Keep and Lists
I used to use a text file and a text editor to keep my lists together. That worked until my laptop became a serving tray during snack time for my kids and some water spilled on it. It never recovered and neither did the text file. Even though I had a back up, there were still a few hours worth of data that had been lost and I always felled after that the file was forever corrupted. Not in the technical sense, it could load fine. No, it was corrupted in that working on it meant acknowledging I would never get back that missing data. It hurt.
Then I switched to an even more precarious technique: using draft emails in Google Mail. Drafts could sync between phone and laptop and I didn’t have to worry as much about a computer getting soaked because the draft was backed up in the cloud. However, I was living with a much bigger issue. I had a disregard for the discard. At any moment, if I pressed the wrong button… poof! Forever gone. The one way to save it was to quickly open another device that had the draft loaded, disconnect it from the Internet, then try to access the un-synced draft. Otherwise, one would have to mourn that loss of work or memories.
Then, I moved to Google Docs. It had revision history but jotting down quick notes was not easy, especially on a mobile device. “Oh, I need to write this down” to actually getting into an app was enough time for the thought to evaporate. What was one to do?
Keep. While Apple users have Notes with iCloud backup, Android / Google users can use Keep. What’s better is that editing rights can be easily granted to other Google users so that entries can be added or modified and there’s a revision history in case accidents happen. I resisted Keep for a long time, mostly because I had been exposed to the earlier version that was very buggy and like the memory of a friend in high school, I didn’t think it would look different or evolve over time.
So now I’m a Keep-er. Perhaps Bard or Assistant integration may one day help make the tool even more powerful. In the meantime, I appreciate the simplicity.
