The one-question filter for what belongs on paper and what earns a spot in a digital tool. The rule that keeps your digital system small enough to actually use.
Short definition
The Four-Power Test is a single rule for paper-plus-digital systems: a note only graduates from paper to a digital tool if it needs at least one of four powers that paper does not have. If it needs none of them, it stays on paper and dies there happily when it is done. Most notes never cross over, and that is exactly the point.
Where it sits
The Four-Power Test is the border control for any hybrid setup built on The Open Book System. Paper is unbeatable at capture and at being visible without you remembering to look. A digital tool is good at four specific things and nothing else. The test keeps your digital layer lean, so it never grows into the over-built thing you abandon, and never adds The Grip instead of removing it.
The Four Powers
- Date. It has to resurface on a specific day. Paper cannot tap you on the shoulder; a digital reminder can. This is the one most worth crossing for.
- Search. You will need to find it again later, and you cannot flip through a finished notebook to do it.
- Sharing. Someone else has to see it: a partner, an assistant, a co-parent, a client.
- Staying power. It matters for months, not just this week. Reference, history, the long-running project.
How to run it
- Ask it once a week, not in the moment. The test runs during your weekly sweep, when the keepers from the week get promoted. You are not making the call under load.
- One power is enough. A note only has to need one of the four to cross. Most need none.
- If it fails, leave it on paper. Failing the test is the normal outcome, not a gap. A note that lives and dies on paper is the system working.
Three AuDHD adaptations
- Small is the goal, not a limit. The test exists to keep your digital tool tiny. A lean board or one boring database is one you will actually open.
- A tool you must remember to check is not a memory. The four powers are the only reasons worth paying the “remember to look” tax. Everything else stays where you can see it: on paper.
- It is not permission to rebuild. The test moves notes across a border. It does not mean redecorating your digital tool every week. Build it once, ugly, and let the test feed it.
What it IS, and is NOT
It is: a one-question filter for what crosses from paper to digital. A way to keep a digital tool lean enough to actually use. The border control that makes a paper-plus-digital system hold together.
It is not: a reason to go all-digital. A system on its own (it sits on top of The Open Book System). Permission to rebuild your digital tool from scratch every week.
See it in action: Paper Plus Trello and Paper Plus Notion.