[I] try to get ahead of my day by listing everything I know I need to do in Todoist the evening before. I review it, and then arrange it in the order that I think it needs to be done. I made my list last night. There were 12 things on it: Run test import…

[I]n one of my favorite Isaac Asimov essays, “The Ancient and the Ultimate,” Dr. Asimov writes considers a book and what would happen to it when combined with technological improvements over time. The essay was written in the early 1970s, but Asimov postulates that there would be electronic books, that the batteries would get better…

[Y]ears ago, when I opened a magazine or a newspaper, I skipped the Letters to the Editor section. It never occurred to me in those young and naive days that I would find anything of value in them. Today, the Letters to the Editor is one of the first things I read when turning to…

[T]he most frequent caution I received when writing my Going Paperless posts went as follows: “What if Evernote goes away? What then?” The more general concern might be expressed as “What if you no longer have access to all that stuff you put into the cloud?” It was never something I lost sleep over, but…

[E]arlier this week, I received the first delivery of my second year subscription  to Field Notes notebooks. My subscription to The List gets me one of these deliveries each quarter, and I always look forward to it. Since June 2015, I have been using Field Notes notebooks to serve as a supplement to my short-term…

[J]ust over a week ago, I got a new iPhone to replace my old phone that gave up the ghost after valiantly sounding my wakeup alarm so that I wouldn’t be late to the office. Setting up my new phone, I made the decision not to install the Facebook and Twitter apps. I’ve now had…

[S]elf-help books are all the rage. They are the 21st century equivalent of the cookbook, at least in terms of their ubiquity in bookstores, physical and virtual. I was browsing through the new nonfiction releases on Audible a few days ago, and half the books listed could reasonably categorized as self-help books. I find the…

[A]s I get older, I find myself much less likely to take an absolutist position on things. I look back on the days when I did take absolutist positions—all those late night arguments in the college dorm—with mild embarrassment. When my kids say, “I would never…” I caution them with the cliché, “Never say never.”…

[I] listened to my first audiobook out of sheer desperation in February 2013. I finished it on this day, four years ago. It changed the way I read books more dramatically than even the advent of the e-book. Time, or the lack thereof, was what forced me to turn to audiobooks. Prior to February 2013,…

[I]t is hard to believe that smart phones have only been around for a decade. Though only ten years have passed, I can’t remember how I filled the gaps of time while waiting to do something else. These days, that time is often filled looking at my iPhone. I have this irritating habit of pulling…

[T]here are two proposed rule changes to Major League Baseball for 2017. One involves shrinking the strike zone, bringing the lower end up to the top of the knees. The argument is that umpires have been routinely calling strikes below the knees and by raising the strike zone, this will help bring it back to…

[S]ometimes I finish a book and have a difficult time figuring out what to read next. This usually happens when the book I’ve just finished is so good that almost nothing will hold up to it. It is as times like this that I will return to my stable of reliable writers. These are a…