Back to Palm?
Having decided against an organizing option that would necessitate monthly fees (i.e. software intended to be used with a Blackberry) or trusting my data with somebody's website, I decided to re-consider Personal Data Assistants. Visor is no longer around, but Palm is, and so I thought that might work.
I actually did buy a Palm a couple years ago, along with (believe it or not) Franklin Covey software, but when I tried (yet again) to use comma-separated values to export my data--this time from the desktop version of the old Palm software on my Mac to the desktop version of Franklin Covey on my PC, the result was uneven and messy. Still, I made an effort and spent perhaps a good five hours or so cleaning up the file. Nonetheless, I could never commit to the new set-up. I found the Franklin Covey software impossible to use; trying to create linkages between a person and an event--like an appointment--was excessively difficult. The Palm itself, a Palm Z22, looked cool in a streamlined, ipod kind of way, but the screen was much smaller than my old Visor and I couldn't get used to the truncated view. Worse, it lacked the Visor's "Find" feature in which each consecutive letter provides an ever shorter list of matched entries. This was important, as I have so many entries in my address book that scrolling through entries, coupled with the Z22's truncated window, made finding an address an exercise in frustration.
So last month when I found myself re-considering the Palm, I wondered if perhaps the find feature I liked on the Visor was some kind of option that had been turned off on my Palm; if so, maybe my Z22 might work for me after all. I also thought I could try using the Palm software instead of the Covey software I'd bought. So I dug out my Z22, found the power cord, plugged it in, and . . . . nothing. I could never get it to start again.
This could have been a tragedy: our computer had crashed a year ago and I had not able to recover the data I'd put into the Covey program. Now that the Palm Z22 was completely dead, there was no way to recover any of the data at all. The only condolence was that I'd actually input relatively little data into the hand-held/Covey, because I'd been so annoyed with it. Most of the data that had been on my Palm was the data I'd originally exported from my Mac, and the data was still on my Mac. So my original 353 contacts were intact. The only thing I really lost was the time I'd spent cleaning up the export and trying to learn the new system.
Still, this whole experience gave me plenty of pause for thought. While I toyed with getting a new Palm, I could never commit to going out and actually buying one. I'd used my Z22 a mere handful of times! A search on Consumer Reports told me my experience wasn't unique. I was also concerned that hand-held PDAs are on their way out. Palm has been focusing its attention ever more on its phones, and it hasn't significantly updated its software in years. I'm not saying I'd never get another Palm, but at this point, I'm not interested in getting one now.
. . . So How About Another Look At Low-Tech?
I turned my attention back to the low-tech options. DayTimer? Nah. Filofax? No. Franklin Covey? Please. DayRunner? No. . .
With all this mulling about organizers, I found that I started making lists again--of projects, of priorities, of calls to make. I found I liked the look of brilliantly-colored fountain pen ink against the super-smooth, super-white laser jet paper Office Max offered. That's right: plain old printer paper! And fountain pen ink! That's about as low-tech as it gets! I developed task headers that changed by the day and by circumstance: Priorities, To Call, To Email, Errands, Clean/Organize, and Blog were some of the headers I most frequently used. I also developed the habit of boxing the titles, the better to see them, and creating fat little bullets to make checking off items all the more satisfying.
I wasn't a slave to updating my lists, but composed them when the mood struck, maybe a couple times a week. After a month or so, I began to realize: this works, I like this. I like seeing my lists in my own handwriting. I like writing with vivid colors on a pure white background. I like the freedom to doodle, to circle, to underline, to cross off, without a pre-printed form to hem everything in. Once I realized this, my lists grew more exuberant: arrows underscored the importance of a certain priority, emoticons cropped up with increasing regularity. I found I liked writing my lists in one color and crossing them off in another. If for some reason the time or opportunity to do a particular task had passed, I struck a line through it. Sometimes I drew a box around an unfinished item to remind me of their open status.
As much as I enjoyed my new-found To-Do list style, it didn't address my calendar issues, nor solve the problem of what to do with all those Post-its with names and numbers, email addresses and websites waiting to be input . . . somewhere. With a regular routine now in place, the quantity of lists on hand multiplied. While I could certainly file them, but there was no simple, systematic way to organize them for easy perusal. Maybe I could get a notebook? But hadn't I sworn off those clumsy 3-ring binders? I had. And then the perfect solution suddenly seemed just so obvious.
On Saturday: The Perfect Solution
