Focused - 242: The Case for Analog

Episode Date: November 4, 2025

Welcome to Focus to Productivity Podcast about more than just cranking widgets. I'm David Sparks and joined by the one and only, the esteemed Mr. Mike Schmitz. Hello, Mike. Hey, David. How's it going? Good. I feel like we should have like clapping sounds after I introduce you. Well, I mean, you're the man of the hour here. You just launched a new field guide. Amen, brother. I did. Yeah. So I got a new field guide out. It's called the Apple Productivity Suite Field Guide. And this one was a slow burn for me.

I used to make fun of the Apple productivity apps. And by that, I mean Apple notes, reminders, free form, and calendar. I used to make fun of them because they just were not very good for the longest time. And then I know five or six years ago, Apple just started turning up the dial on them. And suddenly the frog is boiling. Mike, we have some good apps from Apple. Yeah. And I think this is a brilliant field guide, by the way.

So you've given me access to it, and it's the top-notch production quality that you come to expect from the Max Sparky Field Guides. But I feel like this is the gateway drug. For everybody who wants to become a power user of their Apple technology but doesn't consider themselves a power user, this is a great place to start. Because like you said, the Apple productivity apps have gotten a lot better. But this is all stuff that ships with your computer. So you don't have to invest any other money to buy any other additional apps. And I feel like once you go through this one and you start to get some of those, those quick wins, you recognize the gains. I think this is perfectly positioned in the mount, climbing the mountain or like walking the path for the max sparky field guides.

This is the one that is the most accessible, I think, to the most people. And it's going to help a lot of folks be a little bit more productive with their apple gear. Yeah. And for a lot of people, this is the mountain. Once you get these apps figured out, you're good. And they are perfectly acceptable to run a very successful productivity system. So, yeah, I'm happy with the way it came out. We've refined the process over the years, and I feel like they're very good products.

I'm very proud of it. It's about 100 videos. It's about five hours, something like that. And so you get all the training you need. If you get the pro version, there's a six-week webinar series included, which also gets recorded and uploaded to the course so check that out uh that actually will have started right before the show no i'm sorry that will start a few days after the show releases so still time to get in early on that but what's the the problem is because of our release schedule the the initial

launch code will be expired by the time the show releases so i'm adding an additional code called focused launch. F-O-C-U-S-E-D-L-A-U-N-C-H gets you 10% off. I'm essentially extending the launch discount, but just for focused listeners. So get in there. It'll be good for a week or two and hopefully join in with the course. Thanks, everybody. Congratulations. Yeah. It always feels good to ship one. And it is a remarkable amount of work. But it always feels good when you get it out in the world. Yeah, I know you've been working hard on this one for a while. Yeah, I have.

So we thought today it would be fun to kind of talk about analog. It seems to pop up a lot on shows lately. And I have been on my own kind of struggle with analog versus digital and hybrid workflows. I think that there's something to it. And I thought it would be fun for us to just kind of talk through how we use analog tools, where we use them, and why. today on the Focus Podcasts. Yeah, absolutely.

So I guess when we put together the outline, I felt like the place I needed to start was my analog evolution because when I started, analog was the furthest thing from my mind. I grew up surrounded by computers. My dad owned a software company and developed software for like the Apple 2E's back in the day. In fact, I remember vaguely going to a sales presentation with him because he sold to special education departments and schools. And one of the stigmas at that time was that special education students could not use a computer. So he had me along as like a two year old and he's doing his thing at the table with all the adults. And I'm over in the corner putting together the computer

and starting to use it. And everybody's amazed at this two year old can do it. And my dad's point is well, two-year-old can do it. Your kids can do it. So I've always loved the tech tools. I use the computer for everything that I could. And I think I first kind of started leaning analog when I came across the Oppenheimer study, which talks about the effectiveness of retention when you're taking analog notes versus when you're taking digital notes. I remember that really hit me, how like I brought my laptop to college classes, was taking everything, no, you know, word for word and found it hard to study from that and realize that, you know, just like the Oppenheimer study shared that when you take digital notes, you tend to get it word for word, but you don't

retain as much of it. So that was like the first thing that kind of opened my mind to the benefit of analog where, you know, when you are taking handwritten notes, you are synthesizing the idea is you literally can't keep up. So you have to kind of figure out what the main points are. And so even if you never go back and look at him again, you remember more. And then that kind of led into sketch noting. I remember first coming across the idea of sketch noting from our friend Mike Roddy. And this whole thing of ideas, not art. I was a terrible artist, but I figured, you know, if I can start sketch noting and I'll, that's like the Oppenheimer study on, on a cranked up to 11. You know, I now I'm not only synthesizing the ideas in terms of what to write, but I have to like

create pictures to go with these things. So I started sketch noting and fell in love with that, got into fancy fountain pens, and the rest is kind of history. I know we're going to talk later about the specific ways that we're using this. But yeah, I think probably at this point, I would consider analog to be just as important to my productivity kit as any digital tool that I use. Yeah. Mine was a little different because I'm older than you. I grew up. and computers, you know, I was into computers as well as a kid, but they were very expensive and inaccessible and not portable. So, you know, going through school, high school, even college, laptops just weren't really a thing back then. The paper and pencil was the way to go. And so I took

notes by hand all through my education. When I got to law school, that was 1990. And there was more computers available then that you could bring to school, but they were prohibitively expensive for me. So I did have a little $200 tandy, like, word processor, which was barely a computer, but I used that in law school, but I also extensively use outlines. And through my legal career, I used analog quite a bit in addition to computers because I just saw things it was really good for. one of the things you do with the type of law I did was I would go to court often and argue motions and you know things in front of judges and and I always felt like when you stood up in front of a judge you had to have some notes in front of you but you know like typing out a whole

page of notes is not going to be good you know judge hold on judge let me just read five paragraphs here to find out this thing I need to tell you so I was doing kind of organic sketch noting before sketch noting was a thing. In fact, I was included in my second book for weird uses for sketch noting. But anytime I would stand in front of a judge or jury, I would have a hand-drawn diagram that I would use to make my arguments.

And another thing that I do to this day is I have a big pad of two-foot-by-three-foot-sticky notes, you know, the ones they use for those brainstorming meetings where you hang it on the wall and you get a room full of people and you get a big magic marker and you draw the big words on it. But I use it with a pencil and I put it on a tabletop and treat it kind of like an infinite canvas. And I just come back to it over and over again. In fact, this field guide we just talked about started as one of those sheets.

Nice. I love those big stickies. Yeah. It's a very strange use to use it as a piece of paper as opposed to a big thing. but so i i've kind of been bouncing in and off of analog my whole life the the part that for me is a kind of a later later arrival is the idea of just like extended essay writing and journal writing which has been evolving for me over the last several years and for the same reasons you know i i heard about the studies as well i'm not sure i believe them is it is it a thing where you know

people who grew up doing it obviously are better at that or is it a thing I think people can do meaningful work on computers. Like I wrote a book called Paperless. You know, I obviously think technology is useful. But I also think that slowing myself down, as we get into the Y in a minute here, it has some benefit for me. So today, in addition to kind of like my historical analog stuff,

I have a pile of cards on my desk that I'll write on. I use analog for brainstorming, increasingly I'm using it for kind of productivity planning and just like mapping out what I'm going to do and then kind of there's two forms of journaling in my life there's one where I journal the day and there's the one where I write essays to myself about things I'm thinking about what I call the Spark EOS and both of those have increasingly become analog over the years one other is furniture design you know a lot of people go real deep with CAD. I make furniture in my little shop. A lot of people go super deep with CAD and have everything

mapped out. I do some sketches on a piece of paper. I do use grid paper so I can get the dimensions right. But it's very soft for me because a lot of times I'll change plans midstream in the shop as I'm working through something. Yeah. You bring up an interesting point about whether you kind of grew up with this and it becomes ingrained, the kind of revelation that I had, the tipping point, so to speak, for me was I would take digital notes of, after I had graduated from college, digital notes of the sermons that I attended at my church. And frequently I found myself thinking, you know, I had all of these pages of notes, which were great, I could go back and search and find something. But then when I was meeting a friend for lunch on a Tuesday,

and he asked me what pastor had preached about on Sunday, I couldn't remember. And I was like, well, this isn't really doing me any good. I don't want to have to go back and review my notes every single week. Maybe there is a better way. I had heard about this study. Sketch noting seemed interesting to me. And when I say I was not an artist, I mean it. There's an article out there on the suite setup, which is a little bit older at this point, but it has an image of my very first sketch note. It is a stick figure and a bunch of words. I have gotten to the point where I am with sketch noting simply, and I still don't think I'm all that great, but simply through repetition and that emphasis on ideas, not art, you know, you don't have to

judge the quality of the work. It's really just trying to get this stuff to stick somewhere between my ears. And enough of it has that I feel like I've gotten the value from it. It's hard to to quantify, but I just feel like I retain more information when I do it that way. And then that kind of opened up, you know, where are the other places where analog could benefit my workflows? And I keep finding different ones. I kind of hesitate to say, you know, I'm at the pinnacle analog phase of my life right now. I feel like I've got a great balance between these things. I'll probably find some additional analog tool that looks interesting and try it out just because I can't resist the shiny new analog objects even. But I've got the large sticky pads like you've got.

I don't use those all that often, but I do have them because I do like doing that. You know, when you're just trying to brainstorm something, writing all that stuff out, sticking it somewhere where you can reference it over and over again is really helpful. I've got a whiteboard in my office that I use for developing ideas. things like that. And lots and lots of pens now. I know we'll talk a little bit later about the differences in the tools that we use. You're a pencil guy, but pens really just have clicked for me. I know there's disadvantages with that. You can't erase them, stuff like that. But I think the big thing is it forces me to slow down and then also it adds an element of joy to all of the stuff that I do. And that really does have an impact on my not only ability to focus, but my ability to be productive

and take consistent action on the things that really matter. Yeah, like even journaling, I do also dictate journal entries on occasion, but I think the balance for me is more in analog than digital at this point. And you're right, it's a journey. I don't know where this will be with me as years go forward. In fact, I feel myself as artificial intelligence gets more powerful, finding myself drawn more toward the analog side. of it, just because almost like a rebellion against it. But that's just me. Let's talk about

the Y for a minute. First of all, it's kind of nuts to do analog when you've got these great digital tools. Like I mentioned dictation. Now you can just sit and talk and you can get a very good transcription of your words, just like Captain Picard used to do back on the Starship Enterprise at the end of each day. And you can get a really great journal going that way. and it's synced. It's backed up. It's searchable. It's omnipresent. It's everywhere. I remember we had a big fire scare a few years ago. And it was far away. And then suddenly it was close. You know, if police are driving up and down the streets telling us all to get out of our houses. And so we did that, of course. And we got to a safe haven. And I realized I left all my journals at the house. You know, and if the house would have burned down, they would have gone up with it. If I had them in digital form, they wouldn't have, you know. So there's a lot to say about why digital is good and superior.

And yet, you know, the analog is slower, which is people say, well, it's slower. And I'm like, yeah, it's slower. I have this long essay written I want to publish at some point about optimizing for speed. I think one of the detriments of modern computer era and technology is that we start to think that speed is the best metric for everything. And I think some of the stuff we're talking about doing here, speed is not the best metric. It's actually, it's more about intentionality and meaningfulness that you want to solve for. And analog gives you that.

It slows you down. Intentional friction. Hooray. Yep. Yeah, speed is not the best metric. I love that, that phrase. And this is not a new idea. It reminds me of the Peter Drucker quote that nothing is so useless as doing efficiently

that which should not be done at all. But I do think that in the current culture that we live in, the amount of information that comes at us is exponentially more than at any other point in human history. So I think the value of going slow is greater than it has ever been. Because when you go slow, you are able to see the forest through the trees and identify the things that really matter. Yeah. And that Peter Dricker quote, I would argue, doesn't apply here because I think doing it digitally is valuable. I'm not going to say equally because I guess it depends on the person. It is valuable to sit and do a fast journal entry or a fast essay or some of the stuff quickly using technological means. I mean, you could use AI to help you write it if you want. That would be the fastest way to do it. But I believe that for my own experience, slowing down and doing it more meaningfully is the answer.

And frankly, think about all the stuff we waste time on as we're recording this. We're in the middle of the World Series. I sell mic before we recorded. I don't watch them with sports, but to get to the World Series, I watched it. I spent like seven hours last night watching a baseball game, you know. If I could do that, I could make time to sit down and gather my thoughts with an analog tool. There's time. And the thing that comes with that is I believe it's more introspective when you go slower.

It sinks deeper, kind of getting back to that Oppenheimer study. And in this case, it's not like I'm listening to a teacher trying to learn from them. I'm actually trying to learn from my own thoughts and introspection, which could be arguably even more valuable. And so taking your time with that is good. Another thing I like about analog is just how easy it is. I went on a short trip with the family. I brought a pad of paper, a pencil, and a pencil sharpener. And that was my journaling technology.

And for part of the trip, we were at sea with no internet. It didn't matter. All of my technology still worked for journaling. Another point in its favor for me is that the mere fact that it's not digital. Like I spend so much time. working with digital tools. I teach digital tools who are living. You know, I work with all this technology to make these shows happen, to make these videos happen. And just getting away from that desk. I actually have a separate analog desk in my studio. I know fancy me, but it was, you know,

in the family. And it actually was my mom's desk. So it connects me to her when I sit at it. and I really like just pushing my chair away from the computer once in a while every day and spending some time working analog. I get it. I get it. I would, I think, push back a little bit on something that you said about how the digital tools can work just as well for, I forget the specific phrase that you used. They can definitely be used for thinking, but I do think that there is something that happens

analog that cannot be replicated with the digital tools. And it's hard to put my finger on it exactly. It's sort of a combination of the things that you described where your notebooks are never going to run out of batteries. It kind of ties back to the idea when we talk to Marianne Wolfe about how just the fact that you're using a screen, things hit differently, like your brain activates in a different mode. And for me, that's the real value of using the analog tools, is it is the thing that forces me to go into that different mode. And I kind of can't even describe exactly what that mode is,

but I can see the fruit of operating in that mode. Yeah. Whenever I just have to go slower and make the list. You know, I can type pretty fast. When I have a keyboard, I can write things out. And I do think that writing is a way of thinking as well. You know, I've got the, there's the Dawson Trotman quote that thoughts just entangle themselves your lips and pencil tips. And I say frequently and also clicky keyboards. But it's different when it's analog because it's, you can't just switch to a different application. You can't, you know, 10 seconds from now be doing something completely different. You have to go to a different device. You have to go to a different place in order to do something different when you are in that analog mode. So that forcing me to go slower, that is the biggest benefit

for me. And it is impossible for me to overstate the benefit that I get from that. We've had several people on the show who have talked about ADHD and I've not diagnosed ADHD. so I can't, you know, fully empathize, I guess, with the situations that they describe. But when they talk about things like a race car brain and your brain just moving so fast, that resonates with me. That is me basically all the time that I'm using digital tools. And when I grab analog tools, it's like everything in me kind of down shifts and it feels really good. it allows me to be more focused in a way that's not, okay, I'm going to write a thousand words for

this blog post, but it's more focused in my thinking. And I believe that that helps me ultimately be way more intentional. I really believe in the value of time blocking. We've talked about that a lot on the show. But I feel like for me, the analog time blocking that I do, I get a exponentially greater return from that than the average person just because of the way that I'm wired and how it forces me to go into a different mode. I think it also kind of feeds the belief that, oh, you don't really need to do that as well. So it's sort of a double-edged sword. But every single time that I actually create the action plan for the day and block out every single hour, I really realize the value of the plan, as Dwight Eisenhower put it, plans are worthless,

but planning is everything. That intention and just figuring out, you know, these are the three things that I'm going to do today, and this is when they're going to happen, the three most important things anyways, that removes such a big mental burden from me as I'm going through the rest of my day. And then the last thing that really, really I think does make a difference for me. I've kind of gone off the deep end with the fountain pens. Thanks to you and Brad Doughty at the Relay 5th anniversary show. So thanks for opening that door for me. But I get so much joy out of using those and happy people are productive people. It sounds stupid, but I look forward to creating my time block plan for the day and choosing the fountain pen that I'm

going to use to do it. You know, that brings a smile to my face as I'm walking down the stairs to my office to get my planner and create that plan. And I think that has a impact as well. I agree with all that. I think that, you know, for me, I think the biggest, the last point I would make in favor of the increasingly analog workflows I'm doing is that I enjoy the ritual. You know, I like the process of getting the paper out and sharpening the pencil and looking at the blank page and, you know, maybe I'll have some nice music on. brew some tea and it's just like it's such a different thing than what i'm doing as i race through the day all that said though i still want to defend the digital stuff because i think there's i think

this stuff is so useful that no matter what your avenue of accomplishing it is is worthwhile um i've argued on this show that you know one of the best ways to do introspective writing or journaling is just to talk into a recorder and let the computer transcribe it for you a lot of lot the times you get to deep thoughts that you weren't realized. You didn't realize we're there because you just keep talking. And that's different from writing it down. It's faster. It's a more kind of stream of conscious. And I think for a lot of people that works, that still works for me on occasion. So I don't want to poo-poo that stuff too much. But the reason we're making the show is, is both of us realize that the benefits of analog seem to be landing with us even more as we do this more.

Agreed. And I want to also share that you mentioned the physical analog journals and the fire coming and realizing you have to leave that stuff behind. I actually know somebody who lost a whole bunch of analog journals in a fire in California. So I get the value of having all that stuff digital and having it portable. I think the real question people need to ask when they're deciding which. avenue do they go down for this specific workflow, for this job to be done in their productivity system is really just what are you optimizing for? And if you want the data, if you want to be able to search the stuff, like even the transcriptions that you were talking about, then yeah, you cannot be digital tools. I'm not going to be searching through all of my analog writings, but also the thing that I'm optimizing for with that daily time block plan as an example is simply to clear my brain and get clarity on what is the thing to do. I never go back and look at those again. I know you for a while were scanning things into day one, so you had a

digital record of things. I really don't care once I'm done with the day. I never go back and look at that thing again. So if you do want to have that historical record of things, then yeah, digital's the way to go. Yeah. And the process. is the biggest benefit of it. But I also find it used to go back and read them as I'm doing quarterly reviews and things like that.

But as time goes on, I look at them less and less. That said, if there was a fire and I lost them all, I would feel bad, but I wouldn't feel heartbroken because the journals did their job while they survived.

But the ritual part of it should not be understated. I think that's okay. I felt kind of guilty about that, even writing that into the outline. It's like, oh, fancy Sparky, wants to have his pencils and his tea, you know. But life is short. And if there are rituals that you enjoy, then you should partake. And I think it helps me get to a more meaningful thought and ideas.

I go and look at my, because I type of the, I call them Sparky OS entries, and I've got them on everything. Like, I've got one. I'm just looking through my book, you know. I've got one here. Unnecessary complexity. Here's a whole essay I wrote on it. Like, and so I've got them that I've handwritten, I've got them that I've typed up. And the handwritten ones are shorter, but I think they're better. And I, uh, I want to do more of that. This episode of the Focus podcast is brought to you by Squarespace. Go to Squarespace. Go to Squarespace.com. slash focused and save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain using the code focused. Squarespace is the all-in-one website platform designed to help you stand out and succeed

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focus to save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain. That is Squarespace.com focused with the offer code focus to get that 10% off your first purchase. And to show your support for the Focus podcast. Our thanks to Squarespace for their support of the Focus Podcasts and all of Relay. All right, Mike, we've made the case why. Now, let's talk about the how. How do you analog, Mike Schmitz? Lots of ways.

So the biggest thing I think that's worth talking about as it pertains to the topic of focus is this idea that I picked up from Sean Blanc several years ago about the brain versus the list and splitting up the database of tasks that I need to do from the list that I am going to work off of during the day. That provides the biggest amount of value, I think, for the smallest amount of investment. You know, I talked about the time block plan that takes me five minutes every day, probably saves me for the 95% of the time that I do it, you know, two hours a day at least, just in the intention that it brings. So the brain is what I, the place where all the things that I need to do live is basically my task list is in obsidian.

And then Morgan is my calendar. So that's all the appointments like the cord focused podcast. That's going to appear on the calendar. So I'll look at those things. And I view those from the brain perspective, you know, that's essentially, you've got all the metadata in there. It can tell you, these are the things that you should consider doing today. But then when I make the list, it's like I'm injecting my own agency into this equation and I'm not just going to work off of whatever the computer tells me to do. I'm going to choose the three specific things. And I do force myself to stick with three big tasks each day.

Occasionally, I will have a fourth one. But every time that I do that, I feel like I'm walking close to the edge. I'm getting close to the fire. When I pick three, that doesn't mean I'm only doing three things per day, but it's basically the three most important tasks. So when I create that time block plan, I'm doing that in my personal retreat planner. And I've been loving doing that, that by the way. And then when I've got that, and I've identified the task that I'm going to do today, I write those on a note card, and I put that, prop it up in front of my desk. So those are always in front of me as a reminder of

this is what I'm going to work on today. So that's the big thing. If I was going to say, you know, it's still one thing from my workflow, that would be the thing I would tell people to consider is having a digital database of the things that you could do, but using that simply as like a recommendation engine. But I do several other things. I've got actually on my desk right now as we are recording. Ugmunk makes these capture cards that are about the size of two index cards stacked

on top of each other if you turned them sideways. And it's dot grid and I have that right next to my keyboard and I write down, you know, time codes and things that I need to add to the list of links for the, for the episode. I do that as we go when we have guests, you know, and they say something that I want to come back and follow up on. You know, I'll put things in quotes on there. It's big enough where I never run out of, run out of room for jotting all those things down. So that's kind of like a disposable, you know, just like a scratch pad sort of a thing, but I can't be typing all the time on my clicky keyboard. So I'll do that analog. It's also easier for me to focus on the conversation while I'm writing something down as opposed to typing for some reason. I don't know

why that is, but it's true. I've got the digital calendar, but I've also got the big focused wall calendar, which by the way, 2026 is available now. And that's hanging in the back corner of my office. I don't look at it all the time, but I do put the big stuff on there, like the conferences that I'm going to and the family trips and things like that so I can see the landscape of the year. And if I see you know, week blocked off in June, for example, then maybe I should not try to plan something super big the week before or the week after I get back, leave some space there, some margins so I don't overcomit to things. I mentioned a whiteboard. The whiteboard is if I had to, you know, if I, if you took all my analog tools away and I had to pick, you know,

the one that I was going to get back, it would be a tough choice between the planner and the whiteboard. I use the whiteboard so often for just thinking through things. And you don't need them necessarily board on the wall in order to do this, but that format for me really just does work. Every time that I am trying to think through creative projects, I grab a dry erase marker, get on the whiteboard, just start writing. And again, you know, I don't think I'm a great artist. So one of the things that I have to get over is, well, it's not going to look perfect. I'm going to put things too far over to the side. But just the ability to have those things out there spatially, it's way different than any of those infinite canvas apps or even my beloved

mind node for mind mapping. It's a kind of version of that visual thinking, I feel, but you really can't replace just grabbing a marker, writing things out on a whiteboard. My best ideation happens that way. And then, of course, the one that I really need to mention, because I am full on analog here, is every book that I read is analog. The only exception here would be occasionally, you know, we'll interview someone who has written a book. And if they've got like a pre-release book, often now they won't offer to send a physical book in the mail, but they'll share a PDF so we can look at it before we talk to them. And I die a little bit inside every time that that happens. But analog books are all over my house. I probably have about 1,600 of

them all over the place now. And you'll have to pry my analog books. from my cold dead hands. How do you feel about that really, though? Well, again, you know, we talked to Marianne Wolf, and she's got a compelling case for this, but even before we talked to her, I kind of experienced the stuff that she was talking about. I guess the thing is, you know, I was a reader,

and then I wasn't a reader, and then the thing that got me back into reading was carrying a physical book with me everywhere that I went. that was the thing that kind of unlocked it for me. So having those visual cues of, hey, this is a better way to consume information than scrolling through social media is helpful for me.

And it helps me read more. I think that has a lot of benefits not only to like my creative output, but just the quality of the ideas that I'm able to collect and wrestle with. I feel like it helps me think better about things and make better decisions. I think it has vastly improved the quality of my life.

I've also got a couple hybrid. I say hybrid because I've incorporated elements of analog using digital tools for these. So I mentioned sketch notes. And for a while, I actually did these with the pilot G2 gel pens and just a fancy, like, it wasn't a mole scheme, but it was something, maybe a barren fig style, notebook, you know, with the dockerid paper. I have since switched to doing those in Good Notes. So Good

Notes is an iPad app that I use on my iPad mini. That's the ideal size for me, I think. And I've got, I think, seven years of sketch notes now inside of Good Notes. And I think I'm still glad I started with the pens because I'm a bit of a perfectionist and not being able to go back and erase things. so it was helpful at the beginning. But Good Notes is amazing, and I find, you know, I'm making the same sketches over and over again so you can create the collections of things.

Every single time I do one, I'm usually adding one new drawing at least to the collection in addition to like the big block letters and things like that. But it really just does help me create those visuals a lot more effectively. And I get more joy out of looking at the things that I create inside of Good Notes

as opposed to the things that I was doing with the pens in the paper. And then when I do in-person meetings, which isn't all that often, but I do not like bringing my iPad or my laptop there. So I have a remarkable, and I do still use this for in-person meetings. I don't know why. Maybe it's just in my head, but I feel like the remarkable introduces less friction to an in-person meeting than a tablet that people can tell this is this is an iPad it's it's a lot thinner it feels and looks I feel a lot like a digital legal pad and so I feel like people aren't as

put off by by something like that if you were to to bring it into a into a meeting and obviously the meeting itself is going to be dependent on on whether that's even an issue or not you know most meetings people probably don't care. But I just find it easier to engage in the meeting itself using the remarkable than an iPad. All right. Well, that's a lot. You got a lot of analog stuff going on there. A couple comments on some of yours is just starting with the most recent. The remarkable, I cannot. I've tried it twice. I just can't get into it. And I just feel, it's just not for me, but I think a lot of people have the same experience and use that you do, where they bring it into convenience. It's like their digital notebook. Another one that you're a big

fan of that I can't get my head around is the whiteboard. I installed a glassboard in the studio when I built it and I've tried so often to make that work. Just to give you an example, I have made it like the weekly hot list where I write things on it that I'm doing over the week and then I walk up and check them off as I'm doing them. But that never seems to stick. I turned it into a giant con bond board at one point or I drew the columns and I used sticky pads to move things around on it. That didn't stick. I try to use it for ideation, but I keep coming back to my big jumbo post-its instead. And I just can't seem to make that thing work for me. I would like to be a avid user of it and I am not. Well, that's interesting. But I also think the ways that you're

describing it are not actually the ways that I use it. I kind of use it when I'm going to, for example, figure out what I'm going to do for Black Friday. You know, I'm going to run some sort of sale. I have no idea what it's going to be. So I grab the marker. I walk up to the whiteboard. I put Black Friday, Cyber Monday at the top. And then I just start jotting down things in different places. And as I do it, it's like, oh, I should put this over there. I should put that over there. Yeah. Draw arrows to connect things. And it's almost like the minute that I walk up to the whiteboard, that is the thing that unlocks the thinking in my head, especially when there's somebody else in the room and you're collaborating. I feel like this is the best way to do it. But I basically

just was like, I'm going to try this myself. And absolutely, I get the same sort of benefit from it. So I'll start up, walk up there and, you know, I have no idea what this is actually going to look like. And then all of a sudden I've got a couple different columns and I'm putting things underneath the columns. And as I do that, I start to see these are the big major pieces of this and this is how these things tie together. And from there, it's like, well, which one of these am I going to do first? I'll create like the list of the emails I'm going to send with the dates associated with them. And if I'm going to like flesh out a what in the world is this product that I'm, going to make, you know, those sorts of things. That's the same sort of process. I think you talked

about the big post-its that you stick on the wall, I feel for that you used for the Apple productivity field guide. Yeah. That's the kind of stuff that I do on the whiteboard. I don't use it as a reference of things or even a con bond board so I can see, you know, this is what I'm working on. It's really just for brainstorming for me. Yeah. And I do that digital. I use reform for that. So, yeah, I need to spend some more time with that thing and figure it out because I feel like it's sitting there and not getting used. And then, of course, the books thing, I just go back and forth on it.

Like the book that we're talking about that I'm going to share later, I bought the physical copy of that book, the book I'm going to cover for this week. In fact, most of the books I talk about on this show are books where I bought them. But I just really go back and forth on whether or not I want physical books or digital books or digital books. Part of it is I don't have a lot of storage. Part of it is my eyes. I find it kind of hard to read a book in bed at night without like a lot of light. And that gets into some medical stuff I have going on. And I just, you know, there's some benefits to digital books that, the physical books that don't have. And yet I still enjoy physical books too. So I wish I was

as certain as you are about that. So how I analog, though, it really starts with me with this Plotter system. I discovered this a couple years ago, PlotterUSA.com. It's a Japanese stationary, and it's a ring system. And they make really great paper, and they make really great notebooks, and it's overpriced. But, you know, getting back to the idea of ritual and enjoying it, you know, if you get tools that you enjoy using them, you use them more. And I bought a Plotter A5 notebook a couple years ago, and I use it daily. And I just keep it loaded with the most current stuff I'm working on.

They also have these storage binders, and I've filled up one, and I'm halfway through a second one now. And, you know, so I just, you know, kind of archive the stuff out of the notebook as I'm done with it. They have pre-printed paper of every type. The two-millimeter grid, is actually really good. I didn't think I'd like that, but I like that one even more than the dot grid. And they've got list paper and calendars. And they've got all whatever you want.

And they've got a bunch of different sizes. I actually went through a thing. But what part of the reason why I suggested the show is I went through a little thing last week where I got the idea of like, well, maybe I'll get a plotter, a second one where they have these thin ones. And I'll just write all my tasks in there. and use that, like, as a running task list, kind of like augment cards. But then I'm like, you don't need more stuff.

That's not the problem here. You know, so I got over it. But I really like the plotters. And they're made for fountain pins. The paper is really good and fountain pin friendly. I own some fountain pins. You know, I have been around Brad Doughty and, like, early enough to have acquired a few. But I have really kind of landed the last several years just on using pencils.

I like pencils. I like the process of sharpening. I like the, you know, the feel of writing with graphite is nice. And I've got some nice regular wooden pencils. I've got a couple nice mechanical pencils. And I use all those. I mentioned mild lighters a few episodes ago as a pick. And they're like highlighters that are mild. And I use those as well. But that's basically at pencils and mild lighters. And I write in my plotter paper. and carry it around with me. And that's my main kind of analog connection. Those little essays I talked about,

I write on the A5 paper, all of this stuff just gets written on plotter paper. That being said, I have also purchased more than my fair share of UGMunk products. I have capture cards on my desk like Mike does. I've got those daily task cards, and I've got field notes. And I play with those things on occasion,

but it seems to me like the plotter stuff is really the foundation of what I do. One bit of technology involved with this, however, is that if you do want to get the searchable version of these pages, now more than ever you can scan that stuff really easily. I wrote a custom prompt for Claude, and I feed it a picture of an essay I write, and it does a very good job.

of translating my terrible handwriting into text. So now we've got that option too if you want to kind of have your cake and eat it too. For the scanned handwriting, I'm kind of curious because you've been doing versions of this for a while. How do you incorporate that sort of stuff into like your quarterly reviews or,

yeah, what's the workflow for once you scan it, getting something from it again. Well, if I scan it into text, I can drop it into a day one page and then it's there forever, right? I don't do it religiously, though. I mean, largely I just work off the analog paper and go back and read it,

but I also have entries in day one because I may dictate something. So I kind of like to have a place where I can go back and see them. I haven't decided yet whether this is a thing I want to do on everything I write or not, but the fact is that the option now exists and before it did not like i write in block text you know like an architect and you know text recognition is terrible at that because it's all caps

even you know the and it's it's not handwriting it's or it's not cursive it's it's printing and the oCR has never been very good at that type of writing so that was never an option for me But now it is because now you just tell the LLM, you know, I write in architect block cap style and go through and fix it. And so long as you can get it to understand, you don't want it to rewrite what you wrote. Sometimes the LLM will like do more than just translate it. It'll fix it or in its mind fix it.

What you can teach it. No, I just want a literal transcription of this. It does a very good job. So it doesn't take much work. You can take a picture of a bunch of pages and feed it in, and then you'll get it back out in moments. So that is kind of a best of both worlds option if you're thinking about trying analog, but you want to keep your digital systems running.

Nice. And then you've shared this before, but what are the pencils that you use? So Blackwing sent me like an email one saying, hey, we can make pencils if you want, you know, with your company brand on it, whatever. So I had a box of them made. On one side it says Max Sparky and the other side it says Materium-Supurabod opus,

which means the results were better than the ingredients. These do not feel like blackwing pencils. They're not as good as blackwing pencils. So I don't know if they contracted it out or whatever, but they're fine, you know, and you keep it sharp and it does the job. For mechanical pencils, I've got a couple Japanese mechanical pencils. And they're really nice, and I've got a couple rote-ringed German ones. My favorite Japanese is called the Kuru Toga, which it like spins the lead, so it's always kind of sharp.

But to be honest, my preference is just to use a wooden pencil. If you want to buy a pencil, a wooden pencil, I really like the Mitsubishi 9852EW. You can get them on Amazon. You get a box of them for like seven bucks, and they're really great pencils. Nice. So for the plotter, then, do you have a pencil that just stays in there? I mean, you're not throwing a pencil in your pocket as you walk around writing in your field notes, right? I do, actually. I just, when I wear the pencil down to be shorter than the length of a plotter, I just stick it between the pages and stick it in my pocket. But it's usually my breast pocket. I usually have something on that I can stick it there. the uh with the plotter uh the pencil that i keep attack because there is a plotter insert that has like a pencil holder in it the rot ring 800 i don't know if i'm saying that word wrote it's a german manufacturer but the 800 um

has a little twisty thing on the top where you can recess the pointy tip inside the pencil and you know the thing with a mechanical pencils you don't want to bend that that tip where the lead comes out. So I, I, I, I, that's my fancy one. It's like 60 bucks. I spent, that's my most expensive, you know, pencil. But I, um, you twist it and then you put it into the plotter stationary and it's going to not get bent. So then when I can pull it out later, I can untwist it and then have a, a proper mechanical pencil. Nice. I have not fetishized the pencil stuff too much. I just use a pencil. I like it. And, uh, I can use pretty much any pencil. but I've got a nice little collection of them.

I like the graphite just because of the way it writes, I think, and it works really good with the plotter paper. And most people that use plodd paper use fountain pens. I am an odd ball here. I did order for 2026 a set of calendar inserts like the monthly and weekly, and I don't know if I'll use those or not, but I'm going to try it. that's where I feel like the digital tool is kind of better because you update your calendar and then what are you going to are you going to keep the notebook up as well or are you just

giving yourself extra work yeah that's a good point and um it's one of the reasons that I never was able to get into the Hobanichi which is a big thing in the fountain pen community and they've got all the different styles of Hobaniches I've bought several of them and just never never really clicked with me the paper was really nice i like the fact that you could get all the different uh designs but yeah i never really wrote in it consistently uh the calendar part anyways so just decided didn't really need that just really need the the place to plan my day essentially yeah and i do a bunch of journaling with them but i also like i said i like to write about topics that are of interest in me like i'll read a quote or or hear a

story and realize, oh, I want to, I want to think more about that. And one of the nice things with the plotter is they've got these like little inserts you can put in that are almost like little envelopes that fit right into the ring system. And when I hear an interesting story or an idea, I will just pull out a piece of plotter paper and write the topic at the top of it. And I have a little red one that I use. And those are cooking essays. And then when I have some downtime, or just want to be reflective, I will just, oh, I'll just pull that envelope out of the plotter and go through it. And at any time I've got between two and five half written essays in it, and I just work on them here on my little writing desk. It's also often inspired by books.

I'm reading a book and something in the book inspires me. I'll write it down and turn it into it. And I've got like maybe 250 of these things now, little essays I've written. And some of them, a lot of them were digital that I was doing in day one. indirectly but for the last year or so they've almost all been these analog handwritten things and um i just carry a stack of them around with me you know and uh and i think that's one of my favorite analog implementations is to think through my thoughts you know to be a little pretentious you know marcus aureli's had his meditations that he wrote those are not written to be published as a book they were written for him to sort out his own thoughts and that's what these are for me

They're not, they're just for me. I don't share them. I don't publish them. But there are ways for me to kind of figure out how I think about the world and interact with it. Nice. It's also interesting to me that I feel like there are a lot of places where you and I are flip-flopped analog versus digital. Yeah.

So, you know, I only read analog books, but all of my notes are digital. And you just mentioned that you're capturing things kind of like an analog, into an analog commonplace book essentially. Yeah. Which even when I'm not reading books, the ideas and things. that I capture, I capture those via drafts. And I've got a whole bunch of things in there that are just idea, colon, you know, whatever stood out to me as I was listening to a podcast or whatever.

And I'll go back and I'll develop those later. But they're always digital. Well, digital is still a huge part of my life. And I'm not going full native here. But I felt like both of us are using analog enough. and it's important enough parts of our workflows that we should we should dig in. I'm glad we did that today. And it's evolving.

But the last point I would make on this is that it's not either or. I think both Mike and I have both been on a quest to find the right tool for the right job. And sometimes that's analog and sometimes it's digital and the hybrid lifestyle is a beautiful thing. Don't feel like you have to go all in either direction. This episode of Focus is brought to you by Gusto. You started your business to do what you're good at, not to spend hours calculating tax withholdings. And that's where Gusto comes in, to take the stress out of payroll benefits in HR, so you

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three months free when you run your first payroll. That's three months of free payroll at g-U-S-T-O-com focused. One more time, that's gusto.com slash focused. Our thanks to Gusto for their support of the Focus, podcast, and all of Relay. All right. So got any shiny new objects, David? Well, you know, kind of as part of prepping this show, I bought something. I told you I nearly went down the rabbit hole with plotter or buying a whole separate, like, thin binder to do stuff. Which doesn't make sense for me.

I don't need to make the system more complex. But one thing I did find was, you know, I talked. earlier about these little essays I write and they go into a kind of an archival binder but they're kind of hard to access and so I just got the bug and bought myself a second A5 plotter binder that I'm just putting my little essays in so I can access them easier so about a second one but it's just for it just stays on my desk and it's got a list of the most recent essays it holds I think you can get about 100 pages into one of these. So it's not even going to hold all of them, but it can hold the stuff I'm kind of working on and thinking about at the moment. And so I was inspired. I ordered

that yesterday, and I'm really looking forward to getting it. Awesome. All right. I've got a little bit of a different shiny new object this time around. So I am a bit of a coffee snob. And I always drink, for the most part, the single origin coffees. You know, the beans are ripe in different parts of the world, different times, and the high-end roasters will get, you know, a batch of beans from Columbia or Ethiopia, whatever, and then they'll roast them and they'll be available at different points of the year. One of the high-end roasters that I like is intelligentsia. and they have a blend, which I typically don't like blends, but this one is amazing. It is called Otonio, and it's a fall blend.

It's a combination of Colombian and Ethiopian beans, and it's my favorite coffee I have ever had. They only offer it in the fall, in the U.S. anyways. So every single time that it becomes available, I get as much of it. as I can. I have a brother-in-law who manages a high-end coffee shop around here, and he is getting me a five-pound bag, which will hopefully last me into the new year. But yeah, it's, you can also buy just like the smaller bags. It's fairly expensive, but it is my favorite, my favorite coffee. So if you're looking for a good premium bean, can't recommend intelligentsia, Antonio enough. So how long does coffee last?

I mean, can you get 10 pounds of it or does it go bad at some point? Well, you typically can't even get the 5 pound bags, but because I know someone who ranches a coffee shop, you know, he can get me access, basically. Yeah. Typically, they're 12-ounce bags and it does, you know, coffee does decay after it's roasted. Typically, you want to drink it within the first maybe week and a half. before it really starts to go down. The big thing is you don't want to grind it ahead of time.

Once you grind it, you've got like 15, 20 minutes to make it before it starts to lose some of the flavor. So as long as you've got the whole beans and you store them in an airtight container, you're probably pretty good. I've got one of those like vacuum sealed containers, so I'll open up the bag, put the beans in there, and then that'll make them last a little bit longer. But I'm really not concerned about the absolute best experience with this particular coffee. I just want to have it available to me longer because it's so much better

than I think it's better than anything else that I've had. So I try to stockpile this one. And this is the only one that I'll do that for. Otherwise, I'll just buy. There's a roaster in Wisconsin and called Ruby, which is a very small operation based out of a town that's got like 500 people in it. But they make some incredible coffees and they've got a subscription. So I'll get stuff roasted and then delivered. Usually it'll appear at our house, you know, day or two after it's roasted. So got a monthly subscription to that where we'll get four different bags a month, four different 12-ounce bags. And I'll just, you know, drink whatever, whatever Ruby happens to be brewing at the moment.

But this intelligentsia atonio, this is the one exception for me. Yeah, it's the good stuff. It's like your, what is it, a pumpkin spice for Mike Schmitz? You know, pumpkin spices everywhere. Kind of, yeah, although I loathe pumpkin spice. Yeah, I just don't like how it's everywhere.

Yeah, yeah. The one in Southern California right now that's driving my wife a little nuts is Ube. it's a Filipino like flavor and my wife's Filipino and it's like yeah we've had Ube forever but suddenly like everybody else discovered it and now it's like in popcorn and like it's just like it's they put it too much it's driving her nuts over Ube Ube Ube inflation well that's cool Mike I am happily not a coffee person I understand the attraction of it and I feel like to me it's a bullet dodged that I never went down that rabbit a hole.

Well, I mean, yeah, everybody's a geek about something and spends too much on something, right? So for me, it's coffee. Coffee and fountain pens, I guess. Although, if you're talking about analog, I mean, there is a lot to be said about the ritual of making a cup of pour over coffee every morning. I did that analog for a long time. Now we've got a coffee robot, I call it. It's a thing that makes the, uses the ChemX brewing method, but it does it automatically.

And it just is more practical for us at this point. But I do kind of miss the ritual. And I do have all of the gear to do the manual brew. And I do that every once in a while when I just want to slow down a little bit. Yeah. And like I do the same thing with tea. I have turned it into a ritual of making tea. And I don't have a robot.

I just do it myself. But I feel like coffee. is like another level above tea. Yeah, it's quite a rabbit hole, that's for sure. Okay, so what about books? What do you read these days? I have just started Made to Stick by Chip and Dan Heath. This was a recommendation from a bookworm listener,

so it's actually the next book that we're going to cover for Bookworm. I really like the Chip and Dan Heath books. I think I read Switch back in the day, and then also decisive. Those were both really good. And this one is really about why ideas stick. And so it seems like the most relevant topic of all of the books that they've written for me.

As I said, I just started it. So I can't really pass judgment on it yet. But the first chapter or so has been really good. Good. Well, I also am picking a book that I just got. and it's the new Ryan Holiday book. He's been covering the four stoic virtues. This is the last one called Wisdom Takes Work.

I've read all of them, and I think they're all excellent. And I just want to go on the record for Ryan Holiday here. I got an email from somebody with his book coming out saying, oh, yeah, that guy, he's a brooicism guy, you know. Have you heard that, that's what they call it now, broicism? I have not, but I think I kind of get where that's coming from because it definitely seems to be a little bit trendy. I don't know that I would use that to describe Ryan Holiday.

Well, that's why I'm here, brother. Because, so broicism is the idea of some of these guys talk about stoicism and just, you know, the Greeks and ancient philosophy as a method to become rich and make girls want to go to bed with them. And they really don't get it at all. You know, it's like, I don't know how this happened, but that's a thing out there. And I don't really follow it. closely, but I know that's a thing. Ryan Holiday is not that, not that at all. I think he's

legit. I think he's somebody who really believes in this stuff and is really trying to help people on their journey. And I'm a fan of his work. And just like, you know, we've had other Greeks philosophers on the show, Ryan Holiday fits right in with that group. And I would, I would not poo-poo anything he creates because I think the guy is doing good. And I'm sure this book will be excellent like the other three he did he also runs a very cool bookstore yeah yeah i mean he likes physical books yeah i do not uh i do not buy into that i mean he he's very fit and he seems like a good guy and he gets you know he's he's in all the right circles on the internet and i think that that causes some some strife among people who are into this stuff but i think he's uh he's doing

good and uh yeah and it's very accessible the way he writes about this stuff He wraps it in stories around historical figures and good on him. And talk about someone who embraces the power of analog. I remember seeing the boxes of the index cards that he had used for writing one of his books. I forget which one it was. I'm not sure if he still follows that format. He still does that. Yeah, I saw it here recently.

He just writes down every idea on an index card. And when he goes to write a book, he lays them all out on a big table and puts them in order and starts writing. He's one of us. There you go. We are the Focus podcast. You can find us at Relay.fm. Slash Focus. If you want to join the DeepFocus podcast,

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