Rearden Metal

I’ve been a great fan of Agendus on the palm for a few years now. I loved the enhancements to the built in datebook and contacts that it gave me. Being able to have icons for meetings meant that I could quickly glance at my diary and get an overall view.

But since updating to the version 10 product I’ve had to trade more eye candy and some potentially useful new tools for speed. And this is now getting in the way, and creating a definite psychic resistance.

The litmus test for me has been that a few times now I have deliberately looked at my diary with the built in palm app, as I can no longer stand the 2-5 second delay that Agendus is causing. It’s an irritation and it’s causing me to be less effective.

Apparently I’m not the only one with this complaint…

10.02 Slow Speed Still Exists - iambic Forums

One of the reasons I stick with palm is the instant on, instant go philosophy. I want the ‘turn on, click icon, check info, turn off, get back on with what I was doing’ system, and now Agendus isn’t cutting it.

So I’m on the lookout for a simple icon addition to the palm datebook, or else may even go back to vanilla.

My Moleskine is a thinking tool, something for me to be creative with. My Palm is a reference tool, something for me to store data in, as well as reminders, diary dates etc.

For a while I have felt uncomfortable. Part of me wanted to use my palm in a system that fitted my needs 100%. Another part of me knew that the tactile, free flowing, pen on paper based notebook system just ‘felt’ better and more creative. But I also really appreciated the fact that I could use my favourite software Lifebalance to implement my personal life and project planning system, the palm was much better at handling addresses, phone numbers and all of the other notes I entered into it, yet I just could not enter information into it my way. My way being one that changes constantly - lists, pictures, diagrams, mindmaps.

It was whilst simply sitting down and brainstorming with my new moleskine notebook and Pilot pen that I drew the following:

And then I think I made a breakthrough. Moleskine make great points about how many famous artists and writers used their notebooks. But they didn’t use them for the creation of works of arts, or write books with them. They used them for notes, and then processed the notes elsewhere. I think that using a notebook for dreaming and idea creation is a great idea. Then I can process the work into my palm as data for later retrieval.

Best of both worlds. I can create and dream however I want and enjoy the process.

I can then file the information as action lists, notes, diagrams (I can even scan the pages as images and save them on the Palm’s SD card, for efficient retrieval in my personal data store.

I hope this works, I’ll keep you posted.