I love it when worlds collide. I am a big fan of Lifehacker’s “This is How I Work” series, and I love Moleskine notebooks. So when the co-founder of Moleskine (and currently the “VP of Brand Equity and Communications”), Maria Sebregondi, spoke at length about how she stays organized, what tools she uses, and how she bridges the analog/digital gap in her workday, I was fascinated.

Although this doesn’t really have any mentions of pencils (it’s clear Sebregondi is a pen fan, but I won’t hold that against her), Moleskines and pencils go very well together, so this might be relevant to your interests as well.

When she was asked about gadgets she couldn’t live without, I especially loved her answer. She speaks of an “analog cloud”:

I like to think of my bag as an analog cloud. It follows me wherever I go and carries my most important objects—identity markers that anchor me to the real world, while my phone connects me to the digital cloud through the computer files, emails, and megabytes it stores. [Link]

While I don’t necessarily carry around as much stuff as she does (the contents of her bag are impressive — and makes my shoulder ache just looking at it), I understand what she’s saying. Though I use my iPhone and laptop all the time, with instant access to my files, it’s fulfilling to just bring a pencil and a notebook somewhere with me (though with me it’s often a Field Notes book rather than a Moleskine cahier). She’s right — it anchors me to the here and now. I know exactly where that data lies, and I know that, save for a fire or rainstorm, it suffers zero percent downtime.