Charley Kempthorne has been keeping a journal for more than 50 years. Every morning before the sun is in the sky, the professor-turned-painter carefully types out at least 1,000 words reflecting on his past, his beliefs, his family, even his shortcomings. The prolific fruits of his labor reside in an impressive storage facility in Manhattan, […]
Archive for Productivity
Cornering the Paper Tiger
Why Leaders Should Junk the Technological Fallacy
Studying the history of paper, as I did while writing the book Paper: Paging Through History, exposes a number of misconceptions. The most important of which is this technological fallacy: the idea that technology changes society. It is exactly the reverse. Society develops technology to address the changes that are taking place within it. To […]
Moleskine Mania
Why We Shouldn't Paper Over This Success Story
If you ever attend Milan’s Design Week—a sweeping furniture fair, art festival, and Prosecco-soaked party that takes over Italy’s financial capital each April—you will need several essentials to fit in with the global trendsetters in attendance. First, your glasses. This is a design crowd, so the options are polarized into two camps: ultraminimal frameless spheres […]
The Science of Putting Pen to Paper
Studies Show: It Forces You to Focus
One of my earliest memories involves a handwriting struggle. My class had been tasked with writing stories. I love stories. My masterpiece, about accidentally catching a great white shark and putting him into my bedroom aquarium, was the longest in the class. It was pages and pages long. It had chapters. I was in child-heaven […]
Your Own Personal Time Machine
5 Simple Ways to Recover the Lost Art of Note Taking
I spend most of my work-life in meetings. Note-taking is a survival skill. Yet, I am surprised at how few people bother to take notes in meetings. Those who do sometimes express frustration at how ineffective the exercise seems to be. In this post, I’d like to expound on why I think you should take notes in meetings and then offer a few suggestions on how to do it better.
The Most Overlooked Productivity Solution
Why Every Leader Should Re-Adopt This Tried-and-True Technology
We all want to be more productive, but we’re drowning in a sea of productivity apps and hacks. We’ll show you why every leader should re-adopt a well-known—but often overlooked—productivity solution: paper! By using paper in some situations, you can avoid wasting time and money on solutions that don’t work and focus on your most […]