This Japanese E Ink gadget is my favourite productivity app
The King Jim Kakumiru is the only thing that's stuck for me
I will admit that I am not the world’s most organised person.
I’ve experimented with attempting to corral my life’s work through various productivity apps and mnemonics, sure, but I have never really found anything to be worth the time investment. One way or another, I do tend to end up doing things by the time they need to get done, so I haven’t found it all that useful to reprogram the way I get around to them.
That said, I do kind of need to remember what those things are. And the best solution I’ve found for staying aware of what’s on my plate is, perhaps unsurprisingly for me, hardware-based. More specifically, it’s an out-of-production gadget from a Japanese office supplies company.
Let me tell you about the King Jim Kakumiru.
King Jim is a company that has been around for almost a century. I used to live literally around the corner from its low-key headquarters in low-key Kanda, out on the east side of Tokyo. Its name is a shortened version of “king jimuyohin”, which basically means that it’s the king of office supplies.
The company makes a popular range of label printers called Tepra, as well as more basic stationery, files and computer accessories. It might be most famous outside Japan for the Pomera, a line of stripped-down word-processing devices. (I will write about mine some other time, because it is pretty great.)
The Kakumiru is a note-taking gadget that stands on the shoulders of another King Jim series, the Boogie Board electronic memo pads. Those are simple, inexpensive devices that allow you to scribble down notes on a stylus and erase them with a single button press. The Kakumiru takes that idea and turns it into an ever-present desk ornament.
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