Anne Zelenka, my amazing colleague at Web Worker Daily, has a post on her personal blog about the dullness of tech writing.

Now I get news a bit earlier than I used to, but I don’t necessarily have a more insightful reaction to it, especially if I try to jump onto that news as soon as I’m “allowed” to publish it. I see that my attention gets drawn to the same things that TechCrunch and Lifehacker and other RedMonk analysts follow. And it feels a bit dull to me. I feel a bit dull to myself.

I know exactly what she means. I often feel the exact same way. But then there are the moments that pull it all together for me. The other day I was in DC and my co-worker says, “we need to make a list of what we need to pull together for this project” and she reaches for her steno pad. I said, “Wait, I have something that will be great for that!” and I went to Gubb. Gubb is a great, simple list-making site that I reviewed a few weeks ago for WWD.

I whipped up a Gubb list and quickly typed some stuff off the top of my head and shared it with her through the site. I walked her through setting up an account and she got the list and added a few items, and now when she (or I or our office temp who also has the shared list) has a brainstorm of something we need they can just add it, rather than sending an email of “I just remembered that we should also have…” and having to pray that whomever is the keeper of the master list keeps it updated. When someone takes care of an item on the list, they can just check it off.

It’s not about the technology, it’s about the fact that we have to manage this list. It’s that simple. We’re not thinking about it. It doesn’t happen all that often…when technology becomes something that comes out of the fingertips and makes the way we do something better, without getting in the way. It makes the way it was done yesterday seem ridiculous, and it becomes the only way to do something in the future. Flickr is like that. Email. Text messaging. I get “blah” when I go too long between those moments. And I think it’s the search of those moments…for the things that are so clear, so simple, yet so disruptive all at the same time that keeps me writing and thinking.