Medieval Work Tools

I will turn 44 soon. I’m officially middle aged and mid-career. It has slowly – and I mean slowly – occurred to me that it’s time to update some of the old-school work tools that I use on a regular basis.

Buy a watch with a bigger face. I was used to relying on my delicate dress watch. But after visiting the Shinola flagship store in Detroit a few weeks ago, I realized that the reason why I like their watches so much is because the faces are so big. And I can read them.

Use the voice dictation software on my iPhone to text and write emails on the go. I can’t bring myself to do this in public, but if I’m sitting in the office dictating a text or email, I have no hesitation speaking into the contraption. I have learned to loathe teeny, tiny keyboards.

Use the voice dictation options and set accessibility preferences on my desktop. I use voice and verbal tools to keep track of time on the half-hour and to dictate interviews, notes and documents. I also reverse the screen colours (white typeface, black background) to reduce eye strain when editing on screen.

Buy the current edition of the Oxford English Dictionary, Oxford Thesaurus and Chicago Manual of Style. I actually prefer the print versions. It’s been at least five years since I last updated the writing resources in my office and I’m sure that “bookaholic” isn’t in the OED edition on my shelf.

Get reading glasses. In case you haven’t guessed, it’s time for me to accept defeat in this department. The last time I spoke with my ophthalmologist about this, he said “you’d be surprised by the number of people your age who refuse to wear reading glasses”. Actually, I wouldn’t.

I knew I was no longer ‘hip to the scene’ when an articling student visiting my office exclaimed “Oh, look! You’re using a real thesaurus. How cute!”

I responded, “Didn’t you know that the thesaurus is named after a species of dinosaur? Student: “Really?” Me: “They subsisted on a steady diet of articling students.”

I accept middle age. I love new technology and use it to work efficiently whenever I can. But I still enjoy some of my old work tools. I also accept that I don’t have to keep doing things the same old way just because it made sense at some time in the past.

Onward.