photo by shareski

Of all of the the things you’d typically find in a man’s pocket (or a woman’s purse, I suppose), the wallet is probably the most pervasively adopted piece of hardware in Western civilization. Every Tom, Dick and Harry walking around almost certainly has a wallet in his back pocket. And the wallets that men carry are just as various as the men who carry them. There are big wallets, little wallets, wallets with chains, wallets as thick as a $5 paperback copy of Pride and Prejudice with zippers on them to make sure nothing falls out – the list goes on.

If you’re a guy reading this, I’d like for you to pull out your wallet and look inside. Better yet, dump it out onto the table or desk where you sit. Look over each item in the pile and ask yourself “Do I really need this with me *all* of the time?”. Chances are, no, you don’t. This is one of the reasons I no longer carry a wallet.

What then, you may ask, do I use to carry my driver license (and other plastic)? What about pictures of your children? Business cards for associates you might need to get in touch with? Lottery tickets from 6 months ago? That coupon for a free 16 oz. beverage at the local burger palace?

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Update: Brett continues to receive a ridiculously positive response to this article. He has since authored the first book on Evernote called Evernote Essentials. You should check it out here. Over the past few weeks, I’ve been really pimping Evernote to friends (both in real life and online, particularly on twitter). I’m usually pretty shocked [...]

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Your laptop computer. This is a picture of my Macbook after my 2.5 year old son got his hands on it: