Digital Clutter vs. Lasting Legacy

“And the Lord answered me: ‘Write the vision; make it plain on tablets, so he may run who reads it.’” - Habakkuk 2:2

Here’s the bottom line up front: I want to encourage you to come back to reality, starting with writing things down.

There’s been a lot of debate on my team at work about the best way to “stay organized” and “optimize workflow.” Typically, what this boils down to is whether you organize your notes digitally (the Notes app on your phone) or manually (writing things down).

I’ve taken both approaches to organizing my life.

As of this moment, I have over 600 notes in my phone. I use Notes sort of like a pad of sticky notes; get my ideas down, and then probably never think about them again. I go back a month or two and can’t even make sense of Notes that seemed so important at the time.

On the other hand, I still have journals and pocket notebooks (Field Notes and Rite in the Rain) from high school, college, and my time in the military. In these notebooks are prayers, prayer requests, Bible verses, days I want to remember, reminders I wrote back then for future me, and those calendars you make during boot camp/OCS/deployment where you cross off the days until you get to go home. I have maybe a dozen of these in a couple shoe boxes in my closet that have moved around the world with us, and sometimes when I’m rearranging, I’ll crack one open and remember just how rich my life has been, filled with wonderful friends, exciting adventures, and seasons of loss, trial, celebration, and joy.

Had I catalogued these in my Notes app, they’d likely be lost and forgotten forever. But there is a tangibility of thought in handwriting that even the most cutting edge technology cannot recreate.

I saw one great example of this idea posted by a social media account called “Watches of Espionage” which is run by a former CIA Case Officer who highlights popular watch culture in the National Security, Military, and Intelligence communities. When Donald Trump and J.D. Vance won the election last year, he wrote an impassioned article about why the VPOTUS should swap out his Apple Watch for a nicer “dumb watch.” Surprisingly, counterintelligence concerns were only part of his argument. He also mentioned the following: