I promised you a tech column, and here it is. Well, sort of….
I’m really the last guy who should talk about productivity. If you want to learn about being productive, then you should talk to Donovan Bankhead or one of many other industry people who are smarter than I am. For my whole life, I’ve stayed up too late, slept too little and probably never left work feeling as though I got everything done. I’m prone to tangents, getting involved in too many tasks at once and stretching myself way too thin. My wife says I’m like a dog that sees a squirrel, like in the Pixar film “Up.” So, what I’m really interested in are ways to organize my life that will offer me convenience and efficiency.
I lose everything I don’t break—particularly things I deem important. It’s amazing how much stuff I’ve lost (or broken) in my life. In light of that fact, using paper is the absolute worst way I can do anything. Paper notes, reminders, orders or anything else will be set down and never seen again. Paper, along with my guitar picks and socks, goes into a black hole, never to return. In our store, for many years, we successfully used a simple, old-fashioned paper filing drawer system for sheet music and product special orders. It worked fine, because the Owner, Brad Shreve, was in charge of it and it worked really well for him. However, once he bought the store, special orders became part of my job; and, as we’ve established, paper is my nemesis.
Because I’m unable to completely untether myself from work, I also really hated that the paper stayed at the store. So, I tended to bring a lot home in my laptop bag. Some things would get lost in transition, and it quickly became clear to me that a solution had to be found. So, I began to search for another means of keeping track of things. In the era of mobile technology, I knew I wanted it to be something I could access anytime from my iPhone, in case someone else had a question on my day off or, say, while I was at the NAMM Show. So, I did a little searching and downloaded a few apps, one of which really stuck out: Slack.