Jolly old St. Nicholas has been around for years. After watching a recent live-action redux of “The Year Without a Santa Claus” where Santa has shifted into the new millennium, I started to think about what the 21st century Santa would have in his toolkit in order to make his rounds on Christmas Eve in a more efficient and effective way.
It turns out he may have some of the same tools we’re using today in order to get more done. Let’s break down what Santa Claus of the 21st century could (and should) be using this holiday season.
Traditionally, this has been written down by Santa on what appears to be a never-ending scroll of paper. This is a problem for the following reasons:
What if the child was nice at first, then turned naughty? That means a whole lot of crossing out of names.Where does he keep this monstrous list? He’d need a pretty big file folder. And for archival purposes, he’d need a really big file cabinet.How does he remember that list anyway? Santa’s not getting any younger, and the chances of him missing a house or two during his Christmas Eve run is becoming more likely every year. Even saints aren’t perfect.So what Santa needs in this day and age is some sort of application htat can be easily modified, doesn’t take up a ton of space and is portable.
Sounds like a job for an app like Evernote.
Evernote is available on a ton of platforms, is mobile and can be used to keep trck of both those who are naughty and nice. Santa could have a Naughty notebook and a Nice notebook, and could even use location-awareness if he saw fit.
With Evernote’s ubiquitous nature, he has a wide variety of devices he could choose from to run it on – and it syncs so there’d be no real need to “check it twice”.
As for the device he’d use to run it, I’m sure his elves could make him one that could run an OS that Evernote supports.
Santa’s sack is massive – and magical. There’s likely no replacing it with anything manmade…yet.
But that doesn’t mean he can’t update his wardrobe to fit a few more things in. Perhaps a pair of pants from Scott-E-Vest would be ideal for him to hold the keys to his sleigh, his Evernote-equipped mobile device and all those cookies he gathers during his travels would be a good, er…fit.
Mind you, they don’t come in red.
It’s tough to keep track of inventory of any store or warehouse, but one can only imagine how much Santa’s got on his shelves in his workshop. If he wants to keep his stock levels lean and mean, then he’s got a number of choices to help him do just that.
Delicious Library 2 for the Mac would let him keep tabs on what he has for personal stock, and Bento would allow him to keep a deeper inventory available for quick reference on the Mac, iPad and iPhone. Even Google Docs would work to keep tabs on what he has on hand – and it’s cross-platform.
How to offload some of that stuff during the Christmas season is an entirely other matter, but Santa can pinpoint who might want what with an iOS app called Gift Plan. Evernote can also work in a pinch since he’s already using it for his naughty and nice list.
So with all of this technology at his side, Santa can head out on Christmas Eve and do his thing faster and better. That should give him some time to work on shedding a few of those unwanted pounds during his down time, right?
You know, I think there’s an app for that…
Speaking of apps, if you have other suggestions of applications that would be great for Santa Claus (or yourself) to help you get the kind of stuff Santa does done, leave them in the comments.
(Photo credit: Santa Claus with Laptop via Shutterstock)
Mike Vardy is a writer, speaker, and "productivityist". You can follow him on Twitter, listen to him regularly on his podcast, ProductiVardy, and read more from him at MikeVardy.com and at Vardy.me.
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