The Hipster PDA
Sunday, February 20th, 2005 at 1:19 am
About a month ago, I discovered the Hipster PDA. The library sells 100-packs of index cards for a quarter each, so I grabbed some loose change and bought a couple hundred. I’d keep a dozen or so loose in my back pocket and jot reminders to myself on them - mostly things I needed to remember to do. A week later, I stopped by the book store and bought a pack of binder clips to keep them together. The finished product can be seen to the right.
43 Folders has since suggested a number of different tips for using the Hipster PDA, most of them focusing on the Getting Things Done system. I only got a few pages into it before I lost interest, so I never became one of the hardcore productivity nuts. Rather than having a systematic method to it, I think it’s nice just to be able to jot down notes when I need to. In any given day, there are dozens of things I think of during class, like project ideas, upcoming seminars, mailing a credit card bill, or making a phone call after class. I’ve been finding more and more that making a quick note is a lot more efficient than just hoping I don’t forget about it. When I come home at the end of the day, I pull out the stack and take care of things I need to do, or put reminders in iCal for things that are coming up. It comes in real handy.
If anyone wants to give it a try, let me know; the binder clips only came in variety packs, so I’ve got 5 or 6 more of them and about 500 index cards.
Tags: hipster, pda, Productivity
February 20th, 2005 at 5:03 am
If you want to listen to GTD on audio CD, I have it. I suggest you try the rest, I agree the intro is boring. I have yet to sit down and fully implement GTD, but I’ve been taking some of the practices to heart and it has helped a lot.
I will also suggest that you get a Moleskine pocket acordian file. I love my hipster PDA much more now that I have that, I use it more too. It’s not as “hipster” as just the binder clip, but at $10.75 it’s not too expensive to keep the index cards slightly more organized, and keep them from getting distroyed. The spine is a nice place to keep a pen cliped, as I was always losing mine that were just clipped to the cards. Plus it just looks nice.