Anna, I’m debating on trying the cutting 5×8 cards into vertically ruled 3×5s with the guillotine at work.

“Quit throwing money at your problems”.

After that sunk in, it illuminated how people all around me were doing exactly that.

Later, she applied a similar line of thought to books. I kept giving her articles on personal productivity, and talking about books that influenced me…eventually she intimated that I was “throwing a book at things”, instead of just living life.

I ran across a quote from psychologist Eric Berne that acts as something of a zen koan for addressing misconceptions like these: “The moment the little boy is concerned with which is a jay and which is a sparrow, he can no longer see the birds or hear them sing.”

Most of our waking life we are either consuming or creating. Driving your car to work? Consuming petrol and an auto industry product. Waiting TV? Consuming entertainment and electricity. Making a product in factory? Creating. Writing an insightful article on The Simple Dollar? Definitely creating.

We are all a mix of consumers and creators to some degree but I personally feel a lot better on the creating side of the coin.

Personally, I think that if you actually use an item, you should get a top-of-the-line one, and if you don’t use it, you should not get it. If you use notebooks on a regular basis, get one that will give you pleasure – and use it, of course. It’s consumerism either way – you are either buying a crappy notebook that looks awful or a nice notebook that looks good; in either case, you are buying something. There’s really no reason to buy the crappy notebook – if you are going to use a notebook, get a good one, and if you’re not going to use it, just don’t get one at all.

I own an expensive digital piano. I use it. If I had a cheap one, I would not use it because it would not give me pleasure to play it – it would sound awful. Generally, when it comes to musical instruments, cheap is not good.

If you don’t have the same old tools, you can’t do things the same old way. With unlimited supplies/tools/funds, that’s probably exactly what you would have done. If you read up on a lot of great inventions, many were happy accidents resulting from a resourceful response to restrictions and insufficiency.

I try to apply this in my crafting – fewer expenditures, more ingenious application of intellect to available resources!

Should I let a book go and later want to re-read it… well, what are public libraries, thrift stores, BookCrossing, GreenMet, Amazon et al for? Books are a luxury in terms of time – finding enough for reading – not money, any more.

My version of the Hipster PDA (Battra92, #24) is this: first I cut the 3 x 5 cards in half with a guillotine to make 2.5 x 3 cards; then I attach a mini binder clip at the top. Most notes can be captured in the smaller space, and the card pack and a stubby pencil (never runs out of ink) fit neatly in my pocket.

(You don’t have a guillotine? They are worth every penny. Just keep yours on top of the refrigerator or somewhere safe where the little kids can’t reach it.)