Does using a Hipster PDA make me "Hip"?

Let me start of by saying that the very use of the word "hip" is the surest sign of a complete and utter lack of coolness. It's lame, it's out of touch, and to put it in old person-speak, it's definitely not "hip".

A few years back, after reading Anne Lamontt's Bird by Bird, I began carrying index cards with me. She suggests it as a great way to jot down notes, ideas, quotes, etc. and frankly, I think she's right. They're perfectly portable, and they're big enough for one complete thought. For a scatter brain like myself, it's good to keep my thoughts encapsulated, so that they're not running wild in my head and aren't scattered across seventeen different pages in four different notebooks.

However, being the disorganized person I am, my cards were always getting lost, crumpled, ripped in half and other wise subjected to ceaseless abuse. The end result has been that every few months I buy a new pack of index cards and use them for about three days. Sometimes I'll do really well, and hang onto them for a whole week. This has been the pattern for about four or five years.

This same pattern has been regularly repeated with planners. I think, "Man, I could really benefit from using a planner." So I buy one, use it for about a week, decide it's too much trouble, and a tad too organized for my ADD adled mind, and it get's stuck in a drawer with the last five abandoned planners. This too is the regular pattern, this time followed for the last ten years. With the exception of my mission, I have never used a planner with any real regularity. On my mission I was able to do it only because it was simple, straight forward, fit in my pocket without being a hassle and was completely disposable. So I used that, but haven't really used a planner since.

Such was the cycle of my life, up until about a month ago, when I was introduced to the Hipster PDA. It's essentially a stack of these very index cards, used in lieu of a more expensive PDA. It's one part notepad, one part planner, one part filing cabinet. It's a happy mix of organization, DIY and ADD. In short, it's exactly what I've been looking for my entire life.

Since I first eagerly grabbed my stack of cards a month ago, I've become addicted. Me, addicted to a planner - it's a sign of the apocalypse for sure! Since then, I've also dug up the perfect HPDA accessory, the Mead Index Keeper (which I can't find a link for for the life of me), which is basically a little expanding file/wallet for 3x5 cards. Remix it with some HPDA basics like binder clips and a pen, and it's the best thing I have ever found. My wife laughs at me for using it so often, which strikes me as ridiculous every time. The very fact that I'm so active in using any sort of organizational tool is like catching a glimpse of myself in some parallel dimension. It's just weird, because I've never done that, ever.

So, now that I've rambled a bit about this, I think I'll wrap it up. I've got things to do, after all.