Confessions Of A Chronic Switcher

Hello, my name is Jason, and I am a chronic switcher. When it comes to computing workflows, I guess you could say I try to be fluent in many. Flipping back and forth between different devices, apps, platforms, and ecosystems seems to be a habit and hobby of mine. There may be benefits, but it’s not all rosy. I switch things up for various reasons and mostly have fun with it, but the cost of switching can take a toll.

Small apps

Notes

Over the years, I’ve settled on different note taking apps, for example. I’ve used: OneNote, Evernote, Apple Notes, Obsidian, Google Keep, Ulysses, and Simplenote. The thing is, I’ve jumped between some of these multiple times. Migrating all my notes takes much time and work. Sometimes I catch myself considering a switch, “Wait, do I really want to go through the effort?” Currently, I’m enjoying Apple Notes.

Journals

I’ve juggled my journaling around too. Day One, Journey, Apple Notes, OneNote, and even Google Docs and Keep have all been a solution for me during one season or another. It’s labor intensive and mind-numbing at times, like moving notes. Presently, Apple Notes is also my journal solutions.

Documents and Utilities

Microsoft’s Office suite, Google’s Drive and Docs, and Apple’s iWork offerings have all supported me here and there. Web browsers, password managers, and pretty much any software isn’t safe from my tinkering. If it’s on the other side of the fence, I’ll likely eyeball it sooner or later. It’s all boredom and discontentment’s fault, I think. These days, I’m using all of Apple’s wares-of-soft: Safari, iCloud Keychain, Pages, etc.

Big ecosystems

Gadgets

Individual apps are at one end of the spectrum; entire ecosystems are at the other end. I’ve switched those too. More than once, I was all-in with Google. A Chromebook and Android smartphone were my daily drivers, along with Android tablets, icluding a Kindle Fire tablet.

I’ve been all-in with Apple too. The iPhone, iPad, and MacBook have been my only devices at different times. Of course, I’ve lived on Windows PCs many times and even tried a Windows smartphone by Nokia. I’m now all-in with Apple: a Mac, iPad, iPhone, and Watch. No AirPods usage though.

Blogs

Included here are blogging platforms as well; I’ve used a handful of them over the years. Blogger, Micro.blog, WordPress, Neocities, for example. I test-drove and trialed others like Ghost and Squarespace. Still others tempt me away: Write.as, Blot, and BearBlog.

Recently, I was planning a potential huge migration from WordPress to Neocities. After completing the prep work, I got down to the herculean effort of manually porting my posts over to HTML. I bailed. Simplicity, it seems, prevailed. For once, I managed to abort a switching process. Maybe my chronic ways are starting to change. Now that would be big switch!

Pain and gain

All this digital dancing disrupts my workflows. So while I think the “new” app or whatever will improve my routine or make life easier, I first pay the price of moving my data over. Export/import, copy/paste, etc. Part of me likes the effort involved in switching because it feels productive. The reality is, though I might save time in the long-term, the switching cost is counter-productive in the short-term.

On a positive point, trying different apps and ecosystems gives me new ideas of how to use certain tools and helps me re-organize my data thanks to the churn of migration. Every time I move my notes, I rediscover long-forgotten yet useful ones and resurface useless ones that should be quickly forgotten into the trash bin.

Final thoughts

One of my personal goals is to switch less or, better yet, not at all. No more chronic change-up, just acute change-up at most. And if I make a change, it shouldn’t be for change’s sake.

I want to stop forgetting, ignoring, or neglecting the benefits of staying where I am and using what I’ve got. Maybe I’ll even learn how to better leverage the tech hardware and software I’ve invested in. Unless my setup has a breakdown, I should leave well-enough alone. I must change my ever-changing habit.