Enter Safe Mode

My day job has me in meetings, lots and lots of meetings. A few years ago, I looked around the conference room and realized something depressing: everyone was multitasking. And even if they weren’t, the illumination of the laptop screen made them look like they were.

When you open a laptop in a meeting, you are signaling partial attention. Even if you are taking notes aggressively, the speaker will likely assume the worst. You aren’t present. You are emailing a coworker or a friend.

I needed a way to lower the barrier without losing the data. I needed a “Safe Mode” protocol to make me feel a bit more human.

I didn’t buy the AlphaSmart because I needed another keyboard. I bought it because I needed to stop editing sentences before I finished writing them.

Writing on a modern laptop is an exercise in self-defense. You are constantly fighting off notifications, email pings, and the urge to “just quickly check” a fact, which inevitably leads to a 20-minute deep plunge into the history of the spork.

I wanted a “Writer’s Deck”—a dedicated machine that does exactly one thing: captures words. Now that my short-story collection is out, I need all the focus I can get to complete my novel.

I stalked eBay for weeks, ignoring the beat-up units formerly used by school districts. I waited for an immaculate AlphaSmart NEO2 that looked untouched, complete with a fresh internal backup battery (important for memory storage) and a working USB cable. When one popped up for $95, I didn’t hesitate.