Hacker News new | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submit login
Ask HN: What are your tricks/tools for working with a technology adverse partner
4 points by amflare on Dec 30, 2022 | hide | past | favorite | 2 comments
I'm not the most plugged in person ever. But I do rely on technology a lot to manage my life. Any.do, Google Calendars, Obsidian.md, Bitwarden, a NAS for device syncing, plex, photo backup, etc. Someday I want to build out a Home Assistant to help integrate some of my IoT devices. This, especially for someone in my field, seems like a low-key, yet reasonable level of tech usage.

My partner on the other hand is almost completely analog. She prefers taking notes by hand, using a planner for her schedule, and lists for keeping track of anything else. She has a computer that she'll use if she has to, but otherwise uses her phone as her primary computing device. And if I install something on her phone (like any of the apps I use so that we can sync up or coordinate things), odds are she'll use it for a day and then revert back to just texting me anything from information to questions to requests for to remind her about something later. That's assuming she even lets me install anything in the first place.

So for those of you out there with similarly technologically adverse partners, have you found any systems to help bridge the gap in lifestyles? I'm not necessarily looking for ways to change her mind, but rather tools that could, for example, somehow sync my note taking system with hers. Stuff that I could invisibly put in place to mitigate the incompatibilities without introducing road bumps for her.




This sounds like a classic "it's not a technology problem and technology won't solve it" situation. Synchronize by traditional human-to-human communication and then you both do your preferred method of self-organization independently. If you want to synchronize schedules asynchronously, a paper calendar on a wall in the house should work for that.

If/when you do HASS, make sure that any device that she is affected by (save for the router/hotspot, I guess) can also be controlled and overridden manually with physical buttons without needing her to use a computer or smartphone. If she has any concern about data/privacy which play into this, respect that by self-hosting locally rather than offloading to google calendar et al.


Did you explore what could be the reason behind this? If it’s about data ownership, try going with self-hosted solutions.




Guidelines | FAQ | Lists | API | Security | Legal | Apply to YC | Contact

Search: