sethetter

I sure wish I could tell if this is a joke or not.

I'm curious how big of a factor a consistent core team is to having long-term sustainable and stable software. When companies have people rotating on projects constantly and the original vision and design principles of the product are lost or changed, I can only imagine that contributes to the problem.

I've tried to retrain myself to open Obsidian (and have Obsidian configured to always jump straight to my daily note upon opening) if I compulsively pick up my phone. From there, I'm either going to write about what I'm actually trying to accomplish in the moment, or realize I had no real goal and just compulsively picked up my phone as happens more often than I'd like. It's then much easier to just put my phone back down instead of getting locked into browsing random internet streams, or I just do whatever thing I actually got my phone out to do.

I've injected some intentional friction into an otherwise compulsive habit, which opens up the opportunity to redirect that behavior. It's been very a helpful switch so far.

Not to mention it prevents people trying to legitimately access these services from doing so by putting extra barriers in place, defeating the purpose of the assistance program in the first place.

It's a tricky balance to strike!

Perhaps there is something to be gained by being forced to slow down anyways. Speed for the sake of speed isn't always the highest priority. Certainly there are contexts where "keeping up" is a priority, but not always.

Ad Hoc employee here -- this is spot on.

Well said!

I'm with you here -- constraints like that can definitely be useful! The constraint of slowing down to write by hand is also useful for me in this context.

Most of my thoughts are vague, no judgement ;)

You're touching on a reason I like paper too -- in a digital format, I end up thinking too much about how I'm going to organize the information as opposed to just getting my thoughts down.

Organizing the information is important too, but worrying about it before your thoughts are clarified is a quick way for me to get pulled away from my focus on the problem.

Each tool has it's place!

Definitely agree -- paper is something that should compliment your overall system, it's pretty hard to get by with paper alone these days.

If my goal is to focus in on what I'm thinking about, pulling myself away from the computer and putting pen to paper does a better job than anything digital has been able to provide me.

Ah thanks for the catch! I also just switched over to a new SSG for my site, must have missed this :)

> The article does not explain what the value of pen and paper has over a digital note pad. It just declares it has one.

The advantage is being clear from potential distractions. A lack of "features" providing a direct line of focus on what you're writing.

Apologies if that wasn't clear from the article!

This! There's also plenty of research backing up the idea that writing with a pen commits the information to memory more effectively than typing. It makes sense if you consider the extra time and effort being dedicated to what you're writing.

I've ditched pen and paper in the past because it was too slow for me. Over time I've realized that desire to "go fast" can be good in some contexts, and bad in others. Slowing down with pen and paper does a much better job of clarifying and directing my thoughts.