As paper and stationery lovers, the best part of changing my habits away from phone and social media overuse to a more analog or disconnected is the “analog” stuff!

(I say “analog” in quotes because many of the single-purpose devices and items listed below are actual digital devices like cameras, ereaders and video game systems so I see the irony.)

As I work to disconnect more often and more frequently, I have discovered that I am adding MORE items to my life and my everyday use. While this may seem counterintuitive, having single-purpose devices and tools actually help to focus and demarcate my time.

From my research around Digital Declutter, the biggest problem with always-on, alway-connected lives is that our attention is always split between the various inputs. How many of us has watched a tv show or movie WHILE scrolling on their phone? (C’mon, confess. I’m not the only one.) Those split focus experiences make for less fulfillment. I neither distinctly remember what the episode on tv was about but I also only vaguely recollect what I was looking at on my phone.

The Paper Goods:

I mentioned earlier that I have started adding more notebooks into my life specifically as an alternative to using my phone for notes or feeling compelled to look up stuff the minute they pop into my head. By using a notebook for capturing quotes, ideas, things to research, I reduce the number of times a day I pick up my phone to do said task only to see I have new emails, text messages or comments and then get derailed from what I was doing when the idea popped into my head then I get distracted from doing the search or note taking by random messages and then forget that too.

So, to keep myself from feeling so scattered, I am using two notebooks to capture random thoughts, ideas, quotes, etc.  Both of these notebooks were discussed in more detail in my 2026 Techo Kaigi but I’ll include them again here for reference:

Commonplace Book:

This is an A5 lined notebook (the book I’m using is no longer available but its just a nice lined notebook. If you want an alternative, consider a Leuchtturm1917 or whatever is floating in your collection)  for quotes and thoughts around the books that I’m reading and anything that connects to those ideas. Its not a precious, fancy, decorative notebook. It’s just a lined notebook where I can quickly transcribe quotes. I have not mastered the standard Commonplace Book formatting but I may try to add that in as I go along.

If you are not familiar with Commonplace Books, many people will set a header on each page with a specific keyword and then include quotes, poems or other writing around that specific topic. For example, you find a quote about friendship so you start a new page in your Commonplace Book and add a header “Friendship” and then add your quote. Maybe later, you find a quote about gardens, so you go to the next page, add the header “Gardens” and add the quote there. Maybe you are researching a time period, a person or some other topic, your page headers will reflect those topics: “Edwardian dates of importance,” “Ghosts,” and “Alexander Hamilton”.

“I never travel without my diary. One should always have something sensational to read in the train.”

― Oscar Wilde, The Importance of Being Earnest

I realize the quote above is about keeping a journal or diary but I think having a CommonplaceBook filled with quotes that inspire you is just as much a delight to read while stuck on a train.

Utilizing the bullet journal method, this technique works best if you include an index at the front or back of the book that allows you to track where a specific type of quote is in your book.

Pocket Notebook:

The other book that’s been added into my Digital Declutter project is my small Mark’s Edit B7 pocket notebook. This is the brain dump. I put lists, things I want to research or look-up later, recommendations for books or films to see, etc. If a quote pops up while I’m out and about, I put it in the B7 and then transfer it into the Commonplace Book when I am back home.

I never thought I’d be someone who carried a pocket notebook. Sure, I’ve collected Field Notes for years but I never really used them on a day-to-day basis. Stepping away from using my phone for everything, all the time has opened up a place in my life for a little notebook.

The bonus of more notebooks is that I get to use more of my pens, inks and other stationery accessories. Win-win!

Other analog (or non-streaming, non-phone) tools:

Watching

We have purchased a few DVDs recently and are enjoying being able to have a curated collection of things to watch on tv. In some cases, I only ever watch Star Trek: Lower Decks so why do I keep paying for a streaming subscription when I can buy the discs and watch the episodes as many times as I want for one low-low price!

Since we reduced our streaming services, we don’t watch a lot of tv shows at the moment which I don’t really miss. We have considered renting DVDs of movies and tv shows from our local library if we need a fix.

Listening

In my Music post, I mentioned the addition of the iPod and ripping my vast CD collection as well as purchasing new discs and digital downloads. I spend less time trying to decide what to listen to and more time ACTUALLY listening to music. Its also far healthier for my psyche than doomscrolling or getting stuck in the news cycle loop.

Reading

I currently own two ereaders. I use one as my main reader (KOBO Libra 2) and the other is a Kindle Paperwhite that I use for library ebooks. The way Overdrive works on the Kobo changed this past year so that instead of being able to check out books from multiple branches easily, I now have to either download the books to my computer, run Adobe Digital Editions and then plug my Kobo into the computer to transfer the books or use a Kindle and download the books via Kindle’s partnership with Libby. I found a deeply discounted Kindle over the summer and decided that for the amount I read, it was worth it to have the two devices. I wanted to get out of the Amazon ecosystem but they pulled me back in! As it is, I only use the Kindle for Libby lending from three US local libraries and my Kobo has my purchased books. I also check out physical books from my local libraries pretty regularly. And as a self-respecting book boarder, I also have a lovely stack of TBR books beside my bed.

I also listen to audiobooks which I get from Libby. At present, I have to access these with my iPhone. I use wireless headphones and leave the phone in another room so I can’t scroll while listening. If you have a better solution, please let me know.

Cameras

I have always loved photography and I was one of the people who was last to embrace the iPhone as my primary photo taking tool but once I did, my “good cameras” were relegated to product shots and blog posts only. I no longer take my good camera out into the world and I want to change that. I want to get back into photography as a legitimate hobby and not just a way to collect image from Instagram (which I just don’t do at all anymore). I have an array of digital cameras from high-end dSLRs, mirco 4/3rds and pocket cameras. These are coming out, getting new batteries and SD cards and getting some use this year. My favorites to bring back into circulation are my very pocketable Canon S90 and my rangefinder style Olympus Ep-3 but it is pretty slow to focus. I’m going to experiment with these and see if they are good alternatives to using the camera on my phone.

Watch

I do have an analog watch or two but I continue to use tracking for my exercise and fitness goals so I will continue to use my very old Garmin Rey Legacy Series Watch but I think I need to get a new battery for it this year. I have turned off ALL notifications on my watch which has reduced the constant interruptions and distractions that it was causing. Now all it does is tell time and allow me to track my exercise activities. It’s kind of liberating to not be constantly buzzed every time I get an email, text message or news update. I used to think having all those notifications right on my wrist was helpful but it was actually making me anxious.

Its not imperative for me to use the watch to track my exercise so I may switch to a fully analog watch but I will need to find my analog watch and replace the batteries.

Other Entertainment

I still have an original Nintendo Switch for playing games occasionally and a handful of Solo RPG games that I can play on paper. I prefer the Switch to Apple Games or phone games because, while I am playing, I am not being interrupted by email notifications or other random beeps and bloops. For an hour, I can fully immerse myself in a game with no other distractions (if you don’t count the cats).

I also love to knit, do crossword puzzles, jigsaw puzzles, playing board games and probably a dozen other non-phone related activities. The less time I spend scrolling on Reddit or Instagram I can do ANY of these options.

In Conclusion

I suppose this seems like a lot of stuff when one phone, smaller than a paperback book could theoretically do most of the tasks listed above. Sure, switching to various focus modes on your phone or laptop can help somewhat but, for me, once the device is in my hand, I inevitably check all the things and forget what I was doing or thinking about before I picked it up. All the buzzing, little red dots and constant notifications was leaving me feeling unfocused and frazzled.

I know that some of the stuff listed above is off-topic from the overall theme of The Desk but I think as analog pen and paper users, most readers have at least thought about how devices have encroached on our time — both personal time and work time.

Am I forgetting anything that my phone has tried to replace? What techniques do you use to sharpen your personal focus and pursue your interests uninterrupted? What non-digital hobbies, activities or projects do you have going right now?

 

In my process of Digital Decluttering, the biggest point of concern for me was music. I have always been a music lover. Over the years I’ve accumulated vinyl, CDs and cassettes, made mix tapes for friends and then fell in love with portable music devices (yes, I even had a Minidisc player!) and finally iTunes.

Since the rise of streaming music and curated playlists, I felt like I was spending more time collecting new playlists and songs than I was actually listening to music and that’s not on accident. The apps are built to keep you scrolling. The casino-like vibe of Spotify and Apple Music lend themselves to endlessly scrolling for the next new album, playlist or collection. When you add in the addition of “radio stations”, curated playlists by other artists, audiobooks and podcasts, its easy to get lost in adding various content to a TBL (to be listened) rather than actually enjoying a song, album or book.

There is a theory in the digital minimalism/detox community that recommends going back single use devices like music players, ereaders, cameras, a watch, etc instead of depending on your phone to do all those things. If your phone is your watch, if you pick it up just to check the time and then see 15 notifications its easy to get hi-jacked by the urge to check the notifications. The same thing can happen if you pick up your phone to play some music or queue up an audiobook. “Notifications! Must check!”, then 20 minutes have passed and you no longer remember why you picked up your phone in the first place. Or maybe this is just me?

I bought an iPod

This could just be a me problem but it had become a big problem. So, I did the unthinkable. I bought a refurbished iPod, started re-ripping the mountain of CDs that I had stored in the basement and started to rebuild my music collection from scratch. I started with an empty Music library (not matched or connected to my Apple Music streaming account) and added tracks and built new playlists. It was daunting but after a couple of hours, the process became cathartic. I didn’t need the whole album, just the tracks I really liked. I was able to build different sorts of playlists then I had created in the past.

The experience had the vibe of moving house. At first packing and unpacking is daunting but then you get into a groove and start making decisions about what you don’t want to pack up and drag to the next place and what you had forgotten you loved. The process of building a new music library was my version of moving house.

Adding music to the iPod

I filled the new iPod with the songs, artists and playlists that I loved. I started jamming out to tunes. However, there was a little hitch. As a result of streaming services, I had not purchased any music — physically or digitally– in almost a decade so my new MP3 library is definitely showing its age. There are some artists and albums that have been released in the last decade that I would like to have on my iPod that I will have to purchase but so far I am loving just listening to music without an app recommending a “if you like this, you might like these…” or “people who listen to this artist also like…” for every track.

The other hitch is that some songs and albums I purchased through the Apple iTunes store back before 2009-ish are now listed as “purchased AAC” or “protected ACC” files. This means, in some instances, Apple no longer includes the album in its catalog (for example The Creatures Hai!). I can’t even purchase a full digital copy. I am still learning what these various classifications mean within the Apple Music world and how this will affect my ability to use this music on my ipod. Will I have to input a password to access the tracks? Mostly, I am super annoyed that even purchasing music through an online service doesn’t mean you truly OWN that music. It’s making a strong case for buying physical media.

“But that’s so expensive?!!?” If you remember in my subscription post on Digital Detoxing I talked about how much money I am saving by cancelling streaming services. I am using some of this money to pay artists for their music through services like Bandcamp (Bob would like me to remind folks of Bandcamp Fridays where 100% of the sales of songs and albums go directly to the artists) and then actually own the files. All these online services will change their formats and methods of delivery at some point and I don’t lose the music forever or get locked out of it like the “protected AAC” format.

Wired Earbuds or Not?

I did need to acquire wired earbuds to use with the iPod. I bought a budget set of IEMs (in-ear monitors which is a fancy term for better-quality earbuds — this is a whole separate geek-out category. After years of using bluetooth cans and AirPods, the wire of the IEMs was a little distracting and meant I needed to put the iPod in my pocket while I move around. Ladies, you know what I’m gonna say here — most women’s clothes don’t have enough pockets or large enough to hold more than a coin so carrying the iPod around with me is my only real challenge. When I go out for a walk, since its currently chilly, I put on a giant, ugly AF anorak but it has a big pocket to carry my keys and iPod with me easily.

Anorak • A short weather-proof hooded jacket or parka (the term is borrowed from the Inuit of Greenland) – but also a nerd, someone obsessed with a boring hobby, like watching trains or being obsessed with soccer statistics. (Anoraks have a lot of pockets for holding the notebooks, pens, etc. that such people would use.) — From USAToday

When working at home, I use the playlists and ripped CD music from my laptop and use my wireless headphones so I don’t have to figure out how to carry the iPod from room to room. I’m so spoiled by working from home that my wireless headphones work in every corner of my house including all the way out into the yard without losing signal. Using the AirPods or wireless headphones,  I do occasionally get those pesky notification beeps and boops but since its mostly business hours that I do this, it’s not too bad.

Conclusion

The bottomline, for me, is that listening to my own music that I have collected and selected and made my own playlists is a surprisingly liberating experience.

I like that when listening to my iPod, I don’t get notifications of texts, spam calls or incoming email. I can focus on what I’m listening to or doing while I’m listening. It allows me to pause and check my notification when I need to or want to and not everytime they pop up. I didn’t realize until I started this process the stress response I get from endless alert pings. Not being constantly dinged, buzzed or vibrated is reducing my stress levels in ways that are unexpected.

I will probably tip and out of Apple Music’s streaming service every now and again for new music but my goal is to make contentious choices and not listen to curated playlists. After reading the Mood Machine book, I am skeptical of the streaming music services. They are not really trying to find the best recommendations for me, they are trying to get us to spend more time on the service and listen to the music that serves them best which can sometimes be from the big publishers and not indies as well as the ever-encroaching similar sounds created by Muzak-like companies and even AI.