Go Ask Ben

There are very nuanced reasons why I want to be a digital note taker. These are some thoughts and opinions about my journey. I don't like pens (on paper) unless they are the erasable Frixion type Paper is harder to organize, make available online, and find using search I like digital writing as it is essential to skill building, memory and learning I want to write using ePaper devices as they can be setup similar to real paper experiences I will use OneNote and OneDrive to capture my ePaper notes for review and long term storage Digital pens like Livescribe and Neo are great solutions but require equally great and available paper accessories Supplies have to be bought by the digital pen manufacturer to work You can easily lose a digital pen You can break an e-ink screen The e-ink tablets have their own UI and can be difficult to use, forcing you to learn their OS and changing your workflow. I prefer an eco-friendly writing solution I don't want to run out of paper or pen suppl

I work in an hospital environment that includes 500 different people with various degrees of computer competency. This makes work very complex at times and challenging.  As I grow in my position, now nearly twenty years in technology, I find that people hear a lot of information during the day and their amazing brains somehow organize, shuffle, and prioritize it. How well do we organize, prioritize and share information in the workplace? Apparently not very well. We have conversations with people about technology and they appear to hear in the moment. After something goes wrong, we sometimes hear, "IT never told me." Has this ever happened to you?  I've learned that teaching is not telling   from Ben Franklin who said,  "Tell me and I forget, teach me and I may remember, involve me and I learn." What kinds of teaching are best designed to help people learn and remember? Practice (taking time to learn by failing and trying again) Ritual (this means do

 W e are told not to "dwell on our problems" when sharing our issues with friends and family. This is bad advice because most will continue to think on their problems anyway. Ben Franklin's 13 Virtues included Tranquility and Industry. Ben described tranquility as "Be not disturbed at trifles, or at accidents common or unavoidable.” For Industry, he said "Lose no time; be always employed in something useful; cut off all unnecessary actions.” Dwelling on your problems is both an attack on your tranquility and industry. It has a simple cure. Get the problems out of your head and in a trusted system (like a notebook) where you can write your cares, concerns and thoughts. I have a "Problems To Solve" list that includes just about everything I am facing. I write to get issues off my mind and leave them there. They also make great for future "goals" since they represent a change I want to make. The power of a "Problems to solve" lis