{"id":1619,"date":"2014-02-17T01:29:08","date_gmt":"2014-02-17T06:29:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/dwaynephillips.net\/workingup\/?p=1619"},"modified":"2014-02-07T08:38:31","modified_gmt":"2014-02-07T13:38:31","slug":"the-napkin-or-envelope","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dwaynephillips.net\/workingup\/2014\/02\/the-napkin-or-envelope\/","title":{"rendered":"The Napkin (or Envelope)"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>by Dwayne Phillips<\/p>\n<p><strong>The napkin or envelope is still one of the best tools for the engineer or manager or fill-in-the-blank.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>I have a(n old-fashioned) laptop computer, a smartphone, and a tablet &#8211; <strong>and I still write notes on a napkin<\/strong>. Yes, I am old, that is part of the explanation. Yet, there is something about the utility of a pen and a napkin.<\/p>\n<p>When I worked full time as an engineer, I was credited with be quite good at back-of-the-envelope calculations. Now, as I spend much of my day in coffee shops (<a href=\"http:\/\/communitycanteen.com\/\">like this one<\/a>), many of my calculations are on a napkin.<\/p>\n<p>It is at this point in the blog post that I am supposed to summarize this with some brilliant quip. Well, here are a few attempts:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>napkin notes are <strong>temporary<\/strong>, so I don&#8217;t have to take them seriously<\/li>\n<li>napkin notes are <strong>ugly<\/strong>, but I don&#8217;t show them to anyone else so I don&#8217;t care<\/li>\n<li>napkin notes are <strong>unreadable<\/strong> by anyone else, that is okay as they are intended for me only<\/li>\n<li>napkin notes are <strong>approximations<\/strong>, so they don&#8217;t have to be correct<\/li>\n<li>napkin notes are <strong>quick<\/strong>, nothing else to add here<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>I guess the most important thing is that I like making notes on a napkin, so I do it. And finally, I find what may be a(n almost) brilliant quip:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>A good tool is one that you use.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>by Dwayne Phillips The napkin or envelope is still one of the best tools for the engineer or manager or fill-in-the-blank. I have a(n old-fashioned) laptop computer, a smartphone, and a tablet &#8211; and I still write notes on a napkin. Yes, I am old, that is part of the explanation. Yet, there is something [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,55,48,43,15,50,5],"tags":[135,176,170,165,137,172,128],"class_list":["post-1619","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-design","category-estimation","category-general-systems-thinking","category-ideas","category-notebook","category-thinking","category-writing","tag-design","tag-estimation","tag-general-systems-thinking","tag-ideas","tag-notebook","tag-thinking","tag-writing"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dwaynephillips.net\/workingup\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1619","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dwaynephillips.net\/workingup\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dwaynephillips.net\/workingup\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dwaynephillips.net\/workingup\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dwaynephillips.net\/workingup\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1619"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/dwaynephillips.net\/workingup\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1619\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1620,"href":"https:\/\/dwaynephillips.net\/workingup\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1619\/revisions\/1620"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dwaynephillips.net\/workingup\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1619"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dwaynephillips.net\/workingup\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1619"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dwaynephillips.net\/workingup\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1619"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}