Encoding for Loss

When you encode an analogue music file to MP3, some loss of quality is unavoidable.* I believe that the same is true when you pick digital tools over analogue ones.

You may have picked up on my preference for notebooks and pens over computers and phones. In my mind this is more than a choice over which is more fun to use. I believe that using analogue tools leads to a better output.

There is plenty of research to back this up:

Pen and paper ‘beats computers for retaining knowledge’

9 Incredible Ways Writing By Hand Benefits Our Bodies And Brains

The Benefits of Writing by Hand Versus Typing

Clive Thompson “How The Way You Write Changes the Way You Think”

A good place to have bad ideas

There are, of course, benefits to using digital notebooks, but as I considered this over the weekend (writing into my pocket notebook) just because there are some benefits, doesn’t mean they make up for the disadvantages.

I want to be able to leave my phone behind for days at a time and that won’t feel possible if I’m using it for notes. So, despite the many advantages of using my phone as a notebooks, that one disadvantage is enough to make it a no go.

There are other disadvantages, but that was the big one at the weekend. And it’s an important one. Being able to leave my phone behind makes up for the occasional inconvenience of taking out a paper notebook, for those times when it’s not possible so I miss something. It makes up for a hell of a lot and when you add it to the other advantages (quality, peace of mind, memory improvements) then it just doesn’t make sense for me to switch.

The problem with a lot of digital technologies is that by using them I would be encoding for loss. I know from the start that they aren’t as good as analogue equivalents, so by using them I am saying that quality is less important that convenience. As I mention in Compromises that is occasionally a compromise that I am willing to make, but not always, in fact, not even often.

*Yes, I understand that there are “lossless” formats such as FLAAC, but I would argue that even when using those formats a certain amount of loss happens by not having a physical representation on the music such as a CD or record. In my experience, listening to music goes beyond the sounds that you hear when you press play. At its best it is a tactile experience.

Compromises

We don’t live in an ideal world.

In an ideal world I would only read beautifully bound hardback books. I would sit in a comfortable chair with a foot stool and a reading lamp. During the day I would drink fresh coffee and in the evening a glass of whiskey. I would listen to music on vinyl and do all my writing with a fountain pen at a large wooden desk.

In reality I read in whatever format I can, be that audio books, ebooks or paperbacks. I grab a few minutes whenever I can.

Until yesterday I was reading three fiction books; one audio book, one ebook and one paperback. I didn’t have any issue keeping the stories straight, but it was frustrating for other reasons. Leaving the audio aside, which was working well as I have a long commute so can count on a couple of hours each day listening to that book. The problem was that I didn’t get much time to read and I was splitting my time between two books because I felt like I needed to have a paperback on the go.

Ideally I would have kept the paperback and given up reading ebooks, but like I’ve already said, this isn’t an ideal world. I have many more opportunities to read an ebook because I can have it on my Kobo reader, on my phone and even on my computer. I can read in bed without needing a light on and disturbing Tamzin. In reality, it was the only option that made sense.

So I have re-bought the paperback I was reading as an ebook and I’ve already had more opportunities to read it. I have to admit that this is the best option, even if it isn’t the ideal one. And it makes me wonder if there are other places in my life where I am stubbornly holding on to (already compromised) versions of the ideal. Music, for example. I like CDs (already compromised from my ideal of vinyl) but it’s more convenient to subscribe to Apple Music. I think this is something that I’m going to explore more over the coming weeks.

Finding Time

It’s amazing what you can find time for if you really try.

Life could make things easier, but that’s a lame excuse. If you want to do it then you will find a way.

It doesn’t have to take a lot of time. Ten minutes a day is 60 hours a year.

Bit by bit, making progress towards what is important.

Offline

Some thoughts on the internet…

I try to stay away from networked devices. It isn’t always possible. I work for a big technology company and that means that all the tools I use are connected. In my spare time I do copy writing and that often means I have to go online to do research. So what I really mean is that I try to manage my online use.

I have social media accounts but I don’t use them. Someone tried to contact me on Facebook Messenger and I didn’t find out about it until they messaged Tamzin to ask why I wasn’t responding. The responsible thing to do would be to close my account so that no one expects me to respond to anything they send there.

I subscribe to 22 RSS feeds but only a few of them post daily. Only one of them posts more than once a day and they are very short. None of them are technology related and none of them are “news”.

The internet is a powerful tool, but something feels broken about the way we use it. I don’t think that we should live there the way we do. Maybe that’s just an issue of nomenclature; maybe referring to a home page is what bothers me. But then I see reports about screen time and I ask myself is any time reasonable to spend online every day? Should the internet even be an every day thing?

I don’t have any answers. I’m trying to work it out. I think everyone should work it out for themselves because any answers I come up with will only apply to me.

A Room of my Own

I used to have a room to write in. The spare room in our little two-up, two-down terrace. I had a big desk and plenty of space. Most importantly, I had a door that I could close. After my son Jude was born, it continued to be my office, although sometimes when he had a difficult night I had to share it with him in the morning. When he was six months old my office became his bedroom. That was five years ago now.

Since then I’ve worked in a variety of places. At the dining room table, in coffee shops, on my lap. It wasn’t a problem.

When we bought our new house the plan was to use one of the bedrooms as a laundry room / office. But as we tore down walls and built them up again, as we decorated and furnished, the spare room was never a priority. Again, this wasn’t a problem. I was used to working wherever I could open a notebook.

I have written previously about the number of meetings I have at my day job. It is an hours drive away and I’ve been getting frustrated with doing that journey just to sit at my desk and sit on conference calls. So over the weekend I bought and built a small desk and wedged it into the spare room. The walls are unfinished, the carpet isn’t laid. There is no light in the ceiling and it still smells a bit like plaster. I’m sitting there now and I could not be happier.

It wasn’t until I got the space back that I realised how much I’ve missed having a room of my own. Or, in this case, the corner of a room. There is a door that I can close and that makes all the difference. Finally I have a place where I can go to write, or to work, and feel comfortable.

Week One Done

I now have a full week of posts on the site.

Daily blogging has gone well and it looks like something I am going to continue doing.

Some of the posts will be very short (like this one) but I expect others to be longer.

I am still planning to wait until April to make this page visible on the website, by which time I should have 21 posts published. Maybe then I will also syndicate to Twitter.

Don’t Stop

I’ve been brainstorming the first book of my fantasy series for almost two months now. The old me could have planned, written and published a book in that amount of time. I was starting to wonder whether I’d made a mistake, and potentially wasted two months of productivity. I was losing the excitement that had been pushing me on.

Then last night as I was working through the plot for what felt like the hundredth time, something happened. It clicked. Suddenly a dozen disconnected fragments came together and turned into story.

This is one of the things that I love most about writing. When everything seems to come together out of nowhere.

Now I think about how close I came to giving up on the project and wonder if there are other stories that I gave up once which would eventually have come together in the same way.

There is still a long way to go before I’m ready to start writing in earnest, but now I know that I will get there eventually. I just have to keep working on it and not stop.

Meetings

Today I have a block of meetings from 10am until 2pm. Which is ridiculous. And they are with different groups of people.

Sometimes meetings are worthwhile, more often not, but as more and more of my work week gets filled with meetings I question when I am supposed to get the work done that they inevitably generate. Presumably I should be doing it at home, but that isn’t going to happen.

Time & Tools

Time. Where does it go? It seems there’s never enough of it.

I seem to have a hundred projects on the go at the moment; at work, at home and writing. Everything is getting very busy.

I’m not sure that I’m keeping on top of it but I’m trying. It’s a real challenge to my analogue productivity philosophy.

Things could get even busier. Now is the time to make sure I have a robust set of tools and workflows to make sure I can handle it.

This was not supposed to be a post about the tools I am using, but here we go.

The primary tool I have is habits and routines. These are things that I have been building over the past few months (and will continue to build) that mean the day to day things are taken care of. I have time to work on fiction, I am eating well, I am exercising and I am spending time with my family. These are the bedrocks that I build upon for everything else.

My task management needs work. I am floating somewhere between several systems and have different systems depending on whether it is work, personal or writing. Ideally I would like to consolidate these things, probably using Todoist. Then I have about twenty different calendars in Google. The process I follow is to visit each of those sources every day and create an analogue day plan. This goes in a dot-grid medium Moleskine – although I will be changing that to a LEUCHTTURM1917 shortly because I carry around so many Moleskine notebooks that I can’t tell which one I need at any given time. My day plan includes all of the habits, meetings, and tasks that I plan to accomplish. Generally I split the page in four so that I have two scheduled breaks and a lunch. This only covers my day at work, my mornings and evenings are essentially habit focused with little variation.

One place where I think this can be improved is by also scheduling my weekends. It is something that I plan to look into.

Notes are another big part of my workflow. I use a pocket Moleskine for when I am out and about and Standard Notes for at a computer. This is an evolving system.

Then I have a series of notebooks for specific purposes, a “general writing” book which is where most of my writing starts off, fiction and non-fiction. A logbook which I use as a kind of diary to keep track of the things that I do each day.

Most of these ideas are from other people and a lot of the tension I’m feeling right now is probably a result of not having moulded them into a coherent “system” of my own. It feels like a process that I can’t rush, or I’ll end up skipping from system to system and never settle. It’s a cycle that I’ve gotten into before.

A few of the sources that have inspired my system which are worth checking out if you would like to know more: