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+We need to change from consumption to production.
+
+Instructions for living a life:
+Pay attention.
+Be astonished.
+Tell about it. -- from Sometimes, poem by Mary Oliver
+
+# The Analog Review
+    - The intersection of spirit, craft, and tools.
+        - live well by making
+        - Illich on making things
+    - BIFL
+    - Repair self-reliance, education, creating
+    - Living well is the best revenge
+    - Technology is a choice
+    - The world is EVERYTHING, man made and not man made. the reason we think of then is seperate is because we stopped making beautiful things
+        - cathedrals
+        - antwerp rail station
+    - Digital is not bad (I write on a laptop, you read on a device of some sort, this isn't bad) the digital at its best can replicate the same sense of accomplishment that analog can
+        - I chose to focus this site on analog because it was under served and it seemed to me that a lot of people are looking for permission to embrace the analog. I am hear to give it to them.
+    - How to junk and thrift
+        - repair articles
+            - clean cast iron
+            - what to look for in vintage lenses and camera
+            - etc
+    - Against data -- do you really need someone else to test everything for you? Do you really trust that their "expert" conclusions are right for you? Why not try things for yourself and see if they work?
+    - Henry Ford, Thomas Edison, Tesla, etc
+        - creators, makers, workers, inspiration etc
+    - Promotion: blogs, links, podcasts
+    - Fist clutching hammer with M A K E on the fingers
+    - Simplify, Thoreau.
+    - Plan and record your life
+        - note card system
+        - tactics with strategic goals
+    - stoicism and simplification
+        - be okay with course food
+            - pioneer night, simple food
+    - cooking and fuel
+    - History: looking back not at simpler times, but harder times, hard is good struggle is good that's why we see those times as appealing.
+
+
+# Tools 
+## The Note Card System
+
+If you want to accomplish things in life you need to make plans. Not a plan, those are useless. But you should have many plans so that you go through the process of planning. That's what's valuable, the planning. Plan at all levels -- strategic, tactical, and in between. This requires lists, lots of lists. Lists of goals, lists of outcomes you're aiming for, lists of things you need to do to get from here to there, what you did to get from where you were to where you are, and so on.
+
+The way I see it there are three key parts to any information management system, which is what we're really talking about here. You need a way to track your strategic, long term goals. You need to way to track ideas as they come to you. You need a way to track your day to day tactical goals: what you need to do this month, this week, so you can decide what you're going to do right now.
+
+The note card system I use handles only one part of this triumvirate, keeping track of ideas as they come to me.
+
+The note cards started when I was in my early 20s and was pretty much spinning my wheels. Working in the restaurant and coffee shops, drinking, and um, using other things too much. Not sleeping enough. Never working out. Living without direction. It's good for you sometimes. I think everyone has to pass through this stage. I think I maybe enjoyed it a little too much and maybe spent a little too much time there, but I digress.
+
+I noticed something during this period of time though. One of my good friends, who lived more or less the same way, nevertheless managed to run a successful coffee shop (three in fact), play in a band, and otherwise be a much more successful person than me at the time. While doing all the same bad things I was doing. I asked him one day how he managed to function through the haze of the life we were living and he said, oh, it's simple, I make these little lists of things to do every day on index cards and then I go do them. If I don't do them, I move them to the next day's card. Anything I think of during the day that I need to remember, I write down on the back of the card and then I save that.
+
+Not real revolutionary, but also not something I did at the time. He gave me some more details about his system, which had simple priority rankings for tasks. And by "file" he meant toss it in a shoebox. Not perfect, but I started to do both things. Amazingly, I too started to accomplish more.
+
+I started to use note cards for me too. When I read a book I kept a stack of note cards nearby, writing down things that caught my attention[^1]. I started doing the same for things I read online, conversations I had. Ideas that came to me though out the day. Things I needed to get done. Things I needed at the store.
+
+The last two became a problem. There was no way to know at a glance which index cards were valuable insights gleaned from a book or meditation and which were just reminding me to get paper towels at the store. This is when I stumbled on extra-sticky post-it notes. They're like regular post-it notes. But they actually stick to stuff. Pretty much forever from what I can tell. They also come in this very attention-getting yellow. So I started writing todos and grocery type lists on these little yellow post its. I know that 
+
+Years later I encountered David Allen's Getting Things Done, which inspired me to expand my daily system into longer term thinking and planning. This also had something to do with getting older I think, or at least it coincided with me wanting to accomplish longer term goals. I found note cards to be less ideal for this sort of planning. It's hard to fit much about a multi-year project on a single note card. For a while I used multiple cards when necessary and kept them all together with little binder clips like these. That worked, but it was difficult to carry around. 
+
+I bought a notebook and started keeping my projects (to use David Allen's terms) in that, then making my daily lists of things to do on note cards. When I moved from freelancing to full-time at Wired, I started evolving this system because most of what I do at Wired is very long term and needs to be broken down into more manageable bits. Most of my planning for work starts at the seasonal level, then moves to monthly, then weekly. If find it easiest to track this flow in a notebook. So a project like updating the Wired guide to the best tents is something I do in Spring, Summer, and Fall. It's on the list for Spring, and then at the beginning of March or so, I'll review that list, note that Best Tents is on there, and move it to my list of things to do in March. Both lists are in the same notebook, I just keep the longer term lists and project-specific lists to the back and the weekly/daily lists to the front. I review my monthly list at the start of every week, and move whichever things I want to work on that week to a weekly list. Then I break that down by day. That's where the note cards come out.
+
+There's no such thing as managing time. There's only so much you can do in day. There is what there is, use it wisely. I have a full time job, three kids, live on the road, and run two websites. I also manage to not work all the time. In fact I rarely work past 3. It's not that I'm so great at anything, it's that I can focus, and I can focus because I block out time in my day to work intensely rather than haphazardly throughout the day.
+
+[^1]: I rarely buy books. I rely on libraries so just writing in the book isn't an option. Also, writing in the book means to find anything I'd have to do get the book, open it, thumb through it looking for the quote. All I have to do is flip through my note cards, which are archived (VERY loosely) by subject.
+
+
+## Traveler's Notebook Review
+## Mechanical Pencil Review
+## What to look for in vintage lenses
+## Tools for basic carpentry
+## Bags
+## EDC
+# Craft
+## Return to Film
+## Instax Printing 
+## Postcard Project
+## Carving
+## Nature Journaling
+## Drawing
+## Basic carpentry
+## Building Shelves
+## Knife sharpening
+## repair a bike
+## basic car maintenance
+## Restore cast iron
+# Philosophy
+## Don't Plan Your Life, But Do Make Plans
+
+I've always resisted the idea of checklists. Ticking boxes feels like an empty gesture. It is empty. It's no way to life a life certainly. Similarly, that old cliche, *if you fail to plan, you are planning to fail* (not by Ben Franklin) sounds like a poster in high school guidance counselor's office. That's no way to live your life.
+
+When it comes to plans I'm with Mike Tyson: "everyone has a plan until they get punched in the face."[^1]
+
+It's all good a well to have a detailed plan of how you want your life to go, but life is going to punch you in the face over and over again, shattering even the best plans. Sometimes this will be good, sometimes bad, but either way you'll rarely see it coming.
+
+What's the answer then? Drift along aimlessly with no plan? Why not? This option is too easily dismissed. There's a whole self-help industry out there trying to get you to change your life by buying their books. Saying, *meh, maybe muck about for bit* doesn't sell books, but there's nothing wrong with it. It's a plan. And it's better than some.
+
+I spent my teenage years immersed in the late 1980s world of punk rock where the worst thing in the world you could be was a Gordon Gekko-style yuppie full of hard driving plans. You needed to succeed on your own terms, not chase someone else's plans. This imprinted deeply on me, but I also had a perhaps more biblical take: "to dust you shall return" after all, and, if that's the case, what does it matter if you accomplish your plans or not?
+
+I think this philosophy, while overly dramatic and two-dimensional, isn't a bad approach, especially when combining with Mike Tyson's observation. In other words, why all the fuss over plans if all you're going to do is get punched in the face by life?
+
+The answer comes from Dwight Eisenhower, who famously observed, "plans are worthless, but planning is everything."
+
+I don't have any studies to offer you on the wisdom of this idea, just my experience, for what it's worth. All my life I had the vague idea that I wanted to write. I also hated reading things where I could tell the author hadn't lived it. I liked writers who did stuff. Thoreau, Conrad, Henry Miller, Isabella Bird, Jack London, William Burroughs, Audrey Sutherland. People who lived first, wrote second. I didn't want to be some cloistered academic turning out meticulously crafted bullshit. 
+
+This idea wasn't a plan in the traditional sense, but it was a plan, however vaguely defined, and I pursued it. I dropped out of school and went looking for adventure. That's more or less how I spent my twenties. I slept late. I stayed up too late. I drank too much. I had a ton of fun. I learned to cook, ran a restaurant, traveled around the world, met interesting people, did interesting things, failed in interesting ways. I don't regret it. Take that motivated list makers. 
+
+The whole time I did it I had no concrete plan beyond the next couple of weeks, just that vague, nebulous idea that one day I would write all this down. Any specific plan beyond that would have blinded me to the opportunities and spontaneity that governed those days.
+
+As with anything though, after enough time I found myself stuck in a loop, doing the same things in my early thirties, still looking for novelty, which wasn't there any more. I realized it was time to write it down. I did that and then life punched me in the face. What I wrote wasn't very good. I lacked the discipline necessary to improve it. Half the time I lacked the discipline to even finish it.
+
+This was around the time I met my friend Keith. Although he had done a lot of the "wasteful" things I'd done with my life, he nevertheless managed to start and succeed in a business. Although I never thought of it this way back then, he became a kind of mentor for me. I picked his brain, figured out some systems he used to succeed (detailed here), and copied them. 
+
+In short I started making checklists and ticking boxes. Not for things I wanted to accomplish in life, but for things I wanted to accomplish today, tomorrow, by the end of the week. At this very tactical level of thinking I found lists weren't so bad. In fact they helped me develop the discipline I needed to finish some things. I succeeded in landing some pitches. I got my assignments in on time. Turns out, that's about all you need to succeed as a writer, other than having good stories, which I did, and writing well, which I could. I started getting paid to write. 
+
+Was it all the lists? No, not at all. The plans were worthless mostly, it was the planning that helped me. The act of planning helped me build a habit of doing the work. Once that habit was there, the lists became less important. 
+
+Twenty years on the habits I need to make sure I get done what I want to get done are pretty well instilled at this point, all the lists do is keep track of the various projects I'm involved in, and whatever actions are necessary to move them forward. 
+
+
+
+
+
+[^1]: This always struck me as a good modern rephrasing of Prussian Field Marshal Helmuth von Moltke the Elder, who famously said, "No plan of operations extends with any certainty beyond the first encounter with the main enemy forces," which has been [shortened over the years](https://quoteinvestigator.com/2021/05/04/no-plan/) to "no plan survives first contact with the enemy." In other words, until you get punched in the face.
+
+
+
+There are probably people who enjoy this sort of thing, making lists and then working their way down them.  
+
+I'm a terrible birder because I rarely remember to record the birds I see.  
+
+If you want to accomplish things in life you need to make plans. Not a plan, but many plans. At many levels -- strategic, tactical, and in between. This requires lists, lots of lists. Lists of things to do, lists of goals, lists of outcomes you're aiming for and so on.
+
+I know I named this site the Analog Review, but planning a life requires enough lists, brainstorms, and other processes that you should consider both analog and digital tools. I do a lot of planning in text files. There's nothing wrong with digital.
+
+That said. Ahem. 
+
+When it comes to day-to-day todo lists, notes, and brainstorming I rely entirely on paper and I always have. I also rely on paper for long term strategic planning. There's a little blurb in a Wired guide I contribute too that mentions I do almost all my planning on note cards, which has prompted quite a few readers to write asking for details. Once I get a couple of emails, I almost always put something on the web. It's easier to link to an answer that's available for everyone than to keep re-writing the same email.
+
+To understand why I use note cards though, I have to detail my whole system, not just the notecards bit, because notecards are only one part of a system that also involves sticky notes, regular notebooks, a custom built bookmarking app, a calendar, and a couple other bits and bobs. I also think of it as always evolving, and am always on the lookout for new tools, though I haven't changed much in the last ten years.
+
+It all started when I was in my early 20s and was pretty much spinning my wheels. Working in the restaurant and coffee shops, drinking, and um, using other things too much, not sleeping enough, never working out. Living without direction. It's good for you sometimes. I think everyone has to pass through this stage. I think I maybe enjoyed it a little too much and maybe spent a little too much time there, but I digress.
+
+I noticed something during this period of time though. One of my good friends, who lived more or less the same way, nevertheless managed to run a successful coffee shop (three in fact), play in a band, and otherwise be a much more successful person than me at the time. While doing all the same bad things I was doing. I asked him one day how he managed to function through the haze of the life we were living and he said, oh, it's simple, I make these little lists of things to do every day on index cards and then I do them. If I don't do them, I move them to the next day's card. Anything I think of during the day that I need to remember, I write down on the back of the card and then I file that.
+
+Not real revolutionary, but also not something I did at the time. He gave me some more details about his system, which had simple priority rankings for tasks. And by "file" he meant toss it in a shoebox. Not perfect, but I started to do both things. Amazingly, I too started to accomplish more.  
+
+
+
+
+You've probably heard that saying, . I am not a fan because this implies you're at least planning and you're not, you're doing noting, a leave in the breeze, a bubble in the current, pick your cheesy metaphor. 
+
+Also, Benjamin Franklin didn't say it. People did not talk like that in the late 18th century. What Franklin wrote was, "by failing to plan, you are preparing to fail." I get that the modern version is catchier, but it misses something in its word play. Franklin's version acknowledges something important, 
+
+You don't need me to tell you you need a plan. It should be blindingly obvious that without a plan you're 
+
+## Why shoot film
+## Why print artifacts
+## History as a harder time
+## How Repair Skills Foster Self-Reliance and Independence
+## Simple is Better than Complex Complex is better than complicated
+## There is no nature, because there is nothing unnatural, only ugly things
+## Against data -- do you really need someone else to test everything for you? Do you really trust that their "expert" conclusions are right for you? Why not try things for yourself and see if they work?
+## Pioneer night
+simple food, stoicism, and avoiding hedonic adaptation
+# Podcast
+## Books covered ala Jocko
+    - Illich
+    - Thoreau
+## Talking to other analog people about what they do