We all use electronic devices to help manage our life. Often, the same devices are used for our business and personal lives. There is a certain elegance to integrating all our electronic usage needs into a single device. I have gone in the other direction. My approach is a decentralized device usage behavior by employing multiple devices to perform different tasks.
I think of the devices in terms of our "Perception and Doing."
All these perceptions, doing, and thinking devices are enabled by the cloud. I use both Google Drive and my own idea incubator/website environment called "The Curiosity Vine." They are professionally managed, backed up, secure, and have the low-cost capability to store information and interrelate devices. My thinking tools access the cloud environment but they do not act as permanent storage.
As such, I need to keep up with 4 thinking tool devices. All are small and simple to maintain. Ultimately, the advantage is if any device fails, I can quickly replace and rely on the other devices in the short run. Also, none of the devices are particularly expensive. Today, my thinking tool device inventory is:
Computer - Microsoft Surface Laptop
Writing Pad – Boogie Board Sync eWriter
SmartPhone – Apple iPhone
Tablet – Kindle Fire
An example: For the "Perception - Hearing & Doing - Take notes" row
I use my boogie board writer to take notes. This is far better than a traditional paper notepad. The eWriter makes me a better "hearer" and enhances my creativity because:
Notes are taken just like paper and in my handwriting.
Each note page is easy to save and combine with multiple pages of notes.
The big deal is - I can easily organize notes by client or topic. For example, say I meet with JP Morgan Chase. I generally have many meetings with them over time. I have a subdirectory called "Chase" where I keep all notes over time. It makes it very easy to review previous notes by clients, instead of having to fish through notebooks with many different note topics mixed together.
It does have a "Natural Language Processing" engine to convert handwritten words to typed text. I do not frequently use this, but it does come in handy when needed.
Please see our article Curiosity Exploration - An evolutionary approach to lifelong learning. This article discusses how thinking tools are used in the context of curiosity exploration.
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