Dan Pink Has a Folder for That Idea

The bestselling author of ‘When’ on the daily rhythm of creative work, his love for writing book proposals, and the enduring power of analog tools

Daniel H. Pink

Occupation: Author, most recently When: The Scientific Secrets of Perfect Timing; public speaker.
Preferred tools: Microsoft Word, Dropbox, Evernote, Brother P-Touch label printer.
Creative hours: 8:30 a.m. until he’s written his 700 words.
Writing space: Home office in a converted garage.

Let’s start with the basics. What tools do you use to write your books?

Dan Pink: For writing the actual book, I am very old-fashioned. I am not one of the cool kids like you and everybody else who is imploring me to use Scrivener. I have advanced beyond WordPerfect [laughs], but I now use Word. I’m very comfortable using Word.

For research and note taking, I’ve become a devout user of Dropbox. For my last book, I have a giant Dropbox file called “When research,” and within that are subfolders by chapter, by ideas, by people I’m working with, etc. When I see something interesting, like an article, or when I do…