In the Studio

Learning a new technology (Evernote has rave reviews, as does Asana) that should help with writing and organizing my electronic files seems daunting in the face of trying to maintain my studio practice. And while it would have been a fantastic addition to my tech repertoire, I never did learn how to use it.

Writing things out by hand has always felt so much better to me, I even choose to go back to a paper calendar, with space for notes, daily lists, and a weekly check-in for accomplishments. But then I think, if I can have it on my phone and the technology is there and I just need to learn it, why regress to paper? But then there is the tactile quality of paper. I love paper. And cool notebooks, with dots instead of lines. So what’s really wrong with keeping a written calendar? Or writing reminders on post-it notes? 

going old school: monthly/weekly calendar

Can you see my dilemma?

Sigh, I know I just need to do SOMETHING, and make the decision.  And it really doesn’t matter if it doesn’t work, I can always switch to the next new thing later… which I found this summer, and promptly ordered it - then had to wait until late November for it to ship!

The reMarkable tablet combines the best of writing with the ability to instantly export your notes to with the OCR (optical character reader) transcription or email a PDF of the page of notes (which comes in handy if you want to sketch out some details). This is game changing for me. Anyone familiar with One Note would find some familiarity with the notebooks and pages structure, for me it was love at first mark. The stylus pen feels like writing on matte mylar, which reminds me of my architectural days drawing with mechanical pens, so it has a wonderful nostalgic aspect to it too. It has so many page options, like my favorite which are the grid dots because I'm a geek like that.

But the most amazing thing about it so far is exporting my chicken scratches to text which I can then bring into a Word doc and edit, which helps me to actually keep things organized. And if I just want to add more notes, I can create a new page. No more trying to remember where I stuck the post-it note, or find that scrap of paper with my task list on it; did I leave it in the studio or on my desk, or maybe it was by the bed because I had to jot something down in the middle of the night? Nope, it is all contained in one handy tablet that feels like paper and acts like notebook.

NICE!