pocketmod notes

A pocketmod is a cleverly folded piece of paper with preprinted templates for things like a mini calendar, todo list, quadrille paper, checklist etc. It's the smallest instance of a PDA that I have seen yet, requiring nothing more than a blank piece of paper and a pair of scissors to execute. You could even bypass the scissors if you had good paper and a crisp straightedge to do a rip.

I am a total sucker for new organizing methods, of course, and the very fact that something is new shakes my brain loose to do something interesting with it. Fortunately the investment in this one is very, very small!

Some people have been hacking the idea:
- sangsara's mod: print double sided and use both sides
- slacker manager: the folding is an old field notebook hack
- David Seah rolls his own for the Printable CEO mini-book
- My Mac Won't Start, a tiny trouble-shooting guide

According to Icerocket, the pocketmod meme peaked on September 5 2005, so I'm about 21 days later to the game. One of the disadvantages of living in the midwest, I guess, you never really get the in on the hot new trends. I'll have to ask my bookbinding friends whether they have seen this particular style of page-folding before.

See the 43 Folders wiki for an encyclopedic take on PocketMod.

Technorati Tags: gtd, lifehacks, pda, pocketmod

Comments

[Murph]

The Hipster PDA is still my favorite. I still haven't gotten to the point where I regularly use mine - its main uses so far have been for remembering things when I get home from the bar and for writing down phone numbers from websites or e-mail so that I can take them outside, where my cell has reception.

[Edward Vielmetti]

I'm now finding that single sheets of paper, no matter how cleverly folded and handy when being used, make for lousy long term storage.

I've gone back to writing in my Moleskine, and if I occasionally need a disposable piece of paper I have index cards handy (with a firm determination to throw them away when everything on them is crossed off).

[Edward Vielmetti]

It looks like the Pocketmod forums are down

http://www.pocketmod.com/bb/groupcp.php

and the software to print new mods is still at 0.4 beta.

[max]

if anyone wants a word document template for a PocketMod that you can type in your own information and print it, contact me at maxwellakiva@gmail.com, and i will send you the attachment

[Edward Vielmetti]

There's a new Printable CEO bubble chart in Flash at

http://davidseah.com/tools/ett/alpha/

the "emergent task timer", which is under development. worth a look.

[Edward Vielmetti]

There's now a PHP class for creating pocketmods, pmPDF -

http://aaronland.info/php/pmPDF/

see the blog post about it here

http://www.aaronland.info/weblog/2007/04/01/thick/#pmpdf03