Yes, I’m fully aware of the reference that you might make from the title.
But when all is said and done, a pen really is one of the most useful tools that you can have in your arsenal. As geeky as it might seem, it pays to always carry one around with you (though not necessarily in your shirt pocket). When it comes to business, networking, job searching or just day-to-day life, anything from a 7 cent Bic to a La Modernista Diamonds (look it up) is crucial to success:
- Ever get a pen at the bank, a restaurant, grocery store or other location where you have to sign something, but it’s out of ink? No worries if you’re carrying your own!
- Out of business cards? Write your info on the back of someone else’s, on a scrap of paper, or any small item that the other person can hold on to. You’ll look more prepared than you did just a minute ago when you realized that you were out of business cards.
- Have a great idea for a blog post, something to bring up at work, a change you should make to your resume, or something you need to pick up from the store? If you’ve got a pen and a piece of paper handy, you can record and remember it easily.
- I went to a job interview once where the interviewer forgot her pen. I gave her mine. I got a job offer. I’m not saying that these events are directly related, but it probably helped.
It’s entirely possible that you could manage to cover each of those items on the list with another item, like a cell phone. But making yourself overly dependent on technology is never a good thing (as touched on here, here and here). A low-tech solution is always a fine alternative, especially when it can cost only a few cents to take care of. Carrying around a pen might seem like something obvious, but do you actually do it?
There’s a tendency to rely on multitasking gadgets more than simpler unitaskers, which can lead to some unfortunate results. It might be faster to type something into a note program on an iPhone, but will you remember it’s there? And how many note apps do you have – will you remember where you put it?
A pen is literally a seven cent solution. And you don’t really want to put the lessons of English classes from elementary school to high school to waste, do you? So the next time you find yourself in a situation where you need to write something down, just grab the pen you brought with you. It’s really that simple.
