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I've struggled for years to articulate my ideas and express things clearly, 'specially when it comes to challenging technical problems. One day, I randomly boug
by essem 7y ago
I've struggled for years to articulate my ideas and express things clearly, 'specially when it comes to challenging technical problems. One day, I randomly bought a tiny 12" x 5" whiteboard while I was at the dollar store, with the intention of using it to keep a physical todo list.
I eventually reached for it while in the heat of a challenging debugging session with some colleagues, and was surprised with how much it helped me solve the problem at hand. It quickly stopped being a todo-list after this incident. Turned out my inability to articulate things effectively was not because I was stupid, but because I am a predominantly visual thinker.
The fact people are working on tools like this excites the hell out of me!
- walterbell 7y agoCould you share a little about the difference between the small whiteboard and a letter-sized paper notebook?
- essem 7y agoPaper in my experience can get messy real quick. Example - When drawing a diagram of some process it is common for me to want to tweak and reconfigure things to arrive at a solution. With paper, it requires you either erase, scratch out, or re draw the diagram with your desired changes on another page. What I love about marker boards is the ability to freely draft and modify on the fly without worry. When I want to commit ideas to "storage", paper works best :)
- noobly 7y agoI agree 100%! Though I prefer to store things digitally. I feel so liberated no longer having so many scratch pieces of paper around that may contain an important note or solution to a problem. I remember working through a calculus book and having about half a foot's worth of paper (notes, attempts at solving problems, rewritten solutions to problems, etc) that eventually fell victim to entropy and was absolutely useless for anything but that I kept around out of fear of forgetting all of it. At least now it's all in one box. Maybe I'll burn it this winter as kindling - or would that be too derivative? :^) These days, anything short term -> whiteboard, anything refined and meaningful enough for reusing later -> PC.
- undoware 7y agothat sounds fantastic! fwiw I came to a similar solution but it came in the form of a battery powered eraser and a big pad of paper. erasure is the problem, not marking. a good soft graphite pencil and an electric eraser is my whiteboard ^^
- Allower 7y agoGuess I really am stupid, because white boards do absolutely nothing for me