Beware the Power of Dan and Paper

I love tools.  I like short cuts, accelerators, work arounds, gizmos, hacks, self hacks, super hacks, tricks, and cheats.  I’m a chronic sign up, look and leave of productivity tools.  I’m always trying every prototyping tool I find too.  Team management tools, yep, love them.  Get things done tools?  Yep, those too.

Is there one tool that rules them all?  Yes.  Paper.

Lately I’ve been into 11×17 copier paper and one fine point black pen.  How do I organize you ask?  I don’t really, other than I get things done and i throw paper away.  Anything sketched gets sucked into a computer to be realized via indesign or mockups.  I prefer to work fast, really fast with paper and pen over any tool I can find online.

With a pen and paper there is no interface, no notifications, no tabs, no cumbersome “understand our methodology” no nudges like “you’ve been suckin all your life but now with our 3 2 1 2 8 formula you’ll be chewin skittles on a sunday..’.  No my friends, paper and pen is the ultimate tool, the interface is your brain, your scribbling, your ordering process and more.

Moleskins are good too but the problem with moleskins is that i end up tearing pages out and then the books fall apart.  I like to throw away the papers that don’t matter any more- ideas realized or not, thoughts processed or tossed, saving everything sucks- my brain needs a break.  It wants to create and then destroy.

I feel great when toss paper with scribbles and do’s x’d out in the trash.

Paper is versatile too.

It can be folded, molded, mashed, trashed and still retain info.  Pretty handy huh?

Any rules with pen and paper?  Well a few…

1. No Lines, EVER
2. all white
3. varied thickness, too thick and you’ll be too intimidated to freely scribble fearing you’re wasting precious paper, too flimsy and the ink will seep through
4. 11×17 preferred, 8.5×11 is ok but lame, go big please
5. landscape orientation rules, go fatty, go wide and enjoy the space
6. todo lists start with “Doing” in the upper right most corner
7. list items are numbered, short and concise, should be actionable and not paralyzing
8. you can use colored post it squares for added clarity between multiple pages, but don’t over do it
9. stapling pages is welcome, good for sketches/storyboard flows
10. doodle as much as you can, save your doodles because they’re moments caught in time, fun to look at later

So yes you can have 100 or so varied online tools, mobile apps etc.  I do, asana, clear, etc etc.. but paper and pen rules 98% of my existence.