The playful Playdate gets serious as a personal organizer
One of the best things about the Playdate, Panic’s quirky gaming handheld, is how it only really does one very specific thing: play video games. It’s not bogged down by other apps or features, so when you’re playing something like Crankin’s Time Travel Adventure, it’s easy to stay focused on the game. It’s refreshing to have a device so single-mindedly focused on fun — which is why I found the idea of using the little yellow console as a personal organizer so intriguing. For the past week, I’ve been doing just that, and while it’s definitely not an option for everyone, much like the Playdate itself, it manages to be both simple and straightforward.
First, a few notes for context. One, it’s important to know that I have yet to find a to-do list app I prefer over a paper notebook. I spent a good while testing out the likes of Evernote and Fantastical — once upon a time I used the RPG app Epic Win to track things — but they were always too fiddly to bother with. For the last few years, my process has been simple: near the end of each work day, I write down everything I have to do the next day so it’s ready for me when I log on in the morning. It’s basic and fast, and the act of writing things down has a tendency to help me remember them.
The second thing is that the app I’ve been using, called Pocket Planner, is still in a fairly early beta state. It has three main features: a to-do list, a calendar, and voice memos. In its present state, you can’t add events to the calendar, and voice memos haven’t been implemented yet. (Both features are expected in a future update.) So, for the time being, I’ve only been using the to-do list tool.
Now, the Playdate may be a dedicated gaming machine, but its screen, despite its small
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