I finally tried carrying a pen after 15 years of using my phone, and my old foreman was right
My old foreman Ray used to give me grief about taking notes on my phone at job sites, and he kept saying a cheap pen in the pocket beats a dead battery every time. I blew him off for years, but last Tuesday my phone died at a house in Concord and I had to write a whole punch list on the back of a receipt with a carpenter's pencil I borrowed. Next day I dropped $4 on a plain ballpoint and stuck it in my front pocket next to my knife, and I've used it maybe 10 times in a week. Any of you carry a regular pen instead of the fancy tactical ones, and does it actually survive in your pocket?
Man, Ray sounds like he knew what he was talking about. Sucks you had to learn it the hard way with a dead phone and a carpenter's pencil, but hey, at least it stuck. A plain ballpoint in the pocket is honestly underrated.
There's a study I saw where researchers had people remember stuff and the ones who wrote it by hand retained way more than the laptop typers. Something about how slow writing forces your brain to process the info instead of just copying it down. A cheap pen at the bottom of your bag will outlast a phone battery nine times out of ten.
My grandfather kept a pen in his shirt pocket for 40 years and never once had to ask somebody to borrow one. There's a pattern there where the simple stuff just works and we keep swapping it out for things that need charging and updating. A four dollar pen that writes every time is hard to beat.