My Rocketbook is a staple of my daily work. I absolutely love writing, and I love to think on paper. I also have to do a lot of calculation, and for that pen and paper can’t be beat. But I am also terrible at organizing my notes, and my cupboard was always filled with old notebooks that had work that I wasn’t really using, but didn’t want to throw away.

Of course, this is a terrible system. I had different notebooks for each subject, and trying to pick up a line of reasoning from months (and sometimes years) ago was impossible. Whilst not the perfect solution, the Rocketbook is definitely a step in the right direction.

Rocketbook

For those of you who don’t know it, the Rocketbook is essentially a portable whiteboard. It comes with an app which makes it easy for you to upload your notes to the cloud, or email them, and is usable over and over again. This has made my life a lot easier in daily life and also when traveling – I don’t have to carry extra notebooks with me, and my notes don’t get lost or forgotten. After a few years though, it gets hard to write in, in such a measure that I was considering ditching my current Rocketbook altogether and getting a new one. However, there are two things you can do to ensure that your notebook still works for years to come:

If you’re using Pilot Frixion 0.7 mm pens, stop! The 0.7 mm is my go-to pen size, whether it be the Pentel (some of my all-time favourites) or the Frixion. Problem is, after a few years the Frixion pens do not want to write properly in the Rocketbook any more. An easy alternative is to simply switch to 0.5 mm pens. The difference in enjoyment is immediate – they write better, dry faster and clean better.

Pilot Frixion Pens

Get yourself another microfiber cloth. Even assuming that the cloth that comes with the Rocketbook is pristine, I find that moistening one side of it and drying with the other does not give me the results I desire. So I got a new microfiber cloth from the dollar store, and now when I clean I dampen the original cloth entirely, and use that to wipe the pages. I then dry them with the extra, completely dry cloth. Important: every ten or so pages, completely rinse out the cloth you do the first wipe with.

Microfiber cloth

As I stated in my previous post, I have been thinking about Cal Newport’s idea of “slow productivity”. In this post, I would like to explain why I think this is an excellent idea for someone interested in creating a life of flow.

To recap, slow productivity is about doing fewer things, doing them at a natural pace, being obsessed with quality, and focusing on longer-term results. In a way, this is antithetical to the way I always thought I should work. I have been obsessed for a long time with increasing my work output, and this has naturally lead to being obsessed with speed. The results speak for themselves: they sucked, and I was constantly overworked and underperforming. When you do lots of work very quickly, quality suffers, which means you did negative work, work which actually requires more hours to fix at a later time.

Changing your mindset to being slowly productive requires better planning, and saying goodbye to the idea of measuring productivity by busyness. I believe that it will also improve flow by lowering the barrier to entry. Flow is not something that all of us can switch on at will. Much like exercise, the first while can be really hard. If your intention for a flow session is to get an enormous amount done, you will constantly be evaluating your progress, which brings the inner critic online and kills flow. Yet if you have a realistic goal which relates to a bigger picture (and is therefore meaningful to you), but willing to commit yourself to doing high-quality work instead of just lots of it, I believe you will drop into flow that much easier. After all, the intention is not the extrinsic goal of getting lots done, but the intrinsic one of immersing yourself fully, because that is necessary to increase quality. It also means you’re not constantly watching the clock – another flow-killer.

There is another important aspect. Like most people, especially those who care deeply about their work, I hate doing a bad job. Even if I get a lot done, there is far less satisfaction when the quality is middling. When my goal is to focus on quality, I get a much deeper sense of satisfaction and that, after all, is what keeps you going back for more.

We do not like doing hard things. At the same time, we know that the only way to be happy and satisfied is to do hard things. I found myself quite incapable this morning of doing things that I knew I should, but which seemed daunting given my current mindset. I managed to overcome this quite successfully, using two principles:

1. Use your preferred mode.
2. Remember Slow Productivity.

Let’s start with the second first, because it is the more philosophical, whereas the first is more practical. Slow Productivity is best explained by Cal Newport, but the essence of it, as I currently understand it, is that your planning should be about achieving significant things over years, instead of achieving small, ephemeral wins in the short term. In this context, I see it as giving myself permission to make steady and incremental progress, without needing to put in a teeth-grindingly intense session of deep work. As such, I told myself that I did not have to master an enormous amount of background reading today, I can simply learn a few things, which I will mull over and try to relate to what I currently know, and which will contribute to my foundational knowledge of my field. This is indeed taking the long-term view: I am not trying to master anything today, but am planting seeds of concepts which will be used and refined for years to come. By taking away the pressure of having to work that hard, the barrier to entry of actually accomplishing something has been lowered, increasing the chances of a successful day and an enjoyable work session.

As far as the first point goes, I have repeatedly stressed the value of working in the way which fits you best. With me, that means writing. This could take the form of typing, but I take even more pleasure in writing by hand. To implement my slow productivity then, I took the small task I set myself, moved to the writing desk, and laid out my instruments. A big A3 pad of paper, Sharpies and the book I’m working on. Instead of focusing on the hard mental work of understanding difficult concepts, I concentrate on the pleasure of pen on paper, trying to sketch the concepts I’m busy with, doodling when I don’t understand something. There is something in this haptic environment which I take great joy in, and before I know it, I don’t want to stop, which is my most reliable indicator of flow.