Here’s some naked lunch I woke up to this morning: Microsoft Word is dead.
I’m just done with it. Cold Turkey.
Here’s why: it’s a tool for printing stuff.
I’ve been using Word since I was in, like, middle school–and it was always in preparation for printing.
It sounds like an epiphany–but it’s really been a long train coming.
I think the first thing that happened was that I checked out Google Docs–which doesn’t have a lot of fancy formatting tools. But it made me think: what formatting tools do I really need?
The next thing that happened is that I switched my Word ‘View’ from ‘Print layout’ to ‘Web layout’–which allowed my content to fill my entire screen. Really, why would you want to reproduce the constraints of paper on a screen? This was the ‘ahah’ moment.
Here’s the nugget of truth I’ve been working on: we need tools to enhance our thinking–not to structure the output of our thoughts; otherwise, the tail starts wagging the dog. The focus should be on synergy, interrelatedness and sharing. The goal is enhancing thoughts (like shoes enhance walking!).
I want a tool that lets me cut, paste, share, email, tweet, blog, label, hide/unhide, connect, disconnect, save–whatever.
The last thing I need to worry about is getting my indent perfectly at 1 1/4 inches (who hasn’t lost a day in their life trying to get Word to obey!).
Let’s agree to move away from tools that constrain (not even a tool then, right?) to tools that liberate and accelerate.
Right now I’m using Evernote–not perfect, but totally digging the shackle free experience. No tabs. Just content.
