Friction, Reward and Productivity Systems
Hi, everybody, and welcome to another episode of the Stationery Freaks podcast with myself, Rob Lambert, and, of course
Helen:with me, Helen Lizowski.
Rob:Now, we've been away for a bit. Life's been busy. Helen, you've had that sort of lurgy that we're not allowed to name on, these kind of things. But the same
Helen:name of Voldemort. You do not.
Rob:But you're back.
Helen:I am. Yay.
Rob:Yay. And today, we're gonna sort of well, we we haven't really planned this. I know that that might sound unusual to our listeners because actually none of them are very well planned. But we do appreciate you sticking with us in all the the downloads, so thank you. But today, we're gonna sort of bounce around a bit of an idea, called friction versus reward, and I'll introduce that in a minute.
Rob:And almost kinda like a golden salient moment I had before we were about to record this about why my new productivity system, which is high friction, is actually better for me than the low friction systems I've been seeking out, for the last sort of 3 or 4 years. And also, Helen's system, which I've always described as high friction, and actually some of the nuances there were the rewards. So we're we're gonna we're gonna see where it goes. If it's really terrible, you won't even hear this. And
Helen:That's true.
Rob:That's it.
Helen:Edit edit it to death, Rob.
Rob:Absolutely. But before we jump into that friction reward, it's been a while, Helen. Have you got any stationary stories?
Helen:Well, I have tried very hard to limit my stationery purchasing. I did run a workshop as I think I I think I've mentioned lots of times with Helen Callahan. We run our our workshop at a conference, on on just helping people be more creative by giving them some constraints. And I bought a shed ton of stationery off rented, I think I mentioned. And so I handed all that out.
Helen:So I'm feeling like, you know what? Actually, I really need to stop buying stationery. So I have I have I have stopped buying stationery. However, I have replaced my Stalogy, biropen, which after everything I've ever said about all my, fountain pens and all the rest of it, this Stalogy has an oil based, rollerball, biro kind of thing. And it's just very pleasing to write with.
Helen:And so I paid stupid money for a new BioMo. I think
Rob:it's I think you may have mentioned that you'd you'd bought it in the last episode, but I didn't know whether you'd been using it. And it sounds like you have actually adopted it full on, and that's it. It's it's,
Helen:Ran out, and I had to buy another one.
Rob:Oh, no. Oh, well, there you go. And actually, speaking of Vinted, if you get yourself onto Instagram and follow us at Stationery Freaks UK is the handle. We actually, have caused a bit of a thing with Vinted, haven't we? So we've had a few people comment that they'd never thought to use Vinted, which we covered in, I think it was 2 episodes ago we covered the Vinted episode.
Rob:I'm just looking at it now, and it says stationery_reading_addict. So hello. I hope you're listening to this episode. Thank you for getting in touch, about your new addiction to Vinted, thanks to us. So we
Helen:I am so sorry. I am so sorry.
Rob:Yeah. It did come with a warning, didn't it? But, yes, that's Hayley. So thank you, Hayley. And, yeah, we've had a few other people say that they'd never thought about using something like Vinted for stationery.
Rob:So there you go, Helen. Maybe we're trendsetters after all.
Helen:I am cause of everybody else's empty bank balances as well. I'm so sorry.
Rob:That's it. That's it. Nothing really new from me. I'm still trying to reuse the massive amount of stationery that I bought from Vinted and Amazon, various different places. I've got drawers full of it, and I'm still, like I mentioned in our last episode, trying to use it.
Rob:And I'm I'm doing alright. Well, I'm just sat at my desk at the moment, and there is, 1, 2, 3, 4. There are 8 notepads currently on the desk, and it's chaos. Honestly, it's chaos.
Helen:12. And those are the ones that I'm currently using, and I haven't actually realized that that was quite so bad.
Rob:Yeah. 12's a 12's a lot. 12's a lot. Poor. Yeah.
Rob:Yeah. Let us know in the the comments wherever you're listening to this or on Instagram whether you think 8 or 12, notebooks is too much. And, I follow people that have just got that one single notebook, and, you know, it rules their whole life.
Helen:They can't be happy, Rob. They can't be happy.
Rob:Yeah. I think it's one of those social media fronts, isn't it? I've only got one notebook. And behind the scenes, they've got 25 stacked up next time.
Helen:That's right.
Rob:Alright. Well, let's jump into today's, content, which is really about this idea called friction versus reward. Now I first stumbled across that naming convention. I'll be clear here. I've always sort of had this idea and this philosophy in work and life anyway, but, I first stumbled across it on LinkedIn, I think it was.
Rob:There's a guy called Richard Hammond and not the TV presenter. This is a
Helen:Different one.
Rob:Yeah. Business guy, really cool guy. I've chatted a couple of times on LinkedIn with him, and he's a really cool guy. And he's he's runs a company that indexes business results based on this idea of friction versus reward. Amazon's a great example of this.
Rob:It's a low friction to use Amazon and the reward is quite high. You know, next day delivery Yeah. Yeah. Prime, almost everything you ever want at the click of a phone. It's an easy way to part with your money, let's put it that way.
Rob:And there are other places and other shops and other ideas where the friction's really high and the reward just isn't there. So why would you use that? Equally, there are places and shops that I go to where the friction is really high and the reward's really high, so it's worth that friction. And this sort of idea was what got me thinking about why my new productivity system is high friction, but it's high reward. And then I was thinking, well, Helen's systems always seem to me high friction, and I don't know about the reward because it's not my system, but you say it's high.
Rob:And I was just thinking, I wonder whether the productivity systems that stick are the ones that have got the highest friction and the highest rewards. Do you think, Helen?
Helen:I definitely think that it's the reward element rather than the friction bit. I know that you think bullet journaling or whatever it is, this version of whatever it is I do now, is high friction. Are you sort of I remember you saying something about all the Oh, yeah. Stickers and you you have so much that you have to do. And I'm like, no.
Helen:No. No. My my notebook y thing would work perfectly well. It's already got the dates in. You know, I'm using this Hobonichi thing now.
Helen:It's already got the dates in. It would work perfectly well without any stickers at all. But stickers are actually the reward for me. So that that colorful nature, that tone for the week or the month or whatever it is, really I really enjoy. So it's not that's the reward.
Helen:I can Nice. See this, nice heading or nice sticker that is I mean, I divide it all up with headings. I mean, it's all words. It's not like it's really picture stickers. Don't do very much in picture stickers.
Helen:It's all sort of just like cute little labels that I can stick to then say, this is the management meeting section. What do I have to remember to talk about? But, the color aspect really lifts me. But you think see that as friction, whereas I was seeing that as reward. So I think you might have to classify it as well.
Rob:Yeah. You know what? Actually, when when when you were discussing that just now and obviously before the show, my new system, which I'll I'll, talk about in a minute, and it's based on sort of military campaigns, so stick with me. It's a bit weird. For some reason, I went down a rabbit hole, but we'll talk about that in a minute.
Rob:And, when you mentioned that the colors, the stickers are the reward, I'm thinking, actually, that's the key to my system as well as the color is part of the reward. And I thought that was part of the friction, and it kind of is, and I'll explain in a minute. But for the last sort of 3 or 4 years that we've been doing this podcast, I've always seen that bullet journaling, writing out your calendar. It's just this friction that just I don't see the reward in it. And for me, that's that's just my perspective.
Helen:Yeah. I mean, clearly, you're wrong, Rob, obviously. But
Rob:Obviously. Obviously, lots of people are, are really enjoying that sort of friction reward. And the reward's there for them with stickers, and the color, and the organization, and the value that you get from the system. And ultimately, that's why we do these things. But I've always been chasing a low friction, high reward productivity system.
Rob:We're big fans of Todoist. It's a great tool. But because it's so low friction, you sort of open your phone, add a task, you can add a due date and it automatically recognizes and schedules it all for you. The friction's minuscule. But for me, the reward's not there because it's now so full of stuff.
Rob:Whenever I have an idea, whenever I have anything, I put it into Todoist, and I don't wanna open it anymore because it's this never ending digital list of stuff, and it just grows and it grows and nothing gets done.
Helen:Yeah.
Rob:So it's low friction, but I don't I just don't get the sense as a reward there for me.
Helen:Yeah. I do use to do it more, but I tend to use it for regular stuff that I need to not forget to do in 3 months' time, or I don't use it for daily things. So daily things is all done on kind of paper. But things like don't forget to tax the car or don't forget to, water the orchids, which I have to do every week, but I will forget. You know?
Helen:Yeah. I find that really useful to do. This is really good for that. But it's only useful if you're actually looking at it. So there's no it doesn't matter how how many things you've got in there that are constantly popping up and how great is it reminding you.
Helen:If you don't if you're not there to check it, that there's no push notifications. And if there was, I would just ignore them or turn them off again.
Rob:Yeah. And that's it. There's there's no reward there for me, so I've sort of stopped using it. And and I think, you know, the the the new system I got let me introduce this and, you know, bear with me, listeners. It was a rabbit hole of circular stuff, and guess where it started?
Helen:I it's gonna start on YouTube?
Rob:No. No. It started on Domestika.
Helen:Oh, fair enough. Of course, it did. What was I thinking?
Rob:So I followed, a lady for a long time on social media called I think her name's Annie Atkins. And she essentially creates film props that are period specific for the film. Now this is a cool job. She's got a really good book. I've got it in the in the the shelf over there.
Rob:It's a brilliant book about how to do this and some of the examples. So you imagine you're filming something in World War 2, you want posters on the wall that look like they're period specific, and her job is to create those things. And they're they're sort of you know, it's just such an amazing process to see how you might stain them, increase them, and getting the right fonts, make sure everything's period correct. And it looks like it would be not out of place in the background of a film or, you know, even creating passports for people in films where they're travelling in the the, like, 19 fifties. So it's a wonderful job.
Rob:It's all very analog in a sense that it's, you know, creating real things with your hands. It's yeah. It's amazing. And she's got a domestic, of course. And one of the, pieces that I saw on the sort of social feed was a World War 2, almost kinda like a a go into action form that you would see.
Rob:Now you you'll you'll know what I mean. It's like a printed thing. It's a table with all sorts of different details on usually typewritten bits in the boxes. And you know I'm a fan of typewriters.
Helen:I do. I actually love the font. It's very it's kinda retro, but it's also Yeah. Very attractive. So I use, just as a little aside here, you know those, little stamps that you used to put your address in years ago, you then you people had like its own ink pad and you just press it down and it would stamp your address out and you could make it with the little letters.
Helen:Yeah. I actually use this now. I've pressed into service for so I say I had let letters for little labels for management. So I use I have a little, stamp that says management so I can stick that onto the empty label spot font in my book. So it looks really pretty.
Helen:Nice. Nice font.
Rob:Nice.
Helen:Really like the typewriter stuff.
Rob:Yeah. Actually, I've just I've literally got on order at the moment a stamp that has the word shipped on it, and I'll talk about that in a minute. So so, essentially, what I did is I went into Canva, and I I I stole a few images off the Internet and recreated what looks like a official military document. Created 4 of them, and they're they're very similar. And in a sense, it's you know, one's for the Stationery Frees podcast.
Rob:Okay. So in there is, you know, the top bit of the form says something like, you know, when are we gonna do this? What are we gonna record? What's the idea? Flesh it out, bullet points.
Rob:All all the stuff you'd expect to prep for a podcast, which we don't do very well, but there you go. And then there's a section which is all of the things that you have to do after you've recorded one of these. So, you know, gather the files, edit it, put it through a AI system to balance the audio and all the stuff that goes on in the post production of a podcast, as well as all of the social and all that kind of stuff. And that's all on there. I've got another one for my other brand, sort of podcast and the newsletter.
Rob:And then I've got a general, something that I call a shipping forecast, which is basically what this month am I gonna get done? What am I trying to get done? And again, that's an empty one, so I can actually type right onto that. So that's a free form one and I can just type right into it.
Helen:You've created physical documents that you print off and then
Rob:you put
Helen:them through the typewriter.
Rob:Yeah. But I've not quite finished yet. So, yeah. Only one of them at the moment goes through the typewriter and that's the shipping forecast. Because the rest are sort of predefined, you know.
Rob:There's 20 odd steps that it takes to get a podcast live. So I'm not gonna type those out every time. So I've just printed them in a in a font that looks like a typewriter font. I'm trying to stick to the theme here. Now this is high friction already.
Rob:You know? I've spent time creating these forms. Now each one is then printed on a different colored paper. So I bought different colored paper, and I've got pink for Stationery Freaks. I just thought pink suited what we do here.
Rob:Yellow for the other podcast, blue for the shipping forecast, and green for my newsletter over on the other the brand. And so I printed these as templates, and I've got them all stacked here in 4 different piles, 4 different colors. And then when I'm working on 1, I just pull a sheet off and start filling it in and using it. And at any given moment, it looks like I'm running a military campaign, which feels kinda it feel it feels like I'm kinda, you know, in control and charging in charge of something. But it's been so good because I've just got these sheets of paper.
Rob:And on it is a list of things I've gotta do. And I'm actioning them, getting them done, and then stick them in a pile that says shipped. And I'm waiting for that stamp to arrive, and I'm gonna stamp it. And then that one gets filed away, and I grab another copy, and I move on to the next one.
Helen:Sounds pretty amazing. I do like color coding. I mean, this is the thing I have with stickers. So I do very much color code. So, yeah, I can absolutely see that.
Helen:And it kind of triggers your mental state or where you know, I pick up the pink sheet. I put some stationary freaks. I mean, everything for stationary freaks in my world is yellow or orange. So I have a notebook which is just for the stationary freaks, notes. Exactly the same.
Helen:But you pick it up, and it puts you automatically into that frame of mind. This is what I'm doing now.
Rob:100%. And it just adds a bit of spice to, you know, what is basically a to do list of things we've gotta get done.
Helen:And You've done the setup now.
Rob:Yeah.
Helen:Your that's not as high friction now that it's all set up, though, surely.
Rob:No. Exactly. The only one that is is probably the shipping forecast where I sit down and type on a typewriter, but there's a reward there as well.
Helen:Yeah.
Rob:Huge reward. I love using the typewriters. So you're right. The only friction is making sure I've got the right colored paper in when I'm printing the right PDF version of these. But again, once I've settled on the actual final details, I'll just print 20 of these and they'll sit in a stack, and I just can't pull them off the list.
Rob:So, yeah, the friction's reducing. The friction of using this is obviously more than Todoist, for example, but the reward is just far outweighs anything, any of my other systems have managed so far, and I'm Yeah. Loving this process.
Helen:Yeah. So I I understand that idea of high friction setup, which is what I did when I did at the beginning of the year, and I switched on that, my standard bullet journal blank notebook to a Habaneci system, which I was really just gonna trial. But it it you have to commit to, an amount of pain because the setup pain was quite high. And I did say at the time, I think that, do not take that that pain at a point in time where you're gonna then have a break from your normal working because you forget everything, and then you're coming back to a blank notebook. And that's really unhelpful.
Helen:It would've been much better to have done it, you know, I don't know, in in April when I wasn't, switching or hadn't got big holidays or whatever. But that that has been really worth the setup too, actually, as it goes. I've really, enjoyed it. It's definitely worked for me.
Rob:Yeah. So the advice there was don't do that at Christmas. You know?
Helen:Don't do it. Definitely. Well, I mean, I say don't do it at Christmas. For me, don't do it at Christmas because Christmas, I always have, a week, 10 days off just because it I can. But, yeah, it you don't wanna take a gap between one system and the next.
Helen:You really don't. You want to to move seamlessly so that you can flick backwards and forwards until you stop needing your old book and you've only you're using your new book. But I have to be honest, I'm not going back. So having invested time and effort with the friction, the reward now is is really good. So I'm really happy with what I've got.
Rob:Yeah. And I think that's it. I you know, obviously, who knows? We're in a we'll podcast in a couple of months, and I might have switched something completely stupid again, away from my military campaigns to, something else. But but I think the reward is so high at the moment from the joy of it being analog nicely to the joy of the colors, to the joy of absolute clarity that, you know, each sheet of paper represents something that's gonna get shipped and delivered into live, you know, to go somewhere.
Rob:The reward is is huge at the moment. I'm really enjoying it. And I think that's what I've always been missing. Now there is a bit of a challenge here. As you know, I'm a fan of the Moleskin Notebooks.
Rob:I I like the smaller format notebooks usually, sort of b 5 kind of size. But because these sheets are actually a 4, and I wanna be able to take them with me if I go back up to the house or if I go away anywhere, I've now had to temporarily switch to an a 4 notebook because I don't wanna fold these things of beauty in half.
Helen:No. I can see that.
Rob:Yeah. So they slide into the a 4 notebook. I've got a fairly decent one. And, again, that's working alright as well. So I don't know.
Rob:Can I
Helen:ask how many of these kind of sheets you've got in progress at any one time? Because you're you you you don't it's not like you take a sheet and you fill it in and you're done. Some of these things can live for a week or 2 maybe.
Rob:Yeah. Yeah.
Helen:Maybe longer.
Rob:Yeah. So, I mean, if I've got them here, I've got one for my other newsletter, which sat there in the done column waiting for my stamp to arrive so I can make it look, you know, shipped, like, pretty, actually, stamp it. I've got another one here for a podcast which is going live on Monday. So it's fully ticked off. Everything's scheduled on the website.
Rob:And this is for the other brand. It's not for Stationery Freaks. And so everything's on there, and I've done everything on there, and it's all scheduled. All I've gotta then do is do sort of, you know, on the day social media kinda posting, just because I don't like to schedule that too far in advance. I've got one shipping forecast, which is for the month.
Rob:This is just for June. And again, that's 98% complete, but we're only halfway through June, 2 thirds through June. I've got a Stationery Freaks podcast 1, which is this. And again, once that's all finished, that will get scheduled. And then I'm starting another podcast for the week after next because I've got the other one scheduled.
Rob:I need to start creating that one. And the same with my other, newsletter. So at the moment, I have just counting. You probably hear me counting them. There are technically 5 in progress.
Rob:2 pretty much ready just to be stamped next week when the podcast goes live. Nice. And so yeah.
Helen:Sounds like it's working for you. Now that could be the novelty. But what's been interesting is you are not a person who reaches for friction ever. No. You are mister, how do we reduce friction?
Helen:Now that's what you you know, I can hear your voice saying it in my head. So I I think it's very interesting that that's somewhere where you found that there should be exceptions. And I I also wonder how much the investment of time and effort and pain adds to the joy of the reward. So I think that
Rob:That's a good point. Yeah.
Helen:Could you if you remember, Dan Ariely wrote a load of books. He's, sort of a a social behaviorist kind of person. Behavioral economics, he does. And it's this idea of sometimes things for free are treated as worthless by humans. Whereas if you have had to fork over even a nominal amount of cash, like a tiny amount, it can make all the difference to your commitment to it.
Helen:And I wonder if it's the same with friction. You've bought in. You've invested time and effort and pain to do a thing, and so that you really want to check that you're you know, you don't just give it up lightly. Right? You've you've you've committed.
Helen:So you that commitment, you stick with it for longer than perhaps you would. So I'm really interested to see how that comes out.
Rob:Yeah. Maybe. Maybe. I like that. The I I think, you know, it's it's easy to look at this sort of friction and reward in isolation.
Rob:So, you know, this is a productivity system. But the real friction, and I think the problem that I was trying to solve with this was the use of other systems that were friction free or frictionless or low friction. It's gonna get a bit meta here. That created a whole ton of friction in my life where I was getting nothing done. I mean, ultimately, the goal if if I'm trying to build a publishing company is to publish.
Rob:And I wasn't I wasn't publishing anything. And I had an editorial calendar in Trello. I had a task manager in Todoist. I had ideas in my notebooks. I've got stuff in Joplin, which is like an Evernote equivalent.
Rob:And that friction was just creating absolute lack of clarity over what is coming next, what do I have to actually do, and it was just all over the place. Because, you know, with the Trello, like a digital tool, you can start stacking stuff and prioritizing, and you can add many columns and you can do all sorts of stuff. But I still I still couldn't sit down on a Monday. And what am I actually trying to do this week? Because it was just a mess.
Helen:You couldn't see the woods for the trees. And also, the other thing is is as you quite rightly pointed out is your only measure of success is am I getting shit done.
Rob:Exactly. Exactly. Not. No. Nothing was getting shit.
Rob:So my Trello looked amazing and it had a a backlog. I mean, it's got backlog of, like, 800 different articles to create, and none of them were getting done. And it was because I was trying to find the perfect productivity tool digitally so that I could organize all these disparate bits of information, and I just said no. So the friction of this system gives me, at the end of it, absolute clarity. But when I look at the sheet of paper, I know it's for a newsletter, and I've gotta get these 10 things done and then it's done.
Helen:Yeah.
Rob:And the reward from that has been phenomenal. So, yeah, I think there's friction in many places, and we try to solve it by sometimes introducing more friction and actually or trying to remove friction. And, actually, for me, the system so far, touch wood, 2 weeks in, 2 weeks in, is working. But let's see in a month and, I
Helen:I was gonna say, Rob, I think, yeah, I think 2 months. Talk to me in 2 or 3 months because the 2 weeks is easy. You know?
Rob:Yeah. I know.
Helen:You're novel. Right?
Rob:Exactly.
Helen:I'm I'm very interested to see how this goes, because I, like you, have spent a long time, finding what works. Now I was lucky I could make what worked for me despite your much derision, but it does work for me. And what's really interesting is watching you, I often envied you with your, I'm gonna try this and I'm gonna try that. And you've got these really things. And I, like you, wanted this one thing that was gonna make me more productive.
Helen:But nothing did make me more productive than having it it all in one place.
Rob:Yeah. That's it.
Helen:You know? I I absolutely. What I've got to do needs to be in front of me. Yeah. People are very immediate like that.
Rob:And and that's the same as I've got now. And these different colors, I know eventually, I'll memorize it where I know what color's what without having to read the the title on each page. And there's just a bit of a joy of pushing all the digital tools to one side, turning off screens, and just sitting down with some sheets of paper. And, you know, like you say, the the real proof is, you know, I haven't published anything for 6 months, and now I've got 5 or 6 things all scheduled for June, July, and I'm back on it. And that's because I was just confused and just all over the place with slick, friction free systems that weren't actually solving the problem they were supposed to solve.
Rob:So, god, that was a bit of a deep sort of theoretical podcast today, wasn't it, Helen?
Helen:It was. I have to say, Rob, it's just made me think of an analogy, actually. So the problem is with all these systems having ideas in one place and things to do in another and articles you wanna write and half written stuff. And I think that all these systems together, it's a bit like ending up with one of those big backlogs that you get in IT in people like Jira. And you have product owners who have a backlog full of thousands of things that have been there forever.
Helen:Nobody's looking at it, and nobody's thinking about it because you can't see the woods and the trees. If you're not doing it now or next, it probably doesn't matter. And and other than maybe some really good ideas of three words just so you don't forget, I don't think people look. I I don't think anybody looks. I think that's the problem.
Helen:You capture these good ideas, but you don't make time to go back and look. I mean, I remember you saying about your knowledge management system where you kind of had to solidify the ideas that you'd had or they didn't exist. You had to translate it into actual Yeah. Usable stuff. And I I think that's part of it.
Helen:I think you just our desire to lose good stuff means that we keep everything, and then you can't find anything. It's just a big pile.
Rob:You know, going back to what we're trying to do with the knowledge management system, you're trying to get smarter and clever and change the way that you work and behaviors and all the other stuff. And if you're not doing that, you're just capturing information. And all I was doing was capturing tasks or capturing ideas for stuff and not getting anything shipped. So, yeah, it's going back to that, you know, what are we doing this for? And Yeah.
Helen:You just said it actually. You said change the way we work, and my I would challenge that. And I would say you don't necessarily want to change the way you work. You wanna find the way that you work best. And my way and your way True.
Helen:Be really different. But you and I can both be really super productive so long as we're not trying to use each other's systems.
Rob:I've gotcha. Your sister I I I wouldn't be able to carry around an extra bag full of stickers. It just made it makes no sense to my minimalist everyday carry. Although now I've added a an a 4 notebook to my everyday carry and a whole load of colored sheets with, military style grids on them. So
Helen:Require a typewriter to make the wheel happen.
Rob:Yeah. To take a typewriter on the train next week to London just to get stuff done. You just imagine I'll be sat on the train with all these colored notes with my little stamps and all that kind of stuff and, people thinking, god, this guy's, running part of British intelligence.
Helen:Yeah. Somebody's gonna come up to you and say, have you tried stickers, mate?
Rob:Here's another bag for you to carry them around.
Helen:It's like it had a typewriter, Rob.
Rob:That's true. That's true. Although I do actually follow this guy on Instagram, and, I can't remember what his name is, but he travels around the world with his typewriter and just, you know, visits the entire world and sits there and types out a page of diary and thoughts, all that kind of stuff, and then visits typewriter cafes, which apparently are huge in Asia. There's yeah. Loads of typewriter cafes where you can go and just bash out a word of prose on a typewriter.
Rob:It's good. No. It's good. That's not me, though. I'm not being a carrier in a typewriter.
Helen:I I yeah. The my spelling, I I mean, you've seen me write anything wrong. I mean, my spelling using a keyboard is is not it's very approximate. I mean, most of the letters are there. They're not really in the right order, but you can get the gist of what I was trying to say, and I don't bother to correct.
Helen:If I was on the typewriter, it would be painfully slow.
Rob:Don't get me wrong. I I did a video the other day, which will be coming out on my own personal Instagram channel next week. And I was typing out the 8 different types of intelligence, and I got through I got through about 15 sheets of paper before I managed to spell even the first three lines correctly. And then towards the end, I just thought, you know, I saw this. It's gonna have a spelling mistakes in it, and you can see me sort of going back and correcting stuff and trying to trying to type over the top of letters, which doesn't work on a typewriter.
Rob:Yeah. It's it's full. I've spelled creativity, c e a r tivity. And, honestly, I'm not worrying too much about that at the moment. Yes.
Rob:Yes. It's the joys of analog.
Helen:It is. And and, you know, that's part of it, isn't it? Because you're making permanent marks on paper. That's why it's so pleasing.
Rob:Yeah. Yeah. I'm gonna be doing what you do soon and getting some. You're
Helen:on a roll now. Bloody marvelous stuff. Just literally, it's like, you know, the you can get glue on a roll as well, by the way. You probably don't know that because you're not really into this stuff. But life changing.
Helen:I'm telling you, just do it. You just want this little little Tippex do these little mat it's called a mouse, I think. And you just literally draw it on. You get a very fine, thing that goes over the top of whatever mess you've made, and, it's almost invisible. Not quite.
Rob:Nice. I should be ordering Tippex mouse. I think you mentioned that actually in didn't you on was it the stationary gifts or things you take on a desert island? I can't imagine you take Tippex to a desert island. But
Helen:Depends if you're taking your kite right as well. I thought I'd be good.
Rob:Well, you're not really gonna survive on desert island, are you? Because you only really get one suitcase allowance on an airplane, and yours is full of stickers. So
Helen:You get extra baggage allowance, not bloody tight.
Rob:Oh, god. What's happening to us? Alright. I think that's it for today, Helen. Any final thoughts or comments?
Rob:No.
Helen:No. No. No. It's nice to be back. It's nice to be healthy again.
Helen:So yes.
Rob:Indeed. Good to have you back. And, yeah, good stuff. Alright. Thank you, everybody, for listening to this, this very odd podcast.
Rob:So, you know, let us know if you like this sort of, stuff. And it's good to be giggling again about Stationery, so I'm very happy about that. Alright. Thank you, everybody, for listening to that episode today. And if you head over to stationaryfreaks.com, that's our website.
Rob:And on there, you'll find all of the previous podcasts and a link to our newsletter, which we publish about the same time as each episode as well, including some interesting finds from across the Internet and Instagram.
Helen:Yep. Thank you very much again. It's good to be back, and, I'll see you next time.
Rob:Yep. See you soon. Bye.
Helen:Bye.
