The resolution I didn't know I made

It’s a bit funny, but I’ve just realized that I made a resolution to simplify my life this year. Since I don’t do the new year’s resolution thing, you can image that it surprised me a bit.

Step 1: I’m getting myself into a laptop. Mostly to cut the cord from the one room and be able to roam, but also to localize myself one machine. My wife still uses her circa-1999 Lombard Powerbook, and when I need to use a computer in the living room…well, you know what it’s like to use someone else’s machine with all your everyday applications missing, but add to the equation that it’s slow as all hell. Not to mention, that kind of “pogosticking” is simply a bad way of working. It is a bit Jobsian when you think about it—the home computer being the digital hub. When there are flaws in how you work with the hub—the home of your data—those flaws trickle down to all the things it connects to or manages, which leads in a way to the next item…

Step 2: I’m planning to drop the smartphone. But Noah! you say, 2006 is going to be the year of the QWERTY smartphone! True, there are lots of them out there to choose from, but honestly, I’ve failed to use one that didn’t end up being a distraction or an impediment to getting something done quickly. Using a PDA adds an additional layer of apps, and subsequent road-bumps (when the PDA and desktop features don’t line up exactly), to deal with. Plus, poorly designed mobile apps prevent people from capturing data in the ways they may need to — recall how long it took Palm to support sketch notes as a built-in feature. The truth is while people will always want to create digital data (like photos and messages) when mobile, they generally do not need to convert information to digital on the spot especially if it needs to be captured quickly. I get more errors stumbling with the input system than successes in moments like that. In fact, it’s far, far better that I scrawl out whatever I can to paper and then transcribe it into the proper desktop app later.

Step 3: I’m planning on using the iPod more. It took a while, but I’ve finally realized why all of this “download to your iPod” stuff is so popular: all that pseudo-PDA stuff works. That is, for basic output—reading some text, getting a phone number, etc.—an iPod serves most people’s needs more than enough. In fact, I’d bet it’s the first PDA-like device that many people own. I’ve seen stats for sites that tell me that downloading a recipe to an iPod is actually really popular, and until recently, it just didn’t click with me why that would be the case.

This all follows the smartphone comments above — it’s more about having a huge source of output, not a huge space for input. Using pen and paper for daily stuff, then going home and putting it into the Mac is a really simple workflow that people get into quickly, as you only ever really worry about using the desktop. In fact, I’ve already started checking out Pod2Go as a solution to getting some feeds and whatnot off the desktop, and help round it out as a “PDA-lite.”

Step 4: The last step is to use the hipster PDA again. Sure it seems awfully Luddite to think of switching to this, but in the little time I spent trying it before, it worked rather well. However, I felt silly using it and carrying my smartphone around, so I decided to scrap the paper and really give the phone a workout. But the issues with syncing errors, battery life, buggy apps, etc. etc. finally brought me back to the index cards. And since the smartphone is going away (see Step 1) for something more practical—something “phone-first” with very small profile, like the RAZRs—the old conflict is no more.

“Paul” said it well in a comment on 43Folders:

Since [starting with an Apple Newton] I’ve eagerly tried every new gadget but it all gets too hard. By the the time you get the thing out and have the stylus poised, the moment of inspiration is gone.

So there you have it. Somehow, I managed to find the single resolution from all of these smaller, separate decisions. Will it be a success? Only time will tell. But you can be sure I’ll be leaving a nice long report on how this all turned out by the end of the year….