Thank goodness I don't have to wait until 2026 to get this relic into operation. As long as February 29, 2020 is in the rear view mirror and I ignore the dates of Passover and Easter, this thing is unspoiled and ready to bring organization to where none exists. Even if the pages have a yellow tint.
I am mildly facetious about this. My day can rarely be marked in permanent ink nor is a 3"x1.5" box enough space for me to set up, modify and evaluate my day. While those are my reasons, I am sure for many professionals, this weekly planner is not congruent with a digital-centric existence. But maybe I'll use it when I have to quickly jot down an a future appointment or to record a distant to do, even if it is just a staging area before it gets g-calendared.
My openness in determining the utility of this seemingly expired object, the willingness to investigate an alternative purpose and the flexibility to embrace it even if if it needs a couple of workarounds symbolize an ethos for operating during #stayathome.
For the foreseeable future, our lives will not be as "full-featured" as they once were, just like this planner once was in 1987. And we have changed to optimize within the constraints. We have "reasonably facsimiled" in person contact with a laptop and 48 mbps downstream. Writ large is the ascendance of the video conferencing, seemingly that "next big thing" for the past 15 years. Now it's prime time. So much that it has spawned a verb. We are now conditioned to the possibility of a child or mistress traipsing through the shot. How far we have come. How many a guest bedroom and breakfast nook has be re-purposed into an office? Or a living room corner or book-shelved wall being re-imaged as a broadcast studio? The latter Roger Goodell proved out.
We will continue to experience constraints/headwinds/inefficiencies that need to be worked around to get within spitting distance of our former access and productivity. And success will be defined by the ability to develop new habits and skills (remember, look at the camera, not at the screen, when speaking during a video conference), being amenable to processes moving slower than before (just can't stroll over to a colleague's office to get a signature), acknowledging the need for advanced planning ("What? Instacart can't deliver until next Tuesday?") and maybe even re-establishing a use for the StairMaster, table saw, stack of cookbooks...and the telephone.
The last one can have the most impact. Check in with those at risk either because of susceptibility to illness or of being unemployed. Make time for it. Put it on your calendar.