I've always considered myself to prefer the digital way of things. But sometimes, going back to the analogue route just hits different.
Ever since I was a kid, the idea of journals and agendas was something that attracted me quite a lot. Most of the time it was just the calendars and the contact lists and such things that kind of made everything feel like a paper phone or some sort of gadget. Who would’ve thought calendar and note-taking apps were common long before iOS and Android existed?
Anyway, sometimes my mom would give me her old barely used agendas and I would fill them for a bit with the few contacts I had from primary school or whatever, until I got bored, or forgot about it.
On and off I have used notebooks to take notes, to write about books I’ve read or just because school wanted me to write down short stories, essays, or any tasks I had to do.
Nowadays I don’t really write much with pen and paper I mean, and I do most of my productivity and tracking on my phone—mostly only tracking. I use Letterboxd for movies, Backloggd for videogames, Bookrastinating for books, Anilist for anime and manga, and ActivityWatch for device and app usage.
Recently, probably because I read a bunch of Analogue Office’s archives, I got the itch to do something that I could keep track of on paper. Funnily enough, I had a goal to read the New Testament from the Bible in 90 days, using a Bible app plan. So, I happened to find a PDF printable to use instead, and see if I would find it useful.
There is something about ticking off that checkbox every day that feels weirdly satisfying, maybe I will try and look for some more printable files for tracking my general reading progress, or maybe I’ll end up getting a notebook for that purpose. It might be fun!
On a bit of a sidenote: it had been a while since I had used a sheet of paper for something that wasn’t a form, quick note, drawing, or doing origami. So yeah, fun.
If you make use of some of notebooks, journals or other similar analogue tools please let me know! Its nice to see how other people approach these things.
