Technology is starting to die on me again… My phone has a problem with it’s navi-nubbin™ and won’t scroll down which means I now have to go up to get to the A’s… very odd. That’s not a problem to be honest as it has just been replaced by an Ericsson T39m which should do the job nicely.
But my faithful PDA is also getting a bit venerable … it seems to have problems retaining screen calibration which is getting to be a real pain. So I was looking for a replacement…
Now to tell you a couple of things about me that you may not know.
First off I am easily the most disorganised person I know. I have the time management skills of a lackaday guinea pig and am forget many things as soon as I am told them. The fact that I am able to function at all is only due to a number of organisational crutches and helpers - post-it-notes, phone / outlook synchronisation. Actually just those didn’t help at all but they make a difference when employed with …
… the second thing which is that I am a sucker for life improvement programmes that actually work. I’ve done the Pickle Jar time management technique and have been reading quite a lot about a book called “Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-free Productivity”.
I’m still getting to my point by the way, just in case you were wondering if I had derailed my train of thought completely.
So I first found out about GTD on a site … which I then forgot about … DOH!
But yesterday I managed to find the site again. It’s called “43 Folders” and has introduced me to the concept of the Hipster PDA - the Parietal* Disgorgement Aid.
I’ve made one out exactly as specified and so far it is working out really well. I have cards for each project and have even bought a new bullet space pen (since I lost the old one) to go with it. I’ve even added business card functionality by paper clipping a business card or two to the back page. In short it’s the cheapest, most useful device I’ve ever bought (£20.03 including pen) and looks set to make a serious difference to my org skills.
Now all I need to do is get someone to buy me the book…
*what the hell does Parietal mean?
03/02/2005 at 6:02 pm Permalink
My co-worker went to a variation of the hipster pda when his fancy-pants Palm III finally crapped out. His version is a small, cheap, spiral-bound notebook.
I on the other hand continued to use my venerable Palm Professional (yeah, that’s right, the ORIGINAL version) until dearest GF gifted me with a new Zire 72 for Christmas. (My old palm, which was always a bit flakey, was really starting to die.)
The cool thing about the Zire (aside from the camera, bluetooth and pretty color screen) is the SD/MMC card slot. It is my PDA, and it is also my IPod - much cooler than a simple IPod since it does so much more…
03/02/2005 at 10:02 pm Permalink
My Palm was a very swanky Tungsten T which did me nicely for a good while (I think it’s over 3 years old now) but got usurped by a syncronisable mobile phone and a laptop… oh and a 20gb MP3 player.
It was the mobile that really killed it though - no more need to track tasks and contact deets on a seperate device. After that it spent most of it’s time playing Snails.
04/02/2005 at 1:02 am Permalink
I can see how the mobile will eventually replace my palm, but for now I like have the two seperate. I like my mobiles small and out of the way, and the palm enabled mobiles are too big. I’m not a big fan of the texting thingy with the number pad either - I like the palm interface. I use my palm to do my checking acct too, so it gets plenty of use, but it doesn’t go places I’d take my phone…
04/02/2005 at 8:02 am Permalink
I agree with the small mobile thing but have found that it’s more than adequate to read stuff on. Most of the entry (Prob 90%) is done via Outlook anyway on the remaining 10% is pretty easy on a phone. But then I text quite a lot and so am able to enter data almost as fast as via graffiti.
I’ll miss the accounting stuff through … and having to go back to writing out shopping lists!. Who knows, maybe I’ll grab a Zire at some point but I can’t see it happening in the near future.