Am I the only one that does write down stuff in paper to realize that I never come back to it at a later point? In fact I just throw away all my notes after a few weeks. The only reason I write down stuff is because:
it "liberates" my mind. I can't keep all the details in my brain. Example: designing a system. I can see the system in my mind but at some point I need to dump it to paper, so I can keep thinking about it. The paper, with the design, is discarded later on... the next time I need to continue working on that system, I start from scratch (although it's way easier than the first time). At some point I have the whole thing so memorized that I can start working on it without having to check the notes. I know it sounds counterintuitive, but "it works".
Also, my notes look terrible bad. I don't even care about my handwriting at that point; I only care about "move stuff from brain to paper".
I totally agree. Usually, I don't understand, can't read my notes after a months. What I do is that I put old nodes in a bin and leave them for a bit longer, just in case I remember something is in there. After 2 months, I just trash it.
Notes are just a way for me to think, to help my short term memory as you say. That's the best tool to think. Using my computer, even with my beloved Emacs (which is always shown as the best tool for everything :-) ) doesn't come close.
Now, for long term things, I do write them in a computer file.
Also, I don't know why, but writing with a pencil helps me to rememeber things much better than typing them on a keyboard. I'd say it's because the communication between my hands and my brain is more direct, dunno...
I always avoided this habit because I didn't want to accumulate sheets/notebooks; I picked up a Remarkable Tablet in December and it's been a game changer for me. All the benefits of paper-based note-taking with none of the mess, plus I can easily cut/paste/erase/reshuffle stuff, use different line/grid templates, and markup work documents without having to print them first.
For me, paper works for short lived tasks or "I need to get this out of my head for a now" style inbox stuff. Mostly just post-its and maybe a few larger scraps of paper.
Anything long-term or larger in scope I want to have in a digital, searchable, format.
I use a similar system to the article, just a bunch of checkboxes and stars in my notes. At the end of every day, I review and make sure everything is up to date. A couple of times a week I'll do a deeper review and either do the thing or formalize the work in an issue somewhere. My handwriting is an abomination, but this system has always worked pretty well for me.
I can relate to this. Often times, my notes don't serve as a reference but rather as an append-only stream-of-consciousness intended to reinforce my understanding of something.
Totally. This is the main insight from the bullet journal people that the author seems to have reached in her own way. None of this stuff needs to live forever, it's just about managing short term memory and cognitive load.
Index / record cards and a binder clip work wonders for me. I used to write in a notebook but the anxiety of losing it is real, especially when reaching the end of a notebook filled with precious knowledge.
80% of read-usage was for either the current day or the previous day. Deeper history is very useful but often done at my desk. You can keep a rolling N day history with a binder clip. Having pieces of card is very useful too. Rip em up, fold em, flick em when you need to give an impromptu demonstration of how TCP works*.
Get a Fujitsu ScanSnap too: digitising index cards is much easier than digitising bound notebooks, and it now means you can access your note taking history from any device — essential for all the notes that didn’t get converted into project manager tasks but which need to be referenced, retrospectively.
Paper only works for private task tracking so it won’t work for everything but it’s the best tool for the top of the getting-things-done funnel.
I second the ScanSnap. I have mine scan directly into DEVONthink, and have been in the “scan and shred” camp for a long time now. If paper comes into my hands I think I may possible want keep, I scan it in. Then, everything that I don’t specifically need to keep original copies of gets shredded.
I like pen and paper for organizing thoughts but find that the expensive notebooks and fancy fountain pens and elaborate formatting "systems" just interfere with the core value of pen and paper notes: there are no rules.
I have a stack of discarded printer paper on my desk. Rough drafts I've printed to proofread, that sort of thing. I make notes and doodles on the back side of these pages, using whatever pen or pencil is handy. If I decide they are worth keeping, I can use a three-hole punch and put them in a binder. Mostly they end up getting shredded and recycled.
There are cases where using a text editor makes more sense. Working through the installation of a piece of software, for example. Much easier to copy/paste from the terminal (or just use 'script' to record it and edit later) than to transcribe shell commands onto paper.
I think that ultimately any paper task tracking method that cannot be summarized within one or two pages of text is turning into that thing you do to procrastinate on actually doing shit, instead of a useful tool to help you decide what you want to do. Once you pass the preamble of "other ways I used to track tasks and why they don't work for me", this method passes that test. :)
Her method looks a lot like the old Bullet Journal method from before it turned into a major part of its creator's business affairs and became the sprawling ecosystem of rules and templates and books and discounts on paper/pens and Instgram influencers sharing the layouts they spent several hours on painting that is "BuJo".
Personally I prefer my variant of the Pomodoro Method from before it underwent a similar transformation; breaking one to-do up by the number of half-hour time units I expect it to take works well for me. Whatever works though. A nice notebook and pen work for me, too. Especially since I persuaded a few who had been bemoaning the excessive sizes of their fountain pen collections to send me some very nice perfectly-functional-but-unloved pens.
I've been using mostly paper for my notes for more than 15 years. Of course I have a system that works for me, and it has evolved effortlessly over that time through practice. If I had to explain it to you it may sound convoluted, but it's not like I sat down one day and tried to design a complex system from scratch.
I started using a bullet journal some years back and quickly dropped all the rules and artistic spreads for regular notebooks and most recently a pre-printed planner from Japan.
Just went to the Bullet Journal site, wow, there's an app now? There is so much going on there. It's too much. I'm also team fountain pen.
Lately I've been writing a lot in paper notepads and I've favored pens over pencils. I don't remember where I heard this idea originally, but there's something about using a pen which makes you grow a bit more comfortable with accepting that errors and mistakes will always happen but you can take action later on to correct those mistakes. With a pencil you often erase your mistakes and pretend they never happened. You're a flawed human, not a flawless writing machine. Expecting perfection from yourself at all times is very limiting. It's better to fill up a notebook with a mix of good ideas and mistakes than to leave it blank.
Author of the post here, I use pencil because it's easier for me. Pens work fine (and I've used pens some days) but I mostly use pencil because I prefer pencil. I have a mechanical pencil that I've been getting a lot of mileage out of.
Depends on what you do. I've been glad to use pencil in the past, since it is water resistant compared to pen. Useful when you spill coffee on your notebook, or leave your hiking journal in the rain like me ...
Fair point! All tools have their uses, go with whatever works best for your situation.
I reach for a light mechanical pencil when I need to sketch a diagram or visualization since I tend to be terrible at estimating how much space will be taken up.
The article recommended Field Notes are water-proof as well, if weather conditions are a concern.
Or just change pens. You can find permanant markers in a fine tip, artist pens are sometimes waterproof once dry, and different pens are more/less waterproof - though it has been a while since I tested standard pens, and a ball point (or mechanical pencil) is much cheaper than the waterproof options.
I'd think that the bigger problem when leaving a journal in the rain is trying to keep the pages from sticking together as it dries. Probably a lesser problem with the coffee unless you have a major spill.
I keep thinking I’ll like paper, but I just don’t. A few years ago I started keeping a daily journal: not so much a diary with today I feel… but a record like changed the van’s oil. Drove the kid to camp. Called Mom.. [0]
I was using Drafts on my iPhone as a kind of bullet journal, with an action group I wrote. [1] After a year of this, articles like this one convinced me to switch to a paper journal and to get a nice fountain pen. [2] I've done this for about a year and a half now, and when I fill up this current notebook next month, that's it. I'm going back to digital.
Turns out, pen and paper is vastly inferior to digital in every way I care about. Other people love it and that's awesome, but I can't escape the fact that I hate handwriting stuff, and I often cut my thoughts short so I can quit scribbling. Worse, the analog notes aren't actionable. My Drafts workflow turns my day's worth of bullet-style entries into a set of digital diary entries, new calendar events, and tasks in my task manager. I'm already carrying my iPhone with me everywhere [3], so I don't have to remember to drag something else along. If I'm jogging and think of something, I can say "hey Siri, remind me to..." and it makes a note for me without me having to pause and jot it down. Paper seems nice for impromptu drawings, but since keeping a paper journal, I've literally never drawn something in it.
For me, for my workflow, digital is vastly superior. Paper has its strengths, but none of them apply to how I want to use it. I mention all this for the benefit of other people reading this article and feeling vaguely guilty for not toting a paper notebook with them all the time. I think the important part is the note taking itself, not the medium they're recorded with.
[0] As an aside, this is enough for me to remember that day when I look back at it later. It’d be useless for anyone else reading it, but I write for me, not for a hypothetical person who gives a care about what I was doing in 2021.
I can and happily will second the A5 Rhodia Webnotebook recommendation. They're small enough for convenience, big enough for depth, sturdy enough to stand up to prolonged and heavy use, and full of beautiful Clairefontaine paper on which it's a positive pleasure to write. I've been using them for my diary for years now, and expect to go on doing so as long as I can still get them.
(Fwiw, I like a Decimo better than a Safari, although probably not as a first fountain pen - you want to start with a steel nib, which will be more forgiving as you learn a lighter hand, and the Decimo is both gold-nibbed and fairly expensive among pens that aren't coded "luxury". That said, if you're looking for a change, a Decimo is also light and comfortable to use, and durable in real-world use; I carry mine in my shirt pocket, and the only thing so far to give it trouble was a Labrador who was very excited to see me again for the first time in some years. Some folks do have grip trouble with the pocket clip, but all I can say is it's never bothered me, and the sheer understated elegance of the pen's design - in every way the opposite of the "look at me!" that a lot of more conventional pens convey - is a pleasure in itself, besides.)
Ooh, that’s a beautiful pen! The pocket clip seems like it’d serve the same purpose as the triangular grip on the Safari: “however you want to hold me, this is how you’re going to.” The Safari is the first pen that ever coerced me into holding it the “right” way (instead of my natural “lateral tripod” grip; see https://www.scoopwhoop.com/pencil-grip-names/) and I love it for that. Also, I’d be bummed if I lost my Safari, but seriously upset if I lost a Decimo.
But the Webnotebook is seriously wonderful with a nice pen and ink. It’s the perfectly level of minimal roughness that grabs ink while still feeling utterly smooth.
The only advantage of paper notebooks I've seen so far is that in certain specific corporate settings, you'll be seen as more professional/serious/"executive".
Otherwise, for me, if you want to do art, then sure, paper like any medium is a valid matter of stylistic choice. And I fully understand the tactile and visual pleasure of choosing and touching and interacting with a finely crafted physical product. But if you want to do practical / functional, digital beats paper the way paper beat clay tablets. Just the sheer convenience of having all of my notes and tasks, EVER, organized effortlessly, on any device I happen to be near, is a pure slam dunk. Shareability, automation, reminders, analysis, updates, backups... list goes on.
(I'll still be more excited to receive a nice paper letter than a quick text, of course :)
Which setting did you have in mind? I’ve brought my iPad with keyboard case to C-suite meetings and felt good about it, but I’m imagining a TV-style board meeting with no electronics to be seen.
You summed up my own relationship with paper very well. I don't begrudge people who use it as their primary system, but all the advantages you describe (plus the fact that I can type for infinity while my hand cramps up after a page of writing) make digital the clear winner.
I still write paper letters to my mom, but typically by printing them from text and including a picture of the grandkids.
It’s in the action sidebar (like https://getdrafts.com/assets/img/custom/screenshots/ss-03.jp...). You can type some information into a new draft, then run the “Append to Today’s Journal” action. It’ll find (or create) a new draft with a name like “Journal for 2021-06-26” and append the next of your current draft onto it.
At the end of the day, go to today’s “Journal for …” draft (or run the “Go to Today’s Journal” action to jump straight to it). Then run “Process journal actions” and it’ll process each line of today’s journal draft, then archive the draft.
Each of those actions has a keyboard shortcut so you can run them pretty quickly if you have an external keyboard.
I personally don't like paper much because I write terribly, so either it takes a lot of time, or I can't read half of it. This makes writing either frustrating or useless.
That’s a legitimate issue. Handwriting makes my hand cramp up quickly, and has since elementary school. The moment I was allowed to stop writing and start typing, I leapt at the chance. Turns out I enjoy stringing words together when it’s not physically painful.
My experimentation with fountain pens helped a lot. You have to use a much lighter touch; if you mash a fountain pen against the paper the same way you would a crappy ballpoint, it’d make a huge mess and probably rip through the paper. Being forced to dial the pressure waaaayyyy back, and in the case of the Lamy Safari to hold the pen with a “proper” grip, make writing dramatically more comfortable. But know what’s many times more comfortable than that? Almost any keyboard that’s not completely awful. I’m writing this with an Apple Smart Keyboard Folio, which isn’t even in the same league as my main desktop keyboard, but is still vastly better than any pen I’ve ever used.
I use 8 pieces of A4 folded in half and stapled. You need a long-necked stapler, (or cotton and thread I suppose) and you're done. It always lies flat. A4 is super cheap. You can print covers or different types of page if you're interested in that kind of thing.
Author of the post here, I looked into that but my handwriting is so bad that I needed to have lines on the paper. It was cheaper to use crappy premade notebooks from Amazon.
Over the past 15 years, I've tried to break my paper notebook addiction numerous times, and have failed every time. It took a year of interacting with people over screen only to realize why paper has worked better for me (and why I'm going back to it after a year of Roam):
Writing things on paper forces you to be a better listener, AND when people realize you're writing things down, they tend to speak more concisely. It's not that hard to type at the speed of most conversations, but it never feels like it's really listening. Watch people who do it! They nod, type furiously, and when they have something they want to add they will change their facial expression to signal that they want to finish typing their sentence before they want to interject.
Saying "hold on, let me write this down" gives everyone a moment to refocus, and it's a lot more natural to say that than "hold on, let me type this". Plus, it makes it much more natural to revisit topics and let the conversation flow.
Roam, Notion, GitHub Issues, etc are all great for asynchronous communication and coordination, but I don't know that any system will ever beat writing things down by hand for talking with people. (Although, the hype around ReMarkable is tough to ignore...)
Readit News
it "liberates" my mind. I can't keep all the details in my brain. Example: designing a system. I can see the system in my mind but at some point I need to dump it to paper, so I can keep thinking about it. The paper, with the design, is discarded later on... the next time I need to continue working on that system, I start from scratch (although it's way easier than the first time). At some point I have the whole thing so memorized that I can start working on it without having to check the notes. I know it sounds counterintuitive, but "it works".
Also, my notes look terrible bad. I don't even care about my handwriting at that point; I only care about "move stuff from brain to paper".
Notes are just a way for me to think, to help my short term memory as you say. That's the best tool to think. Using my computer, even with my beloved Emacs (which is always shown as the best tool for everything :-) ) doesn't come close.
Now, for long term things, I do write them in a computer file.
Also, I don't know why, but writing with a pencil helps me to rememeber things much better than typing them on a keyboard. I'd say it's because the communication between my hands and my brain is more direct, dunno...
Anything long-term or larger in scope I want to have in a digital, searchable, format.
Once it is written down i don't need the paper any more.
Index / record cards and a binder clip work wonders for me. I used to write in a notebook but the anxiety of losing it is real, especially when reaching the end of a notebook filled with precious knowledge.
80% of read-usage was for either the current day or the previous day. Deeper history is very useful but often done at my desk. You can keep a rolling N day history with a binder clip. Having pieces of card is very useful too. Rip em up, fold em, flick em when you need to give an impromptu demonstration of how TCP works*.
Get a Fujitsu ScanSnap too: digitising index cards is much easier than digitising bound notebooks, and it now means you can access your note taking history from any device — essential for all the notes that didn’t get converted into project manager tasks but which need to be referenced, retrospectively.
Paper only works for private task tracking so it won’t work for everything but it’s the best tool for the top of the getting-things-done funnel.
*I am a high school CS teacher, former FAANGSWE.
It's the only way to fly.
I have a stack of discarded printer paper on my desk. Rough drafts I've printed to proofread, that sort of thing. I make notes and doodles on the back side of these pages, using whatever pen or pencil is handy. If I decide they are worth keeping, I can use a three-hole punch and put them in a binder. Mostly they end up getting shredded and recycled.
There are cases where using a text editor makes more sense. Working through the installation of a piece of software, for example. Much easier to copy/paste from the terminal (or just use 'script' to record it and edit later) than to transcribe shell commands onto paper.
Her method looks a lot like the old Bullet Journal method from before it turned into a major part of its creator's business affairs and became the sprawling ecosystem of rules and templates and books and discounts on paper/pens and Instgram influencers sharing the layouts they spent several hours on painting that is "BuJo".
Personally I prefer my variant of the Pomodoro Method from before it underwent a similar transformation; breaking one to-do up by the number of half-hour time units I expect it to take works well for me. Whatever works though. A nice notebook and pen work for me, too. Especially since I persuaded a few who had been bemoaning the excessive sizes of their fountain pen collections to send me some very nice perfectly-functional-but-unloved pens.
Just went to the Bullet Journal site, wow, there's an app now? There is so much going on there. It's too much. I'm also team fountain pen.
I reach for a light mechanical pencil when I need to sketch a diagram or visualization since I tend to be terrible at estimating how much space will be taken up.
The article recommended Field Notes are water-proof as well, if weather conditions are a concern.
I'd think that the bigger problem when leaving a journal in the rain is trying to keep the pages from sticking together as it dries. Probably a lesser problem with the coffee unless you have a major spill.
I was using Drafts on my iPhone as a kind of bullet journal, with an action group I wrote. [1] After a year of this, articles like this one convinced me to switch to a paper journal and to get a nice fountain pen. [2] I've done this for about a year and a half now, and when I fill up this current notebook next month, that's it. I'm going back to digital.
Turns out, pen and paper is vastly inferior to digital in every way I care about. Other people love it and that's awesome, but I can't escape the fact that I hate handwriting stuff, and I often cut my thoughts short so I can quit scribbling. Worse, the analog notes aren't actionable. My Drafts workflow turns my day's worth of bullet-style entries into a set of digital diary entries, new calendar events, and tasks in my task manager. I'm already carrying my iPhone with me everywhere [3], so I don't have to remember to drag something else along. If I'm jogging and think of something, I can say "hey Siri, remind me to..." and it makes a note for me without me having to pause and jot it down. Paper seems nice for impromptu drawings, but since keeping a paper journal, I've literally never drawn something in it.
For me, for my workflow, digital is vastly superior. Paper has its strengths, but none of them apply to how I want to use it. I mention all this for the benefit of other people reading this article and feeling vaguely guilty for not toting a paper notebook with them all the time. I think the important part is the note taking itself, not the medium they're recorded with.
[0] As an aside, this is enough for me to remember that day when I look back at it later. It’d be useless for anyone else reading it, but I write for me, not for a hypothetical person who gives a care about what I was doing in 2021.
[1] It got kinda popular: https://actions.getdrafts.com/g/1Sd
[2] Rhodia Webnotebook A5. Lamy Safari, Noodler’s Baystate Blue ink.
[3] None of this applies while on camping trips. I take a paper notebook with me to write stuff down because I don't have to charge it.
(Fwiw, I like a Decimo better than a Safari, although probably not as a first fountain pen - you want to start with a steel nib, which will be more forgiving as you learn a lighter hand, and the Decimo is both gold-nibbed and fairly expensive among pens that aren't coded "luxury". That said, if you're looking for a change, a Decimo is also light and comfortable to use, and durable in real-world use; I carry mine in my shirt pocket, and the only thing so far to give it trouble was a Labrador who was very excited to see me again for the first time in some years. Some folks do have grip trouble with the pocket clip, but all I can say is it's never bothered me, and the sheer understated elegance of the pen's design - in every way the opposite of the "look at me!" that a lot of more conventional pens convey - is a pleasure in itself, besides.)
But the Webnotebook is seriously wonderful with a nice pen and ink. It’s the perfectly level of minimal roughness that grabs ink while still feeling utterly smooth.
Otherwise, for me, if you want to do art, then sure, paper like any medium is a valid matter of stylistic choice. And I fully understand the tactile and visual pleasure of choosing and touching and interacting with a finely crafted physical product. But if you want to do practical / functional, digital beats paper the way paper beat clay tablets. Just the sheer convenience of having all of my notes and tasks, EVER, organized effortlessly, on any device I happen to be near, is a pure slam dunk. Shareability, automation, reminders, analysis, updates, backups... list goes on.
(I'll still be more excited to receive a nice paper letter than a quick text, of course :)
You summed up my own relationship with paper very well. I don't begrudge people who use it as their primary system, but all the advantages you describe (plus the fact that I can type for infinity while my hand cramps up after a page of writing) make digital the clear winner.
I still write paper letters to my mom, but typically by printing them from text and including a picture of the grandkids.
And then once you run it, you archive that day’s notes and start a new one for the next day?
I imported it and m currently trying to find where you run custom actions in ios Drafts.
At the end of the day, go to today’s “Journal for …” draft (or run the “Go to Today’s Journal” action to jump straight to it). Then run “Process journal actions” and it’ll process each line of today’s journal draft, then archive the draft.
Each of those actions has a keyboard shortcut so you can run them pretty quickly if you have an external keyboard.
My experimentation with fountain pens helped a lot. You have to use a much lighter touch; if you mash a fountain pen against the paper the same way you would a crappy ballpoint, it’d make a huge mess and probably rip through the paper. Being forced to dial the pressure waaaayyyy back, and in the case of the Lamy Safari to hold the pen with a “proper” grip, make writing dramatically more comfortable. But know what’s many times more comfortable than that? Almost any keyboard that’s not completely awful. I’m writing this with an Apple Smart Keyboard Folio, which isn’t even in the same league as my main desktop keyboard, but is still vastly better than any pen I’ve ever used.
Over the past 15 years, I've tried to break my paper notebook addiction numerous times, and have failed every time. It took a year of interacting with people over screen only to realize why paper has worked better for me (and why I'm going back to it after a year of Roam):
Writing things on paper forces you to be a better listener, AND when people realize you're writing things down, they tend to speak more concisely. It's not that hard to type at the speed of most conversations, but it never feels like it's really listening. Watch people who do it! They nod, type furiously, and when they have something they want to add they will change their facial expression to signal that they want to finish typing their sentence before they want to interject.
Saying "hold on, let me write this down" gives everyone a moment to refocus, and it's a lot more natural to say that than "hold on, let me type this". Plus, it makes it much more natural to revisit topics and let the conversation flow.
Roam, Notion, GitHub Issues, etc are all great for asynchronous communication and coordination, but I don't know that any system will ever beat writing things down by hand for talking with people. (Although, the hype around ReMarkable is tough to ignore...)