During a recent episode of The Pen Addict podcast #657, they talked about Bullet Journaling and how it is a useful way to not let task management get out of hand.

And thought it was a good time to revisit how I deal with the divide between analog and digital task management.

For me it works way better (most of the time) to capture things on paper, than digital, because it is quick and I don’t have to leave what I was doing or move focus in any way.

But it works way better for me to keep organized lists of tasks in a digital form.

This is where things get weird.

I prefer to have my “hit lists” on paper. This is just me looking at the task manager or my daily plan (I’ll get to that after) and filling out like 30 ish minutes of “stuff”. That I just do one after one. Until I’m out of stuff to do or close to running out of stuff to do and then I repeat.

It works really well for me as a way to limit how often I can get distracted by all the tasks etc.

My daily plan is sometimes on paper and sometimes in an app. Currently it is in Note Plan, and have moved between there and paper like 5 times in the last year.

This is where I just go through all my calendar events for the day and add them to a list of “todo’s”. Then I fill out the three must do today tasks, before I fill out five things I should get done today in various sections. During work days it is usually Chores, Personal and Work.

Just a way for me to work more focused on completing stuff.

My handwriting 90% of the time is horrendous.

Having ADHD is a large part of it, I can focus and write nicer if I go slow and focus. And even quite nice if I go really slow and do a sentence at a time with breaks between.

When I look back at things with my current self awareness and knowledge, I’m pretty sure me writing in a way only I can understand became a defensive tactic after being bullied a lot; and in general feeling unsafe.

I fell all out of using pocket notebooks during the pandemic. And then I never really got back into them, even though I have tried multiple times.

But over the last 2-3 months I have used my passport sized Travelers Notebook much more and consistently than in a long time. And over the last year I have had more periods with consistent pocket notebook use than I can remember.

Seems like it is a form factor I’ll use a lot more going forward.

After a year of not much to do at work, and income being as minimal, I went into February in a new job. And hope that things soon will be more about how it is to use things I had to spend most of last year thinking about buying instead of buying.

The good thing is that I have cleared out a lot of my stationery cabinet and have much more room to get new stuff than I would otherwise.

Been a while since I have written about my Daily Carry.

At the moment my daily stationery carry is super minimal. I usually bring my passport sized Travelers Notebook with a gel pen inside it everywhere, typically with one or two refills in it. And sometimes (when I have a larger tote or bag with me) the full sized one plus my Nock.co Sinclair with some pens in it.

The Sinclair will usually have two Kaweco Sport, another fountain pen and a multi pen.

Recently I have felt like just kind of using up all I have and starting a set of inks.

A few favorites will be back, that I know. But other than that just use all of it up and get all new inks when that happens.

I’ve been having a great time not buying new ink for the last year or so. Outside of cardigan for my Kaweco’s I’m not buying new inks.

It’s kind of nice to just see bottles and my storage getting emptier.

This is one of those topics that probably everyone disagrees with me no matter what I say.

My cleaning practice has gone between “almost never doing it” to “always doing a full clean” and many different points between them over the years.

At the moment my way of doing it is to do a very quick cleaning of my pens when I refill them, at least the ones where I don’t use a cartridge. But do a full on flush until the water is clear cleaning either when I change inks or every 3-4 refill; then I often do a full clean on everything.

While I usually have different inks in different pens, I often end up changing things around on most of them when things change.

My quick clean for piston or vacuum fillers is to just draw in some water and push it out again, while with converter / cartridge pens I first flush some water through them with a bulb syringe and swirl the nib in some water.

In the middle of trying to be all digitally and all of that I ended up getting a pack of Index Cards while getting some other stuff at a book store.

Just because.

I have kind of been doing my own ugmonk-ish thing for a few weeks, as I have in the past.

It works surprisingly well to just write down what are the most important 5 things on a high level right now. When it changes etc I flip it or find a new card.