Gadgets
Why I don't handwrite my daily journal
It’s all about finding the right medium that fits you best
If you spend enough time looking at the benefits of journaling online, you will find some guidance around the medium to use to capture your thoughts.
Many will advise of the benefits of handwriting in a paper (or digital paper) journal; and science has shown the engagement with different parts of the brain when handwriting compared to typing on a keyboard. There’s also a slightly romantic notion of sitting down on a comfortable chair with a warm drink nearby, and handwriting your morning thoughts (or whatever time journaling works best for you).
There’s others that will advise on using the technology that we have everyday with us to journal your thoughts throughout the day; either using an app on your phone or even capturing voice notes to journal.
There’s no right or wrong answer here; however I tried to start a handwriting journaling practice for years with limited success. My journaling method was solidified recently when moving to a digital word processor.
Why typing works for me over handwriting
Being an elder millennial with early access to computers, I grew up with technology. While we were still handwriting all our assessments at school, there were computer labs and typing classes in primary school. I personally had access to computers before 10, putting together 286 PCs with my now brother-in-law before being able to get a 386 machine of our own (good old Packard Bell).
With that exposure to computers at such a young age, it wasn’t long before I was comfortable typing; and soon after I was more comfortable typing than I was handwriting.
Moving forward to today, while I can handwrite decently well it’s still not something I do often enough to ever be truly comfortable with it. I think as a society, many are in the same boat. Most of the documents we need to make now are digital; typed on a keyboard, a phone or even dictated with our voices.
So when I’ve tried to handwrite in either a paper or digital eink journal it’s not too long before I get frustrated with it; either because of mistakes in my handwriting or through general fatigue cause I’m not used to handwriting so much at any given time.
Some might find the benefits of handwriting a journal outweigh these downsides, but they have always presented a frustration and a barrier to myself. Getting my thoughts out of my head onto a page is always difficult and takes time.
Anything that introduces extra friction into that process adds frustration, distracting from the value of journaling in the first place.
Typing allows me to not focus on the medium or my frustrations with it, instead focusing more purely on getting the thoughts onto a page. There’s times where I can even get into a flow state when typing up my thoughts or something I’m working on (like this post).
My natural comfort with typing removes a layer of friction from my head to words on a page.
Why I prefer physical keyboards and a dedicated device to journal over smartphones and apps
I mentioned in my post on the Clicks keyboard accessory for the iPhone that I much prefer typing on a physical keyboard (even a Blackberry style keyboard) over any touch screen phone keyboard that is the default in the modern smartphone era.
This isn’t because I’m necessarily more accurate or faster on a physical keyboard, indeed it might very well be the opposite. However typing on physical keys is a tactile experience that encourages me to type more; something virtual keyboards lack for me, no matter how good the vibration feedback is.
So for a while, I was journaling on an old PSION PDA device. While its cramped, mushy physical keyboard presented some challenges; ultimately typing on this device was more encouraging and productive for myself.
Since that device died, I’ve moved my journaling onto a Writer Forte word processor (which is what I’m writing this post on).
There’s another reason why smartphones are not the best method of journaling for me, which is distraction. The distracting nature of phones and apps is covered extensively elsewhere, so I won’t expand too much here. But it is detrimental to the writing flow if your thoughts and attention are constantly disrupted by notifications, emails, messages, or anything else on your phone that draws your attention away from your thoughts as you journal.
Again, I’m not saying this is a steadfast rule. Some people have found great success in using their phone to journal their thoughts throughout their day.
Experiment and see what works best for you, like I have with myself.
The Vision Pro is not the next iPhone, it's the next Apple Watch
Reading all the discourse leading up to the release of Apple’s Vision Pro headset, and the reviews now that the embargo has lifted; a lot of it feels very familiar.
While some die hard Apple fans have been going a bit too hard on their adoration of the product and a company they seem to have aligned a lot of their identity as a person on; many on the other side of the fence have also been equally as dismissive of it.
As usual, the reality lies somewhere in the middle (but that doesn’t generate clicks in the social media space).
Many in Apple’s camp are trying to align this release as equal to previous moments which has genuinely changed industries: namely the Macintosh and iPhone announcements.
However for myself, I see far more similarities to the Apple Watch.
The Apple Watch was also touted at the time as a new communications and computing platform. They tried to sell the digital crown as an input method similar in significance to the mouse or multi-touch FFS!
The reality is that while the Apple Watch is indeed a good business for Apple, and it can easily be argued that it’s the best smartwatch available; it is still just a very good smartwatch. It’s a fitness tracker and notifications device just like competitors before and after it. It just happens to be one of the best implementations of an existing idea.
The Apple Vision Pro (at least in its current form) feels more aligned to the Watch than the iPhone. One of the best implementations of an existing VR space but not a radical shift in computing.
It’s a VR headset
Apple is trying to shift the narrative to avoid comparisons by referring to their headset as Spatial Computing…but it’s a VR headset. Anyone trying to even suggest otherwise needs a slap in their weird VR avatar head!
Along with Meta and their push for mixed reality in their newer Quest devices, they are all doing the same thing; passing a video feed from your surroundings into your headset display to make it feel more like you are experiencing something within your environment instead of completely blocking it out.
Pretend all they want however, they are all just VR headsets.
The reason is clear. Everyone knows (either consciously or not) that the ultimate goal is a set of regular looking and feeling glasses that has AR capabilities; computing overlays within your actual environment, not a video feed replica. The technology just isn’t there yet.
Once the technology is capable of this, that will be the breakthrough.
The real interesting thing is Meta’s willingness to try moving towards this ultimate goal from both ends; via the traditional VR headsets in Quest, and via limited but more regular looking smart glasses through their Ray-Ban Meta range.
It feels like Apple has cornered themselves into the top-down approach of trying to make VR feel like AR, marketing the device as something you can just use throughout your day.
But no one wants to talk to someone who is wearing a giant headset while their eyes are being digitally recreated on the front display to make it feel like they are in eye contact with you.
That’s not maintaining a human connection while being digitally connected, that’s just being a weirdo.
What’s next
Much like the next few years after the Watch, it’s going to take some time for Apple to figure out what this device and its iterations are best for. Part of me thinks that this will just end up being a very nice display for Apple services and the Mac; until Apple can achieve proper AR through some regular looking glasses.
For that reason, I think this remains a very niche device for a very long time. Apple can’t play the “get it into everyone’s hands at the lowest cost” play Meta did during the Quest 2; even Meta can’t do that anymore.
The Watch got successful becoming focused on what it was good at and getting it down to a cost acceptable by many as a secondary device to their iPhone. Can Apple achieve the same or similar thing with the Vision Pro and future revisions?