This advice from Tom Hanks changed how I work

I was writing a book about the perils of recklessly chasing new things when I had an idea: I should interview Tom Hanks. I had read about how Hanks was an avid typewriter collector, and the typewriter seemed like the perfect foil to today’s futuristic gizmos. It’s heavy and impractical. It has no connection to the internet, no delete key, no spell check. You can’t use artificial intelligence to write on it. I wanted to enlist the typewriter as the symbol of an analog experience, stripped down to the pure basics, and Hanks would be the dream interview to get me there. So, I sent an email to his people, hopeful but doubtful about the likelihood of getting the two-time Academy Award winner on a call. To my surprise, just three hours later, I heard back. “He’ll do it,” his publicist wrote. As I’d hoped, Hanks did talk about typewriters, and he did rail against modern-day technology. But he also gave me a piece of advice that has changed how I think about getting work done. HANKS HAS A PROBLEM WITH MODERN-DAY TECH Despite his passion for typewriters, I learned that Hanks is hardly a Luddite. He uses a laptop and email for work, and a smartphone for keeping in touch with friends and fam…