Paper is enough

You can steward entirely on paper. It isn't the lesser way.

There's an assumption, these days, that the serious version of anything is the digital one. Paper is the draft; the app is the real thing. If you're still writing it down, you're not quite doing it properly yet.

For stewarding, that assumption is wrong.

What paper does well

A sheet of paper doesn't need charging, updating or signing in to. It doesn't ask you to accept new terms. It's still readable in thirty years. It sits on the counter where you'll see it, and you can hand it to someone in one motion.

A single sheet can also be both the record and the container. Write the name of what you're looking after at the top. Write what it's connected to, what belongs with it and where that is, and what it needs. Fold the bottom back to make a ledge, and the papers that belong with it sit behind it. That's a RegiFolio: one thing that matters, given a place.

The test we hold ourselves to

Everything we design for stewarding has to pass one test. If every code, link and digital service disappeared tomorrow, would the paper still be complete and still work?

The answer always has to be yes. A paper practice is never a trial version of something else.

When digital helps

Digital can do things paper can't: keep copies of documents, remind you, search across years, share with someone you choose. For many people, a mix of paper and digital is the right shape.

A printed RegiFolio can even carry a small code, so that scanning it opens the same RegiFolio in your Regi, right where the paper left off. But the code is a shortcut. Cover it, cut it off or never use it, and the paper still does its job.

And if the paper is ever lost, the code gives nothing away. A RegiFolio found in a parking lot is worth nothing to whoever finds it.

Start where you are

If you already have a folder, a notebook and a pen, you have what you need to begin. Add digital when it's useful, and not before.

Paper is complete on its own. Digital is useful when useful.

Care for what matters.