Entrepreneur Mom
with Aliza Sherman
If you own a business - home-based or otherwise - this is the blog where you'll find practical tips and smart ideas about entrepreneurship. I've started and run 4 different businesses so "been there, done that." I'll also invite successful entrepreneurs to share their best advice with you.
To learn more about Aliza, check out her profile on Work It, Mom! and her website, www.mediaegg.com.
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A client of mine teased me the other day when she saw me pull out my calendar book to write down an entry.
“I thought you were so tech, and here you are with a paper calendar,” she said by way of explanation.
“But I have a 30Boxes calendar as well!” I retorted. “And it sends me text message reminders to my cellphone!”
I don’t know why I felt that I needed to prove my tech savvy by rattling off how wired I really am and that the paper calendar is just my first line of defense against my progressively bad memory.
I just like the tangible feeling of a paper calendar. I like the feeling of pen on paper. I like seeing what I write on a page. Our words are so digitized these days with reading and writing emails, reading our news on Web sites, connecting with others through online social networks - that for me, writing things down on paper really grounds me.
Case in point: I still take notes in a spiral notebook. Whether I’m at a conference or a client meeting, I whip out the same notebook and put pen to paper. In the last year, I’ve moved away from lined paper, preferring completely blank pages. And I’ve moved away from numbered lists to lists of to-dos with little open boxes next to them to check them off as I do them.
Now before you think I’ve gone entirely non-tech, I had another friend tease me at a blues club when she lifted my very large leather handbag.
“It’s so heavy! What do you have in it? You don’t need to carry something like this to a club!”
I proceeded to reach into the depths of my bag and pull out:
1. My LG NV2 (my long distance mobile phone)
2. My cheap LG (my local (Alaska) mobile phone)
3. My iPod Touch (which, by the way, picked up free wifi at the blues club, and that thrilled me because you never know when you need to do a Google search)
4. My Nikon COOLPIX digital camera (the compact kind)
5. My Flip video camera (the older, 30 minute capacity version)
So even while I’m in love with my paper calendar and my paper notebook, I can’t seem to leave the house without gadgets galore. But if you see me at a conference or a business meeting, don’t laugh when I pull out the paper stuff. There’s a method to my madness!
What do YOU use for scheduling and taking notes? What gadgets do you carry around with you at virtually all times?
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I am totally with you on this one. I am 25 and love the technology but I do like the pen and paper. I carry a notebook in my bag with pens to write down what ever it is I need to write. Sometimes I feel awkward in public but at least I know my notebook is safe and who would steal a notebook. But electronic notebooks they will steal.
So there, that a good reason to have a notebook. It’s safe.
Vera Babayeva | July 14th, 2008 at 7:37 pm
I use a Treo to keep track of appointments, contacts, etc. BUT I have moved to Levenger To-do list and notebook for taking notes.
I’ve always taken notes with paper & pen, althou in the past year I do live blog from conferences.
The to-do list just never got done on the Treo, so I went back to paper. I also print out my monthly calendar to carry with me…sometimes paper does trump e-stuff.
Plus I am a total paper & pen whore.
Veronica | July 14th, 2008 at 7:59 pm
haha! i have a tablet laptop for work and i rarely use that feature. I take my notebook to meetings to take notes! So much for the tech geek! there IS something special about physically writing it down with pen/paper. You remember how you wrote it and where on the paper almost as much as WHAT you wrote - they all go together for better memory or something (totally unscientific).
so you get a pass from this tech geek (because then i give myself a pass too!)
Kate | July 14th, 2008 at 8:02 pm
You can’t beat old-fashioned paper and pencil for always being available. No worries about network traffic, downtime, or security.
That said, I love the fact that I can speed dial Jott from my cell phone to send a message to Remember the Milk that automatically gets put on my Google calendar.
I used to carry a PDA and pager but ditched them a couple years ago.
I’m getting a FREE ipod touch from a bank promo and can hardly wait to see how cool that will be.
Oh, I also keep my iPod nano in my pocket to pick up the signals from the Nike+ transmitter in my shoe (really) so my my walking workouts can be uploaded to the computer when I get back home.
Sheryl Schuff, CPA | July 14th, 2008 at 8:11 pm
Your bags and pockets sound like mine. I love gadgets, and collect as many as I can. I know that the trend is moving toward having a single gadget that is a smartphone/MP3 player/camera/photo album/address book/younameit, but I really just like to have something that is the best at its main task, and pretty good at some others. That’s why I carry a slim cell phone that fits in my pocket, AND a Blackberry, AND an iPod nano, AND a digital SLR camera, AND an ancient Palm PDA… and not one paper notebook, but two.
I keep all of my work notes in a good, old-fashioned perfect-bound lab-style notebook with graph-paper pages. I buy one a year, and keep all my work notes/sketches/reminders/hints in it. I do this because the lab notebook is a durable medium, with non-removable pages that will withstand a gazillion changes of corporate calendar servers and other stuff that the company keeps changing on me. It’s easy for me to look back through previous years’ notebooks to find the exact command sequence I need to accomplish something I do rarely enough to not have committed it to memory. I can even use highlighters, which I also love.
The other notebook is also a perfect-bound notebook, but with lined, perforated pages. This is my everything-but-work notebook. I sketch, I scribble, I put down quick notes about ideas I won’t have time to pursue this week, I collect lists of topics for my blogs and freelance articles… you get the idea. I just LIKE paper. I LIKE to sketch. No computer, even my beloved MacBook Pro, will ever give me the speed and tactile satisfaction I get from pen or pencil on paper.
Karen Norteman | July 14th, 2008 at 8:36 pm
I love the feel of pen and paper too. I carry two Moleskines. A big one for Macaroni and Peas business stuff - post ideas, phone numbers, appointments, etc. and a little one for general life notes.
I also carry my AT&T Tilt (smart phone) everywhere. It can access the internet, fetch my email, text, and call.
Last, but not least, I am saving for an EEC PC. I am dying for the mini web surfing laptop.
Sandie Law | July 14th, 2008 at 11:10 pm
I’m with you, especially Karen! I’ve been heavily online since 1976, and I use all kinds of online tools and calendars and such, but for taking notes at meetings, nothing beat a reliable pen and a notebook.
The Avery Dennison 53-100 is my notebook of choice. It’s the kind with sewn-in pages, so you aren’t tempted to rip pages out; you never know what you’ll need in the future. It has nice hard covers that don’t bend or get squooshed. I never throw them out, and I probably have over 100 of them by now, and I can tell you, they last and last. 10-1/8″ by 7-7/8 inches, 5×5 quad graph paper.
P.S. Sheryl is right about Jott.com. It’s SO useful, and entirely free (at least for now). It’s great if you have an idea while you’re away from your computer, or driving.
DLW | July 26th, 2008 at 3:29 pm