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sixes_and_sevens comments on Open Thread, June 16-30, 2013 - Less Wrong
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How do other people use their whiteboards?
After having my old 90 x 60 whiteboard stashed down the side of my bed since I moved in, nearly two years ago, I finally got around to mounting it a couple of weeks ago. I am amazed at how well it compliments the various productivity infrastructure I've built up in the interim, to the point where I'm considering getting a second 120 x 90 whiteboard and mounting them next to each other to form an enormous FrankenBoard.
A couple of whiteboard practices I've taken to:
Repeated derivation of maths content I'm having trouble remembering. If there's a proof or process I'm having trouble getting to stick, I'll go through it on the board at spaced intervals. There seems to be a kinaesthetic aspect to using the whiteboard that I don't have with pen and paper, so even if my brain is struggling to to remember what comes next, my fingers will probably have a good idea.
Unlike my other to-do list mechanisms, if I have a list item with a check box on the whiteboard, and I complete the item, I can immediately draw in a "stretch goal" check box on the same line. This turns into an enormous array of multicoloured check-boxes over time, which is both gratifying to look at and helpful when deciding what to work on next.
What are the advantages over pencil-and-paper? I can think of a couple, but would like to hear what a more frequent user says.
Firstly, a hypothesis: I am highly visual and like working with my hands. This may contribute considerably to any unusual benefit I get out of whiteboards.
So, advantages:
A whiteboard is mounted on the wall, and visible all of the time. I'm going to be reminded of what's written on it more frequently than if it's on a piece of paper or in a notebook. This is advantageous both for reminder/to-do items and for material I'm trying to learn or think about.
Instant erasure of errors. Smoosh and it's gone. I find pencil erasers cumbersome and slow, and generally dislike pencil as a writing medium, so on paper my corrected errors become a mess of scribbled obliteration.
Being able to work with it like an artistic medium. If I'm working with graphs (either in the sense of plotted functions or the edge-and-node variety), I can edit it on the fly without having to resort to messy scribbles or obliterating it and starting again.
Not accumulating large piles of paper workings of varying (mostly very low) importance. I already have an unavoidably large amount of paper in my life, and reducing the overhead of processing it all is valuable.
The running themes here seem to be "I generate a lot of noisy clutter when I work, both physically and abstractly, and a whiteboard means I generate less".
The physically larger my to-do list is, the more satisfying it feels to cross something off it. Erasing also works much better on whiteboard than with pencil and paper.
Aid in demonstrating things to others, social aesthetic value as a decoration, and personal aesthetic value. Also, erasing is way faster.
being large and in your field of view. Pieces of paper, even explicitly put places to remind you get lost under things or get shuffled away or are easy to ignore.
Sounds like a good system! What's a "stretch goal", if you don't mind sharing?
It's a term made popular by Kickstarter. If you achieve your initial goal and have resource left over, your "stretch goal" is what you do with the extra.
I will sometimes write things on a chalkboard that I'm trying to understand. I only have access to chalkboards, but I think that i would prefer them regardless -- the chalk feels more substantial.
I no longer use whiteboards if I can help it; while I trained back my fine motor control after my stroke sufficiently well to perform most other related activities, writing legibly on a vertical surface in front of me is not something I specifically trained back and doesn't seem to have "come for free" with other trained skills.
When I used them, I mostly used them for collaborative thinking about (a) to-do lists and (b) system engineering (e.g., what nodes in the system perform/receive what actions; how do those actions combine to form end-to-end flows).
I far prefer other tools, including pencil and paper, for non-collaborative tasks along those lines. And these days I mostly work on geographically distributed teams, so even collaborative work generally requires other tools anyway.
I pretty much only use whiteboards to communicate to others. For private purposes, I use pencil and paper or a text file in my Dropbox folder.
Do you know of a way to edit a text file in Dropbox from one's iPhone?
Evernote is good for that purpose.
No. I use Android, and the Dropbox app here has a built-in text editor as well as allowing you to use a different one.