Austin Kleon has an interesting idea for setting up a workspace: have a digital desk and an analog desk.
I have two desks in my office — one is “analog” and one is “digital.” The analog desk has nothing but markers, pens, pencils, paper, index cards, and newspaper. Nothing electronic is allowed on that desk. That’s where most of my work is born … The digital desk has my laptop, my monitor, my scanner, and my drawing tablet. This is where I edit and publish my work.
From Steal Like an Artist.
The context of this quote is a discussion of how we think differently depending on the tools we use. I wrote something along these lines a while back: Create offline, analyze online.
I have this, unfortunately, my analog desk is covered with analog books, and papers which need to be manually filed. So I barely use it. ;-)
I too have these two desks. But mostly I work on digital desk. Am more glued to my laptop
I’d like that.
This is why I like LaTeX: the division between content and presentation.
On your analog desk, do you ever reach for your vintage HP RPN calculator, which is digital, of course?
You do use only vintage HP RPN calculators, am I right?
Since it’s my analog desk, maybe I should use slide rule. :)
For now, my analog desk holds office supplies and a stack of articles I need to read. I like reading from paper without a keyboard or monitor in my peripheral vision.