then, what do you need it for? What is the problem and how is Thing a solution?
Doing tis more and more vets easier and you sort of short circuit object lust. It’s useful and tends to make most purchase better. And I find I’m approaching purchase differently.
Having the problem first makes getting to the problem-solving purchase that much faster.
Obviously, the notebook solves a huge problem else, why buy it…
….
….
A dearth of pretty notebooks in my life?
Totes true.
So…, reverse reverse engineering a problem into this purchase, I am thinking of trying sketchnoting. If you’re not familiar, check it out here. I bought the book when I read about it on one of the bajillion feeds I follow. The basic idea is that you write fewer notes, draws some pictures and diagrams to go with it, and generally better identify the topics important to you in meetings and classes.
This is especially useful in that a lot of the kink conventions I go to don’t allow devices with cameras for note taking. So having something to write with that I like writing with would be useful. My current notebook is tiny and my handwriting is pretty bad to begin with. I get like a sentence and a half per page and get frustrated by it.
And it is tiny and I can’t hold it open easily with my arm and write at the same time - which is admittedly a unique “I only hae five fingers” problem.
But, “ABM! You only do digital,” you say. “how will this fit into your some work and life notes/common placing process you wrote about a year or two ago?”
What good memory you have, internet stalker!
So the cool thing with the Evernote is that they calibrated the camera feature to crap, straighten, tag and OCR convert your written notes and upload to your existing notebooks. Which is super nifty.
So, it should integrate nicely into my process as is and could potentially be more fun. As is, I process everything that goes into Evernote into a final form. OneNote for Work, Evernote digital notes for everything else. So I’d just do that for these - add tasks or text for work things and sort for life.
Ideally.
I think running meetings may be tough while taking notes. I’m super-awesome at taking notes and leading at the same time but tis may take more attention.
And my e’re present self-loathing for not being fantastic at everything the first time I try will drive me nuts.
“Is that a picture of a dog or a disk drive?”
But: developing new skills is my joie de vivre, yo.
*The glaring exception has been books because: books. Also we found a fantastic leather-bound set we’re slowly collecting using some pretty nice deals.
63° Clear
Outback Steakhouse, Durham, NC, United States