black.margaret•1mo agoProlific Poster

My dad's old Palm Pilot still turns on. I thought it was junk but it's actually kind of useful

I pulled my dad's old Palm Pilot m500 out of a box last weekend, just for laughs. Charged it up and installed a text editor hack from 2002 and now I use it to write down grocery lists and ideas without any distractions. No notifications, no internet, just buttons and a grayscale screen. It works way better than I thought for focusing on one thing at a time. Has anyone else tried using old PDAs for simple tasks like this?

2 comments

2 Comments

susanh461mo ago

Oh man, "writing down grocery lists and ideas without any distractions" is exactly why I dug out my old Handspring Visor last month. I've been using it for my daily to-do lists and it's honestly kind of great having zero temptation to check anything else.

the_val1mo ago

You know, I gotta push back on that a little @susanh46. I actually tried the whole no-distraction thing with a plain old notepad and pen, and it drove me crazy. I kept feeling like I was missing something, like I couldn't look something up right when I thought of it. Plus, then you gotta rewrite the whole list into your phone later anyway if you actually need to share it with anyone. Seems like an extra step for not much payoff to me. But hey, whatever works for you, I guess it's a nice break from screens if that's your thing.