Choose Your Digital Tools

From a blog post I wrote in 2025:

In what ways are our daily digital tools giving us the equivalent of a mental blister, because they’re like an ill-fitting shoe for the way our minds work?

(I wrote this before the proliferation of AI "suggestions" everywhere. The idea of getting a mental blister from one's tech is a bit more obvious these days, I think.)

My life got a lot better when I started setting the criteria for a new tool (to-do list, email manager, etc) before researching the options. And then checking on whether they actually did make me feel and experience what I hoped they would.

Obsidian was a game changer for me because it let me organize the space in which I do my thinking and writing (so basically all of my work!) in a way that made sense for my brain.

Simplify Gmail helped me finally have an experience in my inbox that felt okay to me. (And having the experience of Obsidian helped me go looking for a tool that would do this.)

For Later:
https://www.chrbutler.com/what-if-phones-were-actually-designed-for-hands

Tools are a liturgy, we respect this around physical tools like notebooks, but our digital tools deserve the same amount of care.

https://notes.andymatuschak.org/z51q8prEJzs5Jqa5WPThYoV?stackedNotes=z7EQ2nVGus5B1rS9CqT18g6