2024 Author: Malcolm Clapton | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 03:44
We at Lifehacker have repeatedly raised the topic of choosing the perfect tool for scheduling tasks. This can be task lists, shopping lists, and work on projects and small task streams for multiple users. But there are at least 5 reasons why no application - no mobile or desktop - can replace your notes on plain paper.
For three years I have been experimenting continuously with various lists, todo trackers and project management systems. I tried systems and applications like Basecamp, Trello, Wunderlist / Wunderkit, AnyDO - and I was not completely satisfied with any of them. And that's why:
1. Synchronization
A simple paper notebook doesn't need to sync with anything. You can open any page, make notes long or short, add bookmarks or pictures - there are no restrictions. The mobile and desktop applications need to be synchronized one way or another. Often you will need internet or an auxiliary connection to sync.
Why do many different unnecessary movements, remember passwords, create connections or wait for synchronization / upload / download?
2. If the Internet is gone - the whole world will wait (in fact, not)
The point about synchronization smoothly flows into the need for Internet access (especially when it comes to the system for setting tasks, managing contacts, tasks and deals). The notebook is "warm and analog", it will not require anything from you except a pen or pencil and your own thoughts, tasks, observations and contact details that you set out on paper. You cannot answer a person on a phone call and say “you know, I haven’t had the Internet for half a day, so I won’t tell you how many stages are in our previous deal”.
We are so accustomed to the fact that the Internet is everywhere and always, that when it is suddenly absent, our work freezes. But this should not be so.
Backing up lists of tasks and important projects with entries in an ordinary paper notebook has saved me a lot of time and nerves over the past six months.
3. Cross-platform
Let's imagine that you are using Ubuntu, OS X, Android, iOS at the same time - and you need a native client for all these systems. You are right: this practically does not happen, unless we have a web application in front of us. Hardcover paper with lined or blank pages doesn't have this drawback. The "device" in this case is a pen or pencil, and the platform is your brain, memory and thought processes.
4. Change of OS / control system / project / company
When I left one Internet project and switched to another, I had to change the system for controlling tasks and creating lists, because in the new project the team used completely different approaches and techniques. And when there were more than five projects, and in each of them the setting of tasks, planning and management looked differently and controlled everything that happened in a different way - I had 2 options: either to clutter up my laptop with a bunch of applications and accounts, in which I would constantly confused; or entrust 80% of planning and quick lists to paper. I chose the second option - and I have no regrets.
A notebook with a calendar, regularly checked and filled in manually, takes only 15 minutes a day - and saves you a couple of hours of nerves and time.
5. the UI of your dreams
And the last on the list, but obviously not the last for me personally, and for many readers of Lifehacker, is the user interface.
If in a notebook you are free to draw any schemes yourself, make any bookmarks, catalogs, lists, use any date formats, abbreviations and systematization of data on paper - then in any application (desktop, web or mobile - not the point) you are doomed to fit into the framework that the developer came up with for you.
In half of the cases, the developer's idea of usability, intuitiveness and speed of interaction is fundamentally at odds with your personal idea. Are you ready to spend time and money looking for the interface of your dreams for planning tasks and setting tasks? I was not ready, and therefore, at the end of winter, I bought a paper notebook, which I use perfectly until today. I advise you to pay more attention to paper planning. A regular notebook gives you more flexibility and space for ideas and structuring your thoughts than any application or electronic system.
Unfortunately (or fortunately - it depends on how you look at it), there is still a place for analog instruments in this world: it is proved by a notebook:)
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