How I use Remarkable 2 as an Executive Pastor
“The productivity tool you will use is the one that feels good to use.” -Ali Abdaal
Table of Contents: (click to jump through)
That quote by productivity expert Ali Abdaal perfectly sums how I feel about my Remarkable 2 tablet. It has made note taking and keeping track of my work a joy, and that’s why I use it.
I’m constantly interested in new daily workflows or productivity apps. I’ve spent years as a iPad + Apple Pencil enthusiast and tried a lot of apps and methods to take great notes and keep track of project to-do’s, but after a few weeks, I tend to stop using whatever the new tool is. If you’ll allow me to be super cheesy, honestly, the productivity practices that I tend to stick with are the ones that “spark joy,” to borrow a phrase from Marie Kondo. The productivity tools I use regularly are not always the most powerful or feature-packed, but rather, the ones I enjoy using.
That’s how, as an executive pastor, the Remarkable 2 tablet has replaced my iPad and become deeply ingrained into my productivity workflow.
It doesn’t do NEARLY as much as an iPad, but I love it so much more.
So wait, what is a Remarkable 2?
The Remarkable 2 is a writing tablet. It has a black and white e-ink screen, like a Kindle, so it looks and feels much more like paper than an iPad does. But that’s where the comparisons to an iPad end, because unlike an iPad which can do pretty much anything, the Remarkable does just one thing.
You can write on the Remarkable.
That’s it.
There is no web browser, no email, no Slack, no notifications, no social media, no spreadsheets, no apps of any kind to be found. You can upload PDFs or ePub documents to it, but this is not the best device for reading, admittedly. You can’t read your Kindle books on it. There isn’t even a backlight in the display - you have to turn on a lamp to see it at night!
It’s just you, a felt-tipped marker, an eraser, and infinite digital notebook paper. That’s it.
It’s actually because of these limitations that I’ve come to love my Remarkable. It’s just a very, very good writing experience and nothing more.
What makes the Remarkable better than a paper notebook?
It can hold an unlimited number notebooks (such as one for work, one for to-do’s, one for meetings, a planner, whatever you want!). A “sheet” of paper is infinitely long. You can move and resize whatever you’ve drawn. You can view/share/print your digital notebooks with any of your other devices. You can email your notes to someone. You can transcribe your handwriting to digital/searchable text. It’s password protected. It’s all backed up in the cloud. Those are all things only made possible in the digital world. The Remarkable is like the most advanced notebook.
What makes the Remarkable better than an iPad?
Drawing on the iPad feels like you’re drawing on an iPad - you are fully aware that this is a plastic pencil and a glass LCD screen. The Remarkable feels just like writing on paper. Also, I can rest my hand/wrist on my Remarkable as I write and it completely ignores it, just like paper would. On the iPad, “palm rejection” worked about 90% of the time. Never once has my Remarkable misinterpreted my palm while I draw or write. Plus, because the iPad can do so much, I found using it really distracting to my already distracted mind. The Remarkable is all about focus.
My Remarkable 2 Workflow
Clearly, I’m a fan. Let’s get into how I use it in my everyday life.
Planner
Having previously been an Apple Calendar guy, I’ve switched entirely to using my Remarkable as my daily/weekly/monthly calendar. I begin and end my day in this planner, and I’m in it organically throughout the day. It has given me far more awareness of my schedule. You do have some of the same drawbacks as you would a paper planner. I can’t add events using my phone alone, for example. Typically, this isn’t an issue because my Remarkable is constantly with me and I can still view my calendar on any device (I just can’t add to it on those). I actually bought a 2024 planner PDF on Etsy just for this device - it’s hyperlinked and has far more pages than I actually need, but it nails the daily/weekly/monthly format I prefer.
Meeting Agendas
I prepare for meetings and take notes in on a digital meetings notebook. I usually average about two meetings a day in which notes are helpful/necessary. For this notebook, I tried Remarkable’s built in page layouts and found that none of them were exactly how I prefer to take notes, so I actually created my own template (I used Apple Pages for Mac, built the layout, exported to PDF, and put it on my tablet). Because you can write on PDFs, this gave me an easy way to have the meeting workflow I prefer. It’s one sheet per meeting, with fields at the top for a title and a date, spots for any action items I need to handle, and lots of room for notes in a dot matrix.
Dailies
I’ve started the practice of writing “dailies” at the beginning of everyday - just a short moment to reflect on what I need to do that day and what I’m feeling anxious about. It’s been a helpful exercise to give me focus on what matters most for that day and to get my anxieties out of my brain and onto a piece a paper where I can deal with them. Usually it’s about work, but often there are personal matters that are weighing on my mind and it’s helpful to recognize their potential impact on my interactions with co-workers before I start my day. For these dailies, I use a lined notebook on my Remarkable.
Bible Study & Sermon Notes
At Arrowhead Church, we publish a quarterly journal called a “Rhythms Journal” that leads you through reading Scripture and provides sheets for sermon notes. I simply downloaded the PDF for this journal off our website and loaded it onto my Remarkable. It’s been helpful to keep all those things in one single place, especially as my wife and I lead a small group discussion on Sunday’s sermon.
PDFs
I mentioned that you can upload and annotate PDFs. I keep our entire church budget, our most recent church metrics sheet, and our assimilation curriculum (called Arrowhead Essentials, which I teach sometimes) on my Remarkable. With these, I rarely need to write on them, it’s just useful to refer to them as I’m working or meeting with staff throughout the week.
Scratch Paper
Sometimes you just need to write something down. Doesn’t have to be important or get perfectly organized into another notebook - it’s just a quick note or sketch. So I have a scratch paper notebook for all those random moments and sometimes I’ll cut/paste a note into another notebook later, if needed.
Interest-Specific Notebooks
I’ve created notebooks for the various interests and projects in my life, too. There’s one for our family’s home projects, one for our wedding videography business, one for my YouTube channel about space exploration- it keeps all those ideas organized in their right places.
Articles
You can actually send web articles to your Remarkable. There’s a Google Chrome plugin they make that will take any web page you’re reading and send it to your tablet instantly. It keeps the text and removes any ads, photos, or images. It's so easy, just one click. I’ve found this very helpful for long-format reads that I’d like to sit with and focus on. I do this with a lot of articles from 9Marks, The Gospel Coalition, The Wall Street Journal, and The Atlantic. Because the display is e-ink with no backlight to speak off, I can read these right before bed as though they were in print and it doesn’t disrupt my sleep at all (far from it!).
Review-y things
So now that I’ve shared how I use Remarkable, here are a few review-y notes for anyone interested.
The Remarkable is sold à la carte and not as a pre-selected package. This is great for choosing exactly the package you want, but can get expensive quickly (and presents some decisions on features/price). So here’s what I bought:
Remarkable 2 Tablet
Marker Plus
Book Folio in Brown Leather
As a physical product, the Remarkable 2 is really well made. It’s a lot thinner and lighter than the iPad I was used to, but it feels solid. It’s made of aluminum and has these nice rubber pads on the back to help it stay in place when you’re writing on a table. It snaps in and out of the Book Folio with magnets and the marker attaches magnetically, too. The Book Folio is very high-quality and definitely gives a professional aesthetic to the whole thing, and the cover flips 180° while you write. The Marker Plus has a good feel in the hand, too. The marker doesn’t have a battery, either, so there’s no need to charge it (nice change from the iPad). It has an eraser on the end (like a real pencil) so you just flip it around and erase, like you would expect. Everything feels well engineered and premium, which given the price, it should!
Other things I love about Remarkable 2
Anything you write can be converted to typed text. This isn’t a feature I have used a lot, but what is cool about it is that it makes all your notes searchable.
So many drawing tools! Within a page, you can choose to write with a ballpoint pen, a pencil, mechanical pencil, a marker, a highlighter, a paint brush, and a calligraphy pen. In any of those tools you can adjust the size and color. I tend to favor the mechanical pencil.
The Remarkable apps for mobile & desktop are great. The app is available for Mac, PC, iPhone, and Android, and syncs in real time with your Remarkable. Anything you draw is instantly available on your other devices. Plus, on Mac or PC, you can upload PDFs or ePub files and it’ll sync to your tablet. There’s also a live draw feature where you can share what you’re drawing on your Remarkable over a video call in real time. I’ve used that feature a few times and it’s very helpful for virtual meetings when you want to illustrate something for your team.
There is a way to collaborate with your team using documents on the Remarkable using Google Drive or Microsoft OneDrive. If all your team had Remarkable tablets, you could sync notes this way. The only downside is that just one person can update it at a time - it’s not a true collaborative document with live edits.
What I dislike about Remarkable 2
The battery is my number one complaint. Remarkable advertises the battery as “two weeks,” but I’m lucky to get four days on a charge. It’s just one more device I had to remember to charge, especially one that I’ve come to depend on so much. It’s just a far cry from two weeks. Thankfully, it does use USB-C to charge, so there isn’t an additional cable I have to bring with me.
The felt tips on the marker wear out quickly. I was curious when the marker came with an additional 12 tips, and sure enough, they dull over time. It’s the difference between a sharp pencil and a dull pencil, you know? How long they last will depend on how much you write and how heavy your hand is, but for me, it’s been about 3 weeks per tip. You can buy packs of 36 extra.
The whole Remarkable package is expensive. I got mine on a really good Black Friday deal, but regularly priced, here’s the breakdown of potential cost in the US:
The tablet: $299
The marker plus: $129
The book folio: $169
So in all, you’re looking at $600 full priced for this package. That’s as much as an iPad! I think cost is the primary factor that will keep most people from trying it. My advice to you, if you’re interested in a Remarkable, is to either buy it on sale (which they do have periodically) or to get one refurbished. I also have this link that will give you a discount, if that helps.
I’m the type of person who learns as much as possible about whatever I’m considering purchasing before I take the plunge. I watch far too many YouTube reviews and read too many articles.
One lingering question you might have is why I selected Remarkable 2 over one of the many competing devices out there. The simple answer is that I wanted the best writing experience and it seemed, as of 2023, that nothing provided quite the experience that the Remarkable did. The competitor I most considered was the Amazon Kindle Scribe. For me, I’m an avid Kindle reader, and there was an appeal to having all my books on my writing tablet, too. I watched lots of reviews and went to Best Buy to get a hands-on with the Kindle Scribe, and my impression was that it wasn’t the best device for reading books (it is GIGANTIC, not something I want to hold while reading in bed) and it wasn’t the best device for writing, either. Yet, it is much cheaper than the Remarkable.
Even still I decided to try the Remarkable 2. They offer a 100 day trial and it was clear within just a few days that I would not be returning the tablet.
Wrap-Up from an Executive Pastor
In the end, I return to Ali Abdaal’s quote from the beginning of this review: “The productivity tool you will use is the one that feels good to use.” I chose what seemed to be the best writing tablet available at the time (in part because the price was lower, too!). The one that I suspected I would simply enjoy using, and boy was that the right call.
When I opened my Remarkable, I already had a plan prepared: the first thing I would do would be to open a blank page and write out a list of ideas of how I would use this new tool in my workflow. Over that first week, I refined the list, struck some things out, added a few new ones, built some custom PDFs for myself, and built my workflows around it.
During this time, my wife made an observation about my process: “People are going to see you use this thing and just think they can plug and play and get the same usage out of it as you, without realizing the intentionality you put into how you use it.” That’s a good observation and one that you need to consider. It’s not enough to find a useful tool; you need to be intentional in how you integrate it. If you buy a Remarkable or a similar writing tablet, it won’t magically make you more productive. It’s just a tool and potential. You determine its usefulness to you. So make a plan!
I can’t draw a precise causality line between my productivity and using the Remarkable, but what I can say is that I am more productive and I do take much better notes these days - and all of that has been facilitated by my Remarkable 2. I put a lot of work into integrating it into my life and getting the most use out of it. Causality? No, probably not. Correlation? Absolutely.
Get one on Discount - if you are interested in buying a Remarkable 2, use my link below! It gives you a discount and gives me credit in their store, too. They didn’t ask me to review it and they don’t sponsor me, but they have a referral system, so there you go.
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