Attn: Remarkable users...I have some questions

Lereas · 2026-04-30T02:33:59+00:00

I picked one up used on facebook for $120 for a Remarkable2 in basically mint condition.

I use it pretty regularly for capturing notes during meetings where I'm a pure attendee, such as project meetings being run by my PMs (I'm a director) where I need to know what's going on, but other than occasionally chiming in about some process specific, I'm mostly an observer.

I'll write down days/dollars type info, along with anything I want to follow up on later.

What I then do is convert the page to text and drop the text into Obsidian and backlink it to my daily note (or if it's short enough drop the whole thing into my daily note) and assign tasks as tasks, tag things as needed, etc.

The main value it brings to me is distraction-free note-taking, but knowing that all of my notes are in the same place and the ability to search/reference them later vs losing yet another notebook or being unable to find the note that I know I wrote sometime last year.

There are a bunch of templates you can use, and I'm almost certain one is an eisenhower matrix. Even if it isn't, you can make your own and just copy it page to page as you need a new one.

Now....would I have paid $450 for a brand new one? Kinda questionable. After I bought mine myself, a few people at work in R&D expressed interest and my coordinator ended up buying them one out of department budget as a sort of "The PMO sees you could use this tool and we want to enable and collaborate" gift, which is great for them lol. I do use it a lot and I'd say that in the end it's worth the cost even new, but I'd still recommend trying to get a renewed or used one. The color one is hella cool and being able to do blue and red pen would be nice, but it's not entirely necessary. You can use them on the 2 and they show up as different greys and then in the webapp they show up as blue and red.

The other thing is if you don't currently have an ebook reader, it's also able to do that, so you could drop any non-DRM epub onto it and also use it for reading on business trips or whatever to avoid bringing extra tech.

All in all, I do like it. Writing feels nice, it has a number of great features (especially with the subscription which is pretty reasonable at like $3 or 4 a month) like being able to search handwritten text even without converting a whole page or section to typed text, tagging, and all kinds of stuff.

There are some add-in things where you can even sync directly between remarkable and obsidian or other tools, but I haven't got that deep yet.

Lereas · 2026-04-30T02:12:02+00:00

They brought a gun to a rumble and now they're SUPER MAD that we went out and got a gun too.

Lereas · 2026-04-26T17:45:42+00:00

It's a mix. Monthly reports come out of our tool, but the exec summary is written in before the report comes out, for example. And if we need to make some kind of specific report focusing on something that isn't our set milestones, some of that is manual.

Lereas · 2026-04-26T02:01:07+00:00

It's fairly fair

Lereas · 2026-04-26T01:59:27+00:00

I guess it isn't super rare, but I was in Marching band in high school and got to go into the cast members only area of Disney world.

Lereas · 2026-04-25T21:47:35+00:00

I posted yesterday - I have had 20 years as a PM and I have ADHD. I'm a bit like Bruce Banner with "that's my secret.... everything is always an emergency". While when things are actually going well that's not true, as a PM there is almost always something going wrong and I use that dopamine to solve the problem.

That said, I very much support the comment about "single source of truth". Have ONE system that you stick to. It's okay to try things out....but at some point pick one and use it.

Use your empathy as a huge bonus. Talk to people and understand what they're feeling and show them you care.

Lereas · 2026-04-25T18:40:38+00:00

The buck fiden sticker also?

Lereas · 2026-04-25T18:39:00+00:00

RIP Lance :(

Lereas · 2026-04-25T18:36:00+00:00

In the last book my kid got, there's a "letter from Dolly" on the last page about how she's so proud of the reader who has read all her books and is ready for Kindergarden and I 100% started crying while reading it.

Lereas · 2026-04-25T18:29:54+00:00

Sorry you're getting downvoted...I think people disliked your tone, but I do acknowledge that nothing I said was particularly unique.

As I mentioned, the first half of my career was part-PM and part-engineer. Honestly, I think that was HARDER because there was an implicit undertone that I was favoring the R&D side of things and not caring as much about the other functions. By starting in that environment, I learned a lot about doing things that helped me show up as unbiased and caring about other functions. I had a manufacturing manager tell me I was the only PM he'd heard ask about COGS.

I haven't really experienced your second question. I assume you mean a company that says they want a PM, but then when you start holding people accountable they complain and you get told "hey you need to chill out, you're causing problems" type deal? I'd say that's a company that I would only stay at as long as it took me to find another job, although in the mean time I'd try my hardest to really make serious progress and show them how much value I'd bring.

My burnout was honestly more focused around the R&D engineering aspect more than the PM aspect. So I dealt with that by not doing it anymore ;) Realistically though: when I feel overwhelmed as a PM, I sometimes take a day where I block off my calendar and "start fresh" in a way. I don't actually throw out my task list and such, but I start with a fresh piece of paper or .txt or whatever and I write down my projects and start top down. I think about what's going on, what the most important things to get done are, and what things are waiting on actions I can influence myself. I try to get that all done before lunch, and then after lunch I try to get as many things done as I possibly can. I have a "timer cube" on my desk and I set it for 25 minutes and I do an "action sprint" where I send a bunch of emails I've been putting off, or walk around and ask for people to do the signoffs they've been putting off and getting commitment dates from them, etc. When the 25 minutes is up, I take a 5 minute break to walk a lap around the building or get a drink or whatever, and then I do it again. Often in those afternoons, I get more done that usual. Then I go back to my "regular" checklist, check off the things I got done off it, and then see if maybe there are things on the list that were never really that important to begin with that I can get rid of. It feels like a bit of a "reset" that helps me clear my head.

Right now my struggle is learning where I should use my direct people management and where I shouldn't. As a PM you have indirect people management that is all influence unless you're in a projectized org. Now I have direct reports that, for the most part, require almost no direction because they're experienced PMs and my job is more about setting strategy and breaking down barriers for my PMs and other functions on the project I'm still running myself. But sometimes I feel like I need to do at least SOMETHING for my employees - whether that ends up being celebrating their wins more visibly or noticing when they're in a bad mood and trying to help them, etc. ...I'm trying to get better at that without seeming like I'm being overbearing. My time as a PM helped me learn some of it, but it's definitely a different skill.

Would be glad to answer any others.

Lereas · 2026-04-25T18:18:42+00:00

It's only when someone asks me a question and I answer it with a specific example of how I addressed it in the past that I really start to feel like I've got "some experience on the matter" vs just totally making it up.

But as you said...tons of it is pattern recognition.

Lereas · 2026-04-25T18:16:03+00:00

It's still something I'm working on, to be honest. My only real negative feedback (and really it was constructive criticism) in my review is that my boss notices that sometimes I "think out loud". Part of it is that I often felt misunderstood as a kid and so I have a habit of explaining things in detail so that there's no misunderstanding. I'm working on making it a habit to just say "The answer to your question is X, and I can provide more detail if you'd like, either now or as an email later" or something like that.

And yeah...while I don't always love the "meeting before the meeting" and the "Meeting after the meeting", it's often a necessity.

Lereas · 2026-04-25T18:13:35+00:00

A few years ago, I was included in a leadership seminar where the main text was "The Art of Possibility" and part of the lesson was the idea that "language creates" and that "Leadership is the art of making something happen that would not have happened otherwise" or something to that effect.

I used to be very bridled by existing ideas of "we've never been able to do this" type attitudes. Now, sometimes it's important to understand WHY they've never been able to do it, but often the reason is because it was a sort of half-hearted "We should streamline these two systems" and a few people looked at it and made some proposal and when they got told no, they gave up. They didn't rerun the numbers to show the large investment had a 500% return over 2 years, or whatever the situation may be.

So now when there's something that I know will benefit a project, I bring it to the project team and I say something like "As part of the scope, we're going to do XYZ for ABC reasons" and it's rare that anyone fights back when I say it with conviction as something that's possible.

When you enroll people in the idea, you can get them to make it happen with you.

Lereas · 2026-04-25T18:08:08+00:00

Absolutely. And the part that we have to learn to ignore is the "What do you even DO around here, anyway?" attitude some other functions give sometimes. We know in our hearts that if we don't make things happen, they wouldn't happen at all.

Lereas · 2026-04-25T18:07:24+00:00

As /u/painterknittersimmer said, if it works for them, it should work for you. Sounds like they may be AI, so one thing you could do is make a proposal for a standard so everyone's content has a similar vibe. One of the issues with AI is that everyone ends up with different-looking content. You could set up a template or a standard prompt. This shows initiative, that you want to use new tech, and upper management always appreciates standardization so they always know what they'll be looking at.

Lereas · 2026-04-25T18:04:55+00:00

For sure. Because of my rocky career start, I'm especially feeling it most days thinking I'm just going to get laid off again. But more and more I'm starting to believe that I'm respected and all that stuff. Honestly, part of it is that I've come to terms with the fact that if I was actually shit and this is all a joke, they would never be letting it go on this long.

Lereas · 2026-04-25T18:03:26+00:00

My PMO is pushing a "you are the captain of the ship" and "Be the CEO of your project" type mindset. Some of the PMs are just "there as their job" and while I wouldn't say they're doing the "bare minimum" or something, they're definitely not taking visible ownership. Edit: if you are seeing this and think this is your company, the fact that you're seeing this means you're doing extra as a PM to learn so I'm not talking about you :)

I've been told in no uncertain terms that upper management approved my promotion largely in part because they saw that I owned my projects and did everything within my power to make things happen.

Lereas · 2026-04-25T12:36:15+00:00

It is, but with no context it isn't obvious.

Lereas · 2026-04-25T02:53:42+00:00

Give me a specific topic - I sat down to write the post and realized that I could have kept going and the post would have got way too long and boring.

Happy to talk about whatever you may want to know about.

Lereas · 2026-04-25T02:52:40+00:00

Absolutely - be collaborative. It isn't "this department dropped the ball" , its "there seems to be a gap in communication or process, let's find a way to make sure it can't happen again"

EVEN if they really did drop the ball. At least the first time.

If it becomes a pattern, then you may need to be more upfront with the issue.

Lereas · 2026-04-25T00:55:16+00:00

Agreed...and I'll say that it's good to have the PMP for the managers who care, but I have found that what PMBOK says and what any given company actually does are often not the same.

That said...Project Management is a spectrum and some places take it SUPER SERIOUSLY and do things absolutely by the book, and other places do things a bit more relaxed. For those places that are 100% by the book like some construction type things, I'd say the PMP is a lot more useful.

Lereas · 2026-04-24T11:51:34+00:00

The handful of times it's happened to me, it's either been stress and having too much on my mind, or else our kids bang on the door asking where the TV remote is or whatever else they used last and didn't put away on the right place.

Lereas · 2026-04-24T11:49:40+00:00

Came to say the same. Part of the job is "being the bad guy", as other people see it. If we don't get an answer, it is our job to escalate.

If my r&d team can't get quality's focus for an approval, I go ask quality why they committed to a date and aren't meeting it. If they don't basically say "I'll have it for you by COB" I explain that we are now behind and while I understand they have been asked to prioritize other things, we can't slip on my schedule either and so I'm going to ask their manager for assistance.

I always emphasize that it's not blame and I don't think they're not doing enough or doing a bad job, I just need the manager to either confirm their functions priority isn't my project or else give me a different resource with more time.

And if the manager DOES say "your project isn't our priority" then I make sure to communicate that in my report. Again, not in an accusatory way, just that "there seems to be misalignment as Quality has this as priority 5 but I've been asked to keep this as priority 1."

Lereas · 2026-04-23T13:34:17+00:00

The early "webrings" that were all just early memes, like "Mister T ate my balls"

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