The real productivity killer is multi-tasking and in my opinion the problem with using digital media is that it's too effortless to start multi-tasking.
There are already apps that restrict yourself to certain programs or websites - that might be a solution for people having trouble with multi-tasking.
According to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), globally around 40 percent of the annual industrial wood harvest is processed for paper and paperboard.
The pulp and paper industry is the fourth largest industrial user of energy, consuming 6.4 EJ in 2005, and a significant emitter of greenhouse gas (source EIA report 2008).
Paper consumption has risen by 400% in the past 40 years.
35% of trees harvested are due to paper manufacture.
6.5+ million trees were cut down to make 16 billion paper cups used by US consumers, only for coffee, in 2006.
Paper waste accounts for up to 40% of total waste in the United States. 71.6 tons per year.
I think this whole "go digital to save the trees" thing is utter bullshit, for the following reason:
- the digital revolution made people actually use more paper
- you get a shit ton of paper from a single tree; how much resources do you need to use to manufacture a computer, and keep it running?
- paper is recyclable
- as long as you keep recycling paper, it actually makes sense to plant trees and then cut it down - it sucks CO₂ out of the atmosphere and keeps it out
I remember a HP salesman telling me filing cabinet sales went through the roof as laser printers became more popular, he said the paperless office was as likely as the paperless toilet.
However I think that has turned around in recent years, worldwide paper production volumes are decreasing.
> worldwide paper production volumes are decreasing
That may be true of regular paper and/or the overall production of paper products, but with all the increased retail shipping I would be very surprised if it's true of cardboard.
When I get assigned a new feature to implement, I take the spec and write out my plan for implementation in longhand on paper. It makes me spend more time considering every aspect.
Yeah, it's always interesting how we stop considering certain things as "technology" once enough time passes. Yet anyone reading I, Pencil would be hard pressed to consider it an unprocessed product of the Earth.
You have to read a book to not think a pencil is like a fruit from a tree or something. If I didn't know better I'd be sure your fucking with me on purpose. The stupid has no fucking limits.
For writing text, I prefer to type on a computer because I can easily rearrange / edit things. You can't do that on paper.
I prefer paper for drawing though (diagrams / flowchart / etc).
Has anyone tried using drawing tablet like Wacom? How does it feel compared to drawing on paper?
That's the problem for me. I can end up obsesively re-re-...-re-editing a note or checklist, waisting tons of time. To make it worse I can end up with lost time AND lost information simultaneously if not using something with a version control system too...
So, for condensed small-scale 1-user planning, for me, when aiming for maximum productivity, paper is the killer app!
Traditional Wacom tablets are IMO awful. Some people do get used to them but not having direct feedback of what you've written just doesn't work naturally.
A tablet, especially one like the iPad Pro with the Pencil is much better but still doesn't work as well as just sketching on a piece of paper for me. I assume if I applied myself to using a tablet more though, I'd get used to it. Clearly people with a lot more drawing ability than myself can do great work on tablets.
Yeah, Wacom tablets were/are great and terrible at the same time. I've used them on and off for a long time, and they really are great for drawing, but there's a learning curve to be sure. Actually I liked the older Wacoms better than some new ones I've tries out. The ancient "cursor" device was mouse-like, but used in absolute mode was great for some tasks where keeping it in the same place enabled keeping the pointer on the screen in a predictable spot.
Actually the newer touch/stylus screens on tablets like the MS Surface models I've used are harder for me to use with the stylus. Manipulating the stylus is harder due to parallax and the fact that the tool and hand covers up part of the screen. Just doesn't seem as "natural" to me as the old drawing tablet.
Preferences definitely vary. Our graphic artist at a former employer had a Wacom tablet but she drew everything on paper first and then just basically used the tablet to digitize it. I've never found anything I really loved but, then, I'm pretty bad drawing and writing on paper too :-)
Yes, it's sure hard to beat the sensory and esthetic experience of putting pencil to paper. No digital method can come close to it.
OTOH drawing on the computer has a whole new set of features to offer that are completely novel and can't be accomplished in other ways, certainly not easily.
So like in most things, different "tooling" involves tradeoffs, no single solution ever covers it all. We usually have reasons to go one way or the other. In any case, not tool can make up for dearth of talent, how well I know the truth of that statement!
A low-end Wacom is, IMO, probably worth trying. I've been using one in combination with MyPaint[0] for a few years to do quick sketches and cartoons. It definitely hasn't replaced paper for me, but it's a good way to get some of the spontaneity and expressiveness of pen-and-ink into the machine.
I recently adapted bulletjournaling (from OmniFocus) and absolutely love it. Writing my journal is very relaxing and became a daily ritual of mine. Once a week i escape with my notebook to a cafe (without any tech gadgets) and review my entire system, cut out some tasks that are no longer relevant and plan for the next week.
Paper also allowed me to confront imperfections and mistakes more directly. I made a ton of writing mistakes that drove my crazy first and made me want to buy a new note first since I was so used to having my OmniFocus in perfect shape. It's really refreshing!
Plus It's interesting to see what a engineering brain can do with pen and paper. Most of the "modules" I use in my bulletjournal like my monthly and weekly spreads were from scratch created to fit perfectly on my needs.
I also use the Bullet Journal "system" and it's really nice and I enjoy writing what I need to do for the day. However, unlike you I haven't really extended it and use only the basics which seems to work fine for me.
That's great! Simpler solutions are most of the times better.
I needed to squish start dates and deadlines, task scheduling, 'waiting on' + 'someday' lists, project pages, weekly overviews and better migrations into mine which took a good amount of trial and error to find something that sticks and is intuitive.
On the other hand, I am trying to literally plan everything in my journal. I don't want to rely on any other app and thus need to come up with modules that make it possible to get rid of app dependencies completely.
I warmly recommend a mechanical pencil with a relatively soft lead and a little eraser on the back. If you write softly with soft lead, erasing is very little effort.
The Frixion line of pens is also useful for this. They might be somewhat limited as to what you can get outside of Japan, but a site like Jet Pens should be able to fix any deficiencies. (Eg: didn't know that they made highlighters with Frixion ink until a recent trip to Japan, where they have these pens literally everywhere)
These are the only pens I've bought through high school and university. It strikes the perfect balance between easy erasability and visible ink (luckily going to school in the northeast, I never had the overheating in the car issue).
I draw lines through things. Write-only interface!
My note-taking became much more effective once I realized that my notes rarely ended up in anyone else's hands, and that they were usually for short-term consumption.
You don't need beautiful notes, you need your notes! Scribble all over if you want (plus it's fun to scratch things out)
I like working on index cards because if I screw up a note I can just throw it out and start again without impacting any other notes. Notebooks give me anxiety; my fear of somehow "messing up" the notebook causes me to underuse it. And the sortability/filterability of cards sometimes comes in very handy as well.
I've never had much success with digital todo lists, so I've never stoped using pen and paper to schedule what I have to do.
On my current system I have a math notebook (A5 format) where I dump everything I have to do on the left (or right) non-writable areas of the page, and then everyday I write what I have to do for the next day on the writable area. I try to add for each day at least one of those items on the left/right side, and each day I try not to add more than 2/3 items per day.
The reason that this works for me is that I try to have a very simple life, fulfill my daily obligations, and try to have as much free time as I can get. I do not need automatic systems to search my pending tasks way back in time because if those tasks don't "migrate" to the current page of the notebook, it's because they are not much relevant.
It can be much better to write down notes, rather than typing. The reason, is that writing is slow and therefore forces one to analyse and summarize at origin, rather than just blasting it out, almost verbatim by typing.
I (largely) agree with your point, that doing things by hand limits your capacity to record lots of things, and brings the mind-set of "I can only write down so much, how can I distil it?"
There's decreasingly less time pressure on learners - in and out of formal education. Note-taking from written sources, or recordings (video or audio) means there's less rush to take notes right there and then.
The processes of analysis and comprehension are slow, and so probably aren't best considered at one event, e.g. taking notes. The average person isn't writing something down once, then fully understanding it, no matter how slowly they write. Even improved retention requires revisiting material, and comprehension or synthesis require application and evaluation of the material.
I've found journaling on paper to be one of the best morning rituals for calming anxiety. It really is amazing how just writing a few sentences creates a sense of awareness of what's going on in your head.
I also tried bullet journaling as my 'system', but quickly abandoned it. It is great if you're not a compulsive to-do list maker, but if you follow a GTD-like system where you frequently capture, it becomes onerous to answer the question 'what do I do next?' You either have to constantly flip through pages to review your full list, or regularly copy your to-dos to a master list, which becomes quite tedious, especially if you have a long list.
What works for me is using org mode as my to-do system, with paper for the brainstorming and planning. I always start with paper, then once I have clarity on what to do, I move it to org.
Interesting. I wonder how useful journaling would be to help combat insomnia. I will give it a go next time I am lying in bed at 2am with my head buzzing..
I use sleep cycle as an alarm clock. A few years of sleep data says that (for me) going to bed after working late leads to bad sleep, and going to bed after reading leads to better sleep.
Based on this single data point, perhaps try picking up a book when you call it a night?
Nothing beats curling up in a warm (well, now that it's winter in the Northern hemisphere anyway) bed with a book when you're calling it a day. It's relaxing. This habit also helps you actually get around to reading for leisure.
I have used this successfully this very week, with my worst insomnia yet.
A trick i learned is that writing mainly helps me to clarify my thoughts, so i realized i can do that without turning on the light and getting a pen: i can use a voice recorder (on my phone) and whisper into it, like journaling out loud.
I've been successfully using journaling to fight insomnia for a few months now. What I do is try to simply capture every thought that comes into my head as fast as I can write.
At first, my hand can barely keep up with the torrent of thoughts being produced by my mind, but after maybe 5-10 min it slows right down. At some point I feel like I'm actually waiting for thoughts to come up so I can write.
Eventually, my mind goes quiet. It's much easier to fall asleep then.
This helped me, too, when I was suffering from insomnia. 700 to 1,000 words was the "sleep like a baby" target range for me. Also, the sooner I could bring myself to write about the really difficult topics, the better.
I too find writing a helpful way to stop thoughts tumbling round in my head so I can sleep. I think it has something to do with silencing the rehearsal loop.
You may be interested in http://www.themostdangerouswritingapp.com After 5 seconds of inactivity your text goes away. This encourages you to continue typing. It's helped a lot with my fledging journaling habit.
It may not work for all of course but my insomnia (undiagnosed, so whatever the sleeplessness actually was if not insomnia) has almost completely gone after I started meditating.
Now I don't mean sitting cross legged while chanting "ahhhh" or anything like that, just give your brain an hour or so daily to start but you can probably drop to less after a while (I do it every 2-3 days now).
My best guess it's like freeing up some CPU time for garbage collection. With having podcasts, videos, films, computering, etc going almost every waking hour the brain never really gets a chance to filter through all of this stuff so attempts to do so the only quiet moment it gets - right when you're trying to fall asleep.
Do you work on the computer until late? You should consider trying this app that removes the blue hues from your monitor after 9pm: https://justgetflux.com/ (Apparently, blue coloured light is a cue our brain uses to know when to wake up—morning light has more blue than evening light)
If you are a linux user gtk-redshift does the same thing, I've also found it be very reliable with ATI's binary drivers (though these days I use the open source drivers anyway).
Most people with a lot on their minds do find it easier to have pen and paper bed side. This why they can quickly jot down what's on their mind and leave the burden of remembering and figuring stuff out to tomorrow. I can't find the article about it, but it has helped me in the past.
Now I just throw on a nature documentary and a timer to shut the tv off after 30 min. I'm usually fast asleep in 10 minutes. :)
hugely :) you don't even have to use the structure of a journal. i've found it helpful, when my head is too full, to simply write down single words reverberating in my head impairing sleep. I did it just last night!
So I moved to paper note taking a month and a half ago, and it's helped with work-anxiety. It's not a cure-all either, the hardest part is changing your habits so that you still open the book to look at what you wrote down.
I know someone who found journaling cured severe RSI, when nothing else worked. I learned about this on HN and was skeptical, but lots of people had testified that it helped them, so I passed the recommendation on - amazingly it did work. See The Mindbody Prescription by Sarno.
I think it will depend on the type of RSI. Both me and a coworker once had horrible RSI. One of the problems (amongst many) that we complained about was that writing with a pen became quite painful.
I mean, RSI can be really bad. It affects your quality of life outside of the computer world. Pressing the button on my remote was painful. Pressing the button to change the frequency on my car radio was painful. Essentially, any delicate work was painful.
This is not on paper but I do the same thing on paper when I'm away from the computer. On my computer a cron job just pops this into a Dropbox folder as YYYY-MM-DD.md and I edit it from there.
There are some neat journaling cues available if you read e.g. "The New Diary" by Tristine Rainer. Like writing in the third person, or just viewing a diary/journal as a place to scribble down work notes and improving on it from there.
I probably change my own template every 1-2 months. You'll see on the "schedule" portion that the least productive part of my day is 1-3 p.m., so I encourage a lot of fun and relaxation during that time as a way of releasing anxiety and picking up task momentum.
Most of my work in the journal is under the "other" heading, and I don't fill out every heading every day. Most entries just have a score for the day, some notes on why I chose that score, and ideas to improve it, and then a lot of ideas under "Other".
Every Friday I do a sort of "information archaeology" thing where I go back over my paper & digital journal entries and round up reusable tips or things I've learned into a "frameworks" folder where I have separate files for things like building websites, coding, preparing for meetings, working with various types of people, possible new hobbies, etc. The recapture of these ideas has been worth quite a lot to me, as it feels like I have a better foothold next time I encounter the problem.
Your template is much more complex than I was thinking. I can see though if reflection is the goal, then a format that encourages that makes a great deal of sense.
I find this can calm my anxiety about forgetting something important. Back in the 90's I used a Franklin Day Planner which was pretty awesome but also a bit too prescriptive for me so it was equal parts useful and repulsive :-). But I found I could capture the things I felt were important on paper and worried less about them being lost.
That turned into writing into my notebook at night what questions had come up during the day, and what needed doing. And in the morning, reviewing that and picking the top three things on that list to be addressed that day.
I never liked all the multitude of list making apps - Evernote, Todoist, Omnifocus, etc.
I prefer org-mode[1] on emacs. It's simple, flexible, distraction free and for some reason reminds me of writing on paper. You get the simplicity, while also making it as powerful as you want.
org-mode has been my 2017 resolution, and in the 23 days I've been using it, I'm sold. I love prose and writing, and this scratches that itch pretty effectively while also giving me really powerful things that I need to be organized, like structure to my notes and tag searches. It's also as in or out of the way as I want it to be, which is great - I get to define the structure of how it works, and have largely through my emacs config. My last remaining hangup is capture when not in front of a full computer, but I'm sure that's a problem just in need of some time and automation, and admittedly my life would be easier if I'd give in and store my orgfiles in Dropbox, but being less dependent on cloud services I don't control is my sub-resolution, so I'm resisting this one as long as I can.
I capture on paper. If I'm at a meeting or something, I simply write to paper, then transcribe my daily notes to org-mode at the end of the day. I don't particularly worry about structure when spooling to paper.
Sometimes I'll capture to paper even if I'm sitting in front of my computer. If I've got something complex to reason through, I like the free-form nature of paper. I pretend it's an auxiliary scratch buffer whose contents I will reason about later.
My paper notebook, therefore becomes pretty nonsensical, because it isn't the system of record. I carry it as a notebook because I can always go back a day or two if I got lazy and didn't transcribe the previous day. Also a paper notebook puts on a better show for society as compared to just having a few sheets of printer paper along for the ride at meetings (though that works too). Periodically, I rip previous pages out (if spiral bound--they tear cleanly) and shred them just to restore that fresh notebook feeling.
I'll add that I've used Mobile-org and even tried Evernote on mobile. I cannot for the life of me figure out how people use mobile note-taking apps. Even with a bluetooth keyboard the UX is so slow / inflexible compared to paper.
I've seen people apparently use them to reasonable effect though, so I'm going to assume that people capable of note-taking on mobile are just a more evolved kind of human than I am :-)
As someone who writes for a living, I can appreciate mobile note taking. Flexibility of the app is not really the important part - I frequently use apple's notes app. But, in those cases what I'm really doing is "pre-writing" not note taking. I'm not capturing ideas, I'm already interpreting them before I write them down, adding structure as I go.
In paper, I tend to really note-take. I like note-taking on paper for things I don't really understand yet. I prefer pre-writing in an app for situations where my understanding of the topic is good, and I want to skip steps (e.g. writing a blog post about a presentation, where the topic is already familiar)
Now, in fairness, I have recently started using SimpleMind for mind-mapping real-time. I find it does a good job at doing both things. It helps me build a narrative structure in one branch, while capturing notes in others. It also gives me a lot of nice flexibility on-screen to rearrange branches, relocate topics and do other general house-keeping.
I use Emacs' org-mode for pretty much all my work notes. It's very structured, long and includes spreadsheets.
But usually I don't use my laptop during work. Instead I print just day's notes (schedule etc.) to a single paper sheet and keep the note paper with me. I do corrections and maybe add notes with a pen. Then later at home I modify my org-mode files to match my note paper.
I like Evernote as a place to store my notebook pages that I want to search for. It's easy to take a picture with my phone and upload it as a PDF to Evernote which does a shockingly good job of finding text in the images and indexing them. I also get some metadata related to the time, date, and place where I generated the PDF. It's nice having important parts of my notebook available at all times.
I'm also surprised the article didn't mention mind mapping. Does nobody do that anymore?
I do mind mapping extensively, both on paper, and using Mindjet's "mind manager". I use mind mapping to brain dump everything relevant about a project. The free-form approach helps me get stuff down in whatever order my brain decides to bring it to memory. They then get hacked into a logical order, maybe split into separate maps, and get used as an "at a glance" overview, which is great for making sure nothing gets missed during development. Paper is handy for the first cut, or on a bus, in a meeting etc., but the electronic version is better for editing and showing to colleagues and customers.
That is the same problem I have with most of the list making apps, but for web, at least Taskcade (https://www.taskcade.com) does the job for me, while feeling somewhat natural typing on it.
I'd agree. I've been trying to think of why I like orgmode and todoist and toggl aren't the same, it's that I can manipulate it freely as text without being blocked by the structure or hitting a use-case unanticipated by the authors of the app. I can also extend it easily and have done so.
In that way its benefits are similar to pen and paper.
This is ridiculous. Are people this short-sighted? I keep hearing about people going back to paper agenda or simple text files for todos. I would understand if they said they couldn't find a better solution, but many of them claim that this is an improvement over any digital solution.
Again, nobody seems to be tackling this. Not even YC mentions this problem.
I've been keeping notes in plain text files[1] for the last 15 years. It's a really good system and doesn't require 8 million in funding to make a startup around it.
Text files take up almost no resources, are quick to work with in every way, have superb portability, are automatically date/time stamped and can be siphoned into a database any time you want get crazier with organizing or tracking them.
Paper is its own unique experience that is neat and stuff, but photos or scans of paper are ultimately kind of wasteful from a data perspective, as well as difficult to OCR-- and the way I see it, if you're not saving your stuff in data form at all, is whatever you're writing really a good use of your time?
You seem to have implicitly made a jumbled mass of claims without supporting any of them. I can't quite tell what claims. It seems you contend that you need more complicated solutions for a better task tracking solution than paper or text files can offer. At some point, you reach the point of not getting any more marginal utility by making your planning system more complicated. The mental energy you put into the dealing with the machinery of your task tracking system could go into actually solving the problem. Bill Gates, shockingly, built Microsoft without a GTD planner. Trump became president of the united states without one. I don't find this premise at all convincing.
Paper, as mentioned by the article, can stimulate different parts of the brain. No app can match that.
You seem to react with shock to the notion without addressing the actual shortcomings in any constructive way.
> Bill Gates, shockingly, built Microsoft without a GTD planner. Trump became president of the united states without one. I don't find this premise at all convincing.
I can walk all the way to Argentina. Does that make planes any less useful?
> Paper, as mentioned by the article, can stimulate different parts of the brain. No app can match that.
Bullshit.
> You seem to react with shock to the notion without addressing the actual shortcomings in any constructive way.
I can't believe nobody has managed to tackle perhaps the most important problem (GTD) using computers. I truly can't accept that this is true. I must be missing something.
You are correct. My comment was not constructive at all. There's nothing I want more than a discussion about making the world better through proper GTD tools.
The only ridiculous thing is how digital is overblown. Paper is a very good tool.
As for simple text files, well, I'm yet to see any startup coming even remotely close to beating Emacs + Org Mode with optional Dropbox sync. But IMO that's the culture clash - plaintext is about actual productivity and usefulness; startups are about bullshitting people with shiny things to get a nice growth curve.
So, what's your favorite notebook and pen combination?
I ordered a bunch of pens from Jet Pens a year ago and my favorite also ended up being one of the cheapest - the Pilot Hi-Tec-C.
My favorite notebook used to be an engineering notebook. It had a grid on one side of the page and college-ruled lines on the other and had a spiral bound spine. Not sure if I have a favorite any more. I do use a lot of index cards.
I did buy a Frixion pen but gave it away. I live in Texas and there are lots of times where my notebook will sit some place where the temperature is high enough to erase or at least fade the ink.
Favorite pen: Lamy Safari fountain pen with EF nib, and Noodler's Black ink. I've been using this for many years and it's always reliable. The grip is comfortable and the construction feels solid (it's survived being dropped a few times with no real damage). It's reasonably priced and meant as a practical tool, not a fashion statement like some fountain pens. And Noodler's Black ink is waterproof and will write on the cheapest paper without problems. I've tried many other fountain pens and inks but I always come back to this combination because it's so trouble-free.
Favorite pencil: Rotring 500 0.5mm, with Pilot Neox 4B lead. I never much liked pencils before I found this lead. It's the softest I've found in 0.5mm, softer than most brands of 4B. It lets you write with very little pressure so it feels more like using a pen. The Rotring 500 has the same solid and reliable mechanism as the famous Rotring 600, but a plastic body so it's cheaper and lighter. But despite being a good pencil, I can't recommend it as strongly as the Lamy Safari because of one major flaw - it has no end cap. I reserve it for desktop use because the end pipe is completely unprotected and fragile.
I have no strong preferences for paper and IMO a good writing implement should work with any common paper.
I have a Pilot Metropolitan fountain pen. It's a nice pen but I don't use it for a few reasons. First, the ink evaporates very quickly. Secondly, the ink is always uniformly dark. I like that I can vary the heaviness of lines by varying the force I use as I write. Third, they are messier.
Interesting: I own the same pen, but do not have the issues you listed. Mine is a Medium, but light inks remain light (i.e. the flow is not thick).
If you meant that you want the thickness of the ink to vary with angle, then yes - most modern fountain pens are designed that way. However, they do also make the "italic" type ones.
With ball points, I can vary the heaviness of lines by altering how hard I press the tip into the paper. Very light pressure yields very faint lines. A fountain pen is uniformly dark, which I suppose what most people want for writing.
I have the same pen. I prefer dark and rich lines, as long as it dries immediately and does not bleed.
One thing i do with all fountain pens are to resurface the nibs using dremel or grinding on any fine surface. Basically a hit and trial to get fine calligraphy like quality, writing after that is more consistent and in control.
I've settled on virtually the same thing. Safari, medium nib, Noodler's Black. The Lamy pens can be had very cheaply and write well. I have several of the Safaris in various nib sizes as well as an AL-STAR, which is virtually the same thing but with a slightly larger metal barrel (which looks a little nicer).
The notebook strikes a balance of quality (but not heirloom quality so you don't want to touch it), cost, and portability.
I discovered the original Pilot Precise pen in high school for writing left handed without smearing ink. It has been my go-to pen for years, and the retractable version is a welcome convenience.
Pens: Pilot Varsity fountain pens, or a good gel pen. Basically, something that creates good, solid lines without requiring a lot of force, but still provides feedback.
Paper: Still working this out - finding a good diary-style notebook that fountain pens don't bleed through is a real challenge. I've had good luck with a Daler Rowney sketchbook, but I find that I'm missing the lines.
I carry a Field Notes pocket book with me everywhere, they are so durable. I like either the grid or standard line print. The pen is a Pilot Precise V5 RT.
I liked used a Pilot Dr. Grip for awhile, liked the feel and ink color, but it would sometimes decide not to write. I eventually got so annoyed I said, "Fine, I'll get a pen that can write anywhere!" and bought a couple of Fisher Bullet Space pens, and while the ink isn't quite as black, it writes when the other pen would refuse to, so I use those now.
I grew up on fountain pens when I lived abroad. When I moved to the US, I stopped. I found notebook paper here not horrible for fountain pen ink. And my pens leaked a lot (cheap Chinese Heros).
Almost two decades later, only a few months ago, I decided to give them another try.
Fantastic stuff. I use a Pilot Metropolitan MR. Medium nib. But one does need to purchase higher quality paper than what you'll find in regular stores. These days I write on Figurare notebooks.
I can't believe I wrote with ballpoints all these years. Fountain pens are so much better. I now look for excuses to take notes on paper.
They are - you simply have to do the extra bit of indexing work yourself.
Create a high level topic for each note, and put that in the front of the notebook, with a page number. Once you're beyond one book, keep a separate index book and update it periodically with a book/page number from the indexes in the individual books.
If you find yourself referring to a particular topic frequently, take some time and re-write the entry. That way you can correlate several writings on the topic, and add both a better framing and lessons learned.
I would argue that anything you refer back to even once should be translated into digital. Note I said translated, not transcribed. When converting to digital you should fix things: check the facts, make the diagrams pretty, fix the grammar.
Paper is great for a rough draft. Rewriting your rough draft to the final is always good practice.
agreed. the main thing i use pencil & paper for is sketching out designs for some physical stuff I make. I always start on paper, but if it's a design I'm actually going to use more than once, it gets drawn up on the computer.
Wow, my system is just like yours. The key is the daily review and transcription to a digital format (in my case, a big textfile with a rigid date format for everything, Google Calendar for appointments, Habitica for TODOs).
Like bullet journaling, the review ensures that I actually see what I've written. The searchable digital copy can be hugely helpful later. It also adds the possibility of recording daily metrics to be parsed and made into charts.
It's truly the best of both worlds: paper to record, digital to archive.
(I'm about to hit 50 Field Notes in just under five years of doing this. I plan to do a write-up of my system now that I have a pretty good idea of what does and does not work for me.)
What I like about Field Notes is that I can quickly write down thoughts and come back to them later --- if I want. It isn't rigorous which I think is key to productivity. The problem with todo apps is they become jobs that you need to complete.
With paper notes there's no pressure to complete anything. Sure, I keep a todo list in my field notes, and every day I create a new list, some of which carries over from the previous day and some does not. I don't feel pressure to complete anything, and paper is what makes that possible (nothing is permanent, just a checkmark in time).
I'm probably going through one FN every 3 months, so not a voracious note taker by any means, but it works for me.
I use Dropbox Paper as my digital archive, it seems to work.
My approach to the note taking is mostly just a summary of a thought - might even just be one or two words, but they usually allow me to remember a train of thought I was in at the time. Might be nonsense to anyone else if they read it, but works for me :)
You actually have to cut a tree to make a notepad. I hope in 100 years people will look at the "paper age" as we do see the era when people carving information in stones.
Why paper is worse:
* you cannot easily edit/alter information that has been already created
* it is hard to replicate and distribute
* version control is non existent (except book keeping)
* due to the replication problem and accessibility the information on it is not durable (at least not as durable as s3)
* collaboration is hard and not possible over the long distance
* security it terrible (even with all the stamps and hand signatures)
I know that paper might sound tempting sometimes, but I blame the schooling system which enforces kids to use it. We are trained to use paper first that's why it might seems easier. To learn how not to use paper (I don't use it at all for over 3 years) is really hard, it requires to change the workflows, mindset and attitude towards the information. But at the end of the day, it is really worth it.
For most people that resource cost will be sunk. If you note take on paper the chances are you'll still have a computer. The reverse is possibly not true.
>due to the replication problem and accessibility the information on it is not durable (at least not as durable as s3)
Paper records can last for hundreds of years without the support of any expensive infrastructure. I wouldn't bet on things that are stored on s3 being available hundreds of years from now.
It seems to be default when you count governments and businesses. Those have lasted decades even when they didn't want individual records to on occasion. Whereas, the current systems use individual components that break faster with huge damage loss per square inch provided through services that charge you & try to cause lock-in more over time. The competition for those services is also intense in a way that often results in firms going under with a few surviving.
Whereas, the older tech that lasted so long used simple components on older, process nodes with careful engineering practices. The better ones were also extremely costly with Voyager being a good example at $800+ million.
>Some of paper lasted for hundreds of years. How much of information didn't survive during that time period?
But we're just dealing with simple physical facts about paper here. All you need is a safe place to store it. S3 doesn't run without constant and costly maintenance.
> due to the replication problem and accessibility the information on it is not durable (at least not as durable as s3)
We have documents that are thousands of years old, and digital archiving is far from a solved problem. Still, I think going back to paper is insane and this is a total puff piece about people longing for olden days. I'll add one significant item to your list: search! If I had to go back to flipping through endless pages of notebooks to find that one margin entry I made during a customer meeting about some edge case requirement I'd go mad.
Actually, due to pseudo-immutability, scribblings on the dead trees have better durability properties than many digital things.
A durable storage may be less prone to use data due to say, a fire or a flood, but it's way easier to lose data if it's just overwritten. Overwrite a file in-place and it's pretty much gone (good thing most editors don't, but create a temporary file then rename it, so old data still can be scrubbed from HDD). That had happened to my files a few times, but never had such experiences with paper.
Not to say commodity-grade paper may easily outlive commodity-grade HDDs, magnetic tapes or CD-R's. I still have my notes from university, but all the CD-R's I've burned around the same time are unreadable, and I've replaced dying HDDs quite a few times over past years. And paper is probably easier to recycle (although not sure about this).
I made my work desk all digital over two years ago. If there is one thing I've learned about paper vs digital, is that nothing can beat the UX of paper at flexibility.
Only once you have an idea what you want to represent, and how you want to represent it, do software tools that rigidly enforce that systematization of your written data become helpful instead of hindrances. I have dozens of different pieces of software for composition, to store data into hundreds of formats, none of which I'm wholly satisfied with.
With paper I know when I run into the limitations of paper, they are either my personal limitations and/or the bounds of what humans have figured out how to do. In software, I can see the design decisions standing between me and what I'd really like to be able to do. I can't move my pen and just do it anyway, I'd have to waste years of my life creating a competing software package.
Even though my overall choice is still to be all digital, I have to face the downsides of that trade-off every goddamn day.
>security it terrible (even with all the stamps and hand signatures)
Sure, if you're sending a letter. But as long as you maintain physical control over your paper it's far more secure than anything stored on a computer.
There's a reason Russia's FSB bought typewriters instead of a thought-to-be-secure computer system for the storage of its most sensitive secrets.
Not to mention that the security of your letter increases quite nicely when you use thick paper and seal it shut. Yes, with wax.
No, it's not super-secure, but it stops most casual snooping attempts. Taking off (and reattaching) a seal without breaking it is quite a bit of work if you choose the right wax.
I hate paper. No searching and highly losable.
I'm also way faster on a keyboard than with a pen/pencil.
In fact, I had to fax a hand written letter (yeah, don't ask) the other day and realized I'm now almost illiterate with this thing. I could draw very well as a kid, but my handwriting was always pitiful. But after years of neglect, the thing was illegible. I pity the poor person that would have to decifer the hieroglyphs.
This is sort of the point of pen/paper - slows you down, makes you more contemplative. Plus, with a little practice I'm sure your handwriting would improve.
Partly it depends on the kind of writing/brainstorming I'm doing. I make lots of drawings in my notes, which is hard to do with a keyboard only app. Graphics tablets, even my Cintiq, which I use for actual drawing, don't have the responsiveness and clarity for note taking, diagram doodling, storyboarding, etc.
Plus, and this the real killer, the start up cost in time of using a tablet and graphic stylus are enormous compared to having paper and pencils handy on my desk. A cheap memo pad in my brief case is also handy. I've tried using my phone, but keyboard input on a phone, while I'm sitting somewhere away from office requires a minimum dedicated effort.
A lot of stuff gets lost when you have to overcome those startup costs. Even unlocking my phone with the thumb sensor contributes to me _not_ reaching for my phone when I've had a thought.
Few weeks ago I was at a party and had a moment of inspiration so I took a pen and paper to write down some poems. Barely I could read them later, let alone anyone else.
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[ 2.8 ms ] story [ 326 ms ] threadThere are already apps that restrict yourself to certain programs or websites - that might be a solution for people having trouble with multi-tasking.
I can't imagine writing on paper that's for sure.
The pulp and paper industry is the fourth largest industrial user of energy, consuming 6.4 EJ in 2005, and a significant emitter of greenhouse gas (source EIA report 2008).
Paper consumption has risen by 400% in the past 40 years. 35% of trees harvested are due to paper manufacture.
6.5+ million trees were cut down to make 16 billion paper cups used by US consumers, only for coffee, in 2006.
Paper waste accounts for up to 40% of total waste in the United States. 71.6 tons per year.
Sources: Wikipedia, WWF, FAO
- the digital revolution made people actually use more paper
- you get a shit ton of paper from a single tree; how much resources do you need to use to manufacture a computer, and keep it running?
- paper is recyclable
- as long as you keep recycling paper, it actually makes sense to plant trees and then cut it down - it sucks CO₂ out of the atmosphere and keeps it out
However I think that has turned around in recent years, worldwide paper production volumes are decreasing.
That may be true of regular paper and/or the overall production of paper products, but with all the increased retail shipping I would be very surprised if it's true of cardboard.
From drawings to pseudocode it all seems far easier.
Link for anyone else interested: http://www.econlib.org/library/Essays/rdPncl1.html
I prefer paper for drawing though (diagrams / flowchart / etc). Has anyone tried using drawing tablet like Wacom? How does it feel compared to drawing on paper?
That's the problem for me. I can end up obsesively re-re-...-re-editing a note or checklist, waisting tons of time. To make it worse I can end up with lost time AND lost information simultaneously if not using something with a version control system too...
So, for condensed small-scale 1-user planning, for me, when aiming for maximum productivity, paper is the killer app!
A tablet, especially one like the iPad Pro with the Pencil is much better but still doesn't work as well as just sketching on a piece of paper for me. I assume if I applied myself to using a tablet more though, I'd get used to it. Clearly people with a lot more drawing ability than myself can do great work on tablets.
Actually the newer touch/stylus screens on tablets like the MS Surface models I've used are harder for me to use with the stylus. Manipulating the stylus is harder due to parallax and the fact that the tool and hand covers up part of the screen. Just doesn't seem as "natural" to me as the old drawing tablet.
OTOH drawing on the computer has a whole new set of features to offer that are completely novel and can't be accomplished in other ways, certainly not easily.
So like in most things, different "tooling" involves tradeoffs, no single solution ever covers it all. We usually have reasons to go one way or the other. In any case, not tool can make up for dearth of talent, how well I know the truth of that statement!
[0]: http://mypaint.org/
3x5 or 4x6 (US) for concepts and notes. Date 'em and stick 'em in a box.
Riffle through them, find the sense and order, stack them that way, then fill in the blanks (or additional references, or whatever).
An index card is, roughly, a full thought.
Keep a small stash on you for notes-on-the-road.
Paper also allowed me to confront imperfections and mistakes more directly. I made a ton of writing mistakes that drove my crazy first and made me want to buy a new note first since I was so used to having my OmniFocus in perfect shape. It's really refreshing!
Plus It's interesting to see what a engineering brain can do with pen and paper. Most of the "modules" I use in my bulletjournal like my monthly and weekly spreads were from scratch created to fit perfectly on my needs.
Oh and boy does good paper feel nice!
I needed to squish start dates and deadlines, task scheduling, 'waiting on' + 'someday' lists, project pages, weekly overviews and better migrations into mine which took a good amount of trial and error to find something that sticks and is intuitive.
On the other hand, I am trying to literally plan everything in my journal. I don't want to rely on any other app and thus need to come up with modules that make it possible to get rid of app dependencies completely.
I do use org-mode and git at work, but even then will often capture to paper.
Unless you scan your work, erase stuff on your computer, and then print it.
Edit: Plus whiteout allows fairly simple overwrites.
My note-taking became much more effective once I realized that my notes rarely ended up in anyone else's hands, and that they were usually for short-term consumption.
You don't need beautiful notes, you need your notes! Scribble all over if you want (plus it's fun to scratch things out)
On my current system I have a math notebook (A5 format) where I dump everything I have to do on the left (or right) non-writable areas of the page, and then everyday I write what I have to do for the next day on the writable area. I try to add for each day at least one of those items on the left/right side, and each day I try not to add more than 2/3 items per day.
The reason that this works for me is that I try to have a very simple life, fulfill my daily obligations, and try to have as much free time as I can get. I do not need automatic systems to search my pending tasks way back in time because if those tasks don't "migrate" to the current page of the notebook, it's because they are not much relevant.
There's decreasingly less time pressure on learners - in and out of formal education. Note-taking from written sources, or recordings (video or audio) means there's less rush to take notes right there and then.
The processes of analysis and comprehension are slow, and so probably aren't best considered at one event, e.g. taking notes. The average person isn't writing something down once, then fully understanding it, no matter how slowly they write. Even improved retention requires revisiting material, and comprehension or synthesis require application and evaluation of the material.
I also tried bullet journaling as my 'system', but quickly abandoned it. It is great if you're not a compulsive to-do list maker, but if you follow a GTD-like system where you frequently capture, it becomes onerous to answer the question 'what do I do next?' You either have to constantly flip through pages to review your full list, or regularly copy your to-dos to a master list, which becomes quite tedious, especially if you have a long list.
What works for me is using org mode as my to-do system, with paper for the brainstorming and planning. I always start with paper, then once I have clarity on what to do, I move it to org.
Based on this single data point, perhaps try picking up a book when you call it a night?
Hope this helps!
At first, my hand can barely keep up with the torrent of thoughts being produced by my mind, but after maybe 5-10 min it slows right down. At some point I feel like I'm actually waiting for thoughts to come up so I can write.
Eventually, my mind goes quiet. It's much easier to fall asleep then.
http://www.cognitiveatlas.org/concept/rehearsal_loop
Focusing on a quiet podcast has a similar effect.
Now I don't mean sitting cross legged while chanting "ahhhh" or anything like that, just give your brain an hour or so daily to start but you can probably drop to less after a while (I do it every 2-3 days now).
My best guess it's like freeing up some CPU time for garbage collection. With having podcasts, videos, films, computering, etc going almost every waking hour the brain never really gets a chance to filter through all of this stuff so attempts to do so the only quiet moment it gets - right when you're trying to fall asleep.
YMMV, Works For Me(tm), etc. Good luck!
I've had zero issues with gtk-redshift across multiple machines/configs with 1 to 4 screens :).
Now I just throw on a nature documentary and a timer to shut the tv off after 30 min. I'm usually fast asleep in 10 minutes. :)
I mean, RSI can be really bad. It affects your quality of life outside of the computer world. Pressing the button on my remote was painful. Pressing the button to change the frequency on my car radio was painful. Essentially, any delicate work was painful.
https://pastebin.com/djyFiZkz
This is not on paper but I do the same thing on paper when I'm away from the computer. On my computer a cron job just pops this into a Dropbox folder as YYYY-MM-DD.md and I edit it from there.
There are some neat journaling cues available if you read e.g. "The New Diary" by Tristine Rainer. Like writing in the third person, or just viewing a diary/journal as a place to scribble down work notes and improving on it from there.
I probably change my own template every 1-2 months. You'll see on the "schedule" portion that the least productive part of my day is 1-3 p.m., so I encourage a lot of fun and relaxation during that time as a way of releasing anxiety and picking up task momentum.
Most of my work in the journal is under the "other" heading, and I don't fill out every heading every day. Most entries just have a score for the day, some notes on why I chose that score, and ideas to improve it, and then a lot of ideas under "Other".
Every Friday I do a sort of "information archaeology" thing where I go back over my paper & digital journal entries and round up reusable tips or things I've learned into a "frameworks" folder where I have separate files for things like building websites, coding, preparing for meetings, working with various types of people, possible new hobbies, etc. The recapture of these ideas has been worth quite a lot to me, as it feels like I have a better foothold next time I encounter the problem.
Your template is much more complex than I was thinking. I can see though if reflection is the goal, then a format that encourages that makes a great deal of sense.
That turned into writing into my notebook at night what questions had come up during the day, and what needed doing. And in the morning, reviewing that and picking the top three things on that list to be addressed that day.
Really good for project status and 100% paper-based.
I prefer org-mode[1] on emacs. It's simple, flexible, distraction free and for some reason reminds me of writing on paper. You get the simplicity, while also making it as powerful as you want.
1- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oJTwQvgfgMM
Sometimes I'll capture to paper even if I'm sitting in front of my computer. If I've got something complex to reason through, I like the free-form nature of paper. I pretend it's an auxiliary scratch buffer whose contents I will reason about later.
My paper notebook, therefore becomes pretty nonsensical, because it isn't the system of record. I carry it as a notebook because I can always go back a day or two if I got lazy and didn't transcribe the previous day. Also a paper notebook puts on a better show for society as compared to just having a few sheets of printer paper along for the ride at meetings (though that works too). Periodically, I rip previous pages out (if spiral bound--they tear cleanly) and shred them just to restore that fresh notebook feeling.
I've seen people apparently use them to reasonable effect though, so I'm going to assume that people capable of note-taking on mobile are just a more evolved kind of human than I am :-)
In paper, I tend to really note-take. I like note-taking on paper for things I don't really understand yet. I prefer pre-writing in an app for situations where my understanding of the topic is good, and I want to skip steps (e.g. writing a blog post about a presentation, where the topic is already familiar)
Now, in fairness, I have recently started using SimpleMind for mind-mapping real-time. I find it does a good job at doing both things. It helps me build a narrative structure in one branch, while capturing notes in others. It also gives me a lot of nice flexibility on-screen to rearrange branches, relocate topics and do other general house-keeping.
It's response is sufficient to capture in paper like fashion.
I still prefer paper, but the little note app that ships with the phone works very well.
But usually I don't use my laptop during work. Instead I print just day's notes (schedule etc.) to a single paper sheet and keep the note paper with me. I do corrections and maybe add notes with a pen. Then later at home I modify my org-mode files to match my note paper.
I'm also surprised the article didn't mention mind mapping. Does nobody do that anymore?
In that way its benefits are similar to pen and paper.
Again, nobody seems to be tackling this. Not even YC mentions this problem.
I've been keeping notes in plain text files[1] for the last 15 years. It's a really good system and doesn't require 8 million in funding to make a startup around it.
All you have to do is open notepad and get going.
[1]: https://nickjanetakis.com/blog/plain-text-and-google-keep-is...
Paper is its own unique experience that is neat and stuff, but photos or scans of paper are ultimately kind of wasteful from a data perspective, as well as difficult to OCR-- and the way I see it, if you're not saving your stuff in data form at all, is whatever you're writing really a good use of your time?
Paper, as mentioned by the article, can stimulate different parts of the brain. No app can match that.
You seem to react with shock to the notion without addressing the actual shortcomings in any constructive way.
I can walk all the way to Argentina. Does that make planes any less useful?
> Paper, as mentioned by the article, can stimulate different parts of the brain. No app can match that.
Bullshit.
> You seem to react with shock to the notion without addressing the actual shortcomings in any constructive way.
I can't believe nobody has managed to tackle perhaps the most important problem (GTD) using computers. I truly can't accept that this is true. I must be missing something.
You are correct. My comment was not constructive at all. There's nothing I want more than a discussion about making the world better through proper GTD tools.
As for simple text files, well, I'm yet to see any startup coming even remotely close to beating Emacs + Org Mode with optional Dropbox sync. But IMO that's the culture clash - plaintext is about actual productivity and usefulness; startups are about bullshitting people with shiny things to get a nice growth curve.
I ordered a bunch of pens from Jet Pens a year ago and my favorite also ended up being one of the cheapest - the Pilot Hi-Tec-C.
My favorite notebook used to be an engineering notebook. It had a grid on one side of the page and college-ruled lines on the other and had a spiral bound spine. Not sure if I have a favorite any more. I do use a lot of index cards.
Only for note taking though, I'm not happy about erasable ink on official forms.
Favorite pencil: Rotring 500 0.5mm, with Pilot Neox 4B lead. I never much liked pencils before I found this lead. It's the softest I've found in 0.5mm, softer than most brands of 4B. It lets you write with very little pressure so it feels more like using a pen. The Rotring 500 has the same solid and reliable mechanism as the famous Rotring 600, but a plastic body so it's cheaper and lighter. But despite being a good pencil, I can't recommend it as strongly as the Lamy Safari because of one major flaw - it has no end cap. I reserve it for desktop use because the end pipe is completely unprotected and fragile.
I have no strong preferences for paper and IMO a good writing implement should work with any common paper.
If you meant that you want the thickness of the ink to vary with angle, then yes - most modern fountain pens are designed that way. However, they do also make the "italic" type ones.
Personally, one of the reasons I like fountain pens is that I don't have to apply pressure. :-)
One thing i do with all fountain pens are to resurface the nibs using dremel or grinding on any fine surface. Basically a hit and trial to get fine calligraphy like quality, writing after that is more consistent and in control.
The notebook strikes a balance of quality (but not heirloom quality so you don't want to touch it), cost, and portability.
I discovered the original Pilot Precise pen in high school for writing left handed without smearing ink. It has been my go-to pen for years, and the retractable version is a welcome convenience.
Paper: Still working this out - finding a good diary-style notebook that fountain pens don't bleed through is a real challenge. I've had good luck with a Daler Rowney sketchbook, but I find that I'm missing the lines.
For notebooks, I need something that opens flat and stays flat, so I need a binder. I found these Blue Sky notebooks at Walgreens and really like the look and feel of them: https://www.bluesky.com/blue-sky-trade-black-5-75-x-8-5-note...
Almost two decades later, only a few months ago, I decided to give them another try.
Fantastic stuff. I use a Pilot Metropolitan MR. Medium nib. But one does need to purchase higher quality paper than what you'll find in regular stores. These days I write on Figurare notebooks.
I can't believe I wrote with ballpoints all these years. Fountain pens are so much better. I now look for excuses to take notes on paper.
https://www.smashingmagazine.com/2012/04/ui-patterns-for-mob...
Create a high level topic for each note, and put that in the front of the notebook, with a page number. Once you're beyond one book, keep a separate index book and update it periodically with a book/page number from the indexes in the individual books.
If you find yourself referring to a particular topic frequently, take some time and re-write the entry. That way you can correlate several writings on the topic, and add both a better framing and lessons learned.
It's a bit of extra work, but it's worth it.
Paper is great for a rough draft. Rewriting your rough draft to the final is always good practice.
Each day I review what I've written and and input anything important into digital applications
Like bullet journaling, the review ensures that I actually see what I've written. The searchable digital copy can be hugely helpful later. It also adds the possibility of recording daily metrics to be parsed and made into charts.
It's truly the best of both worlds: paper to record, digital to archive.
(I'm about to hit 50 Field Notes in just under five years of doing this. I plan to do a write-up of my system now that I have a pretty good idea of what does and does not work for me.)
What I like about Field Notes is that I can quickly write down thoughts and come back to them later --- if I want. It isn't rigorous which I think is key to productivity. The problem with todo apps is they become jobs that you need to complete.
With paper notes there's no pressure to complete anything. Sure, I keep a todo list in my field notes, and every day I create a new list, some of which carries over from the previous day and some does not. I don't feel pressure to complete anything, and paper is what makes that possible (nothing is permanent, just a checkmark in time).
Yep. I read this the other day https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/dec/22/why-time-... and somewhat agree !
I use Dropbox Paper as my digital archive, it seems to work.
My approach to the note taking is mostly just a summary of a thought - might even just be one or two words, but they usually allow me to remember a train of thought I was in at the time. Might be nonsense to anyone else if they read it, but works for me :)
You actually have to cut a tree to make a notepad. I hope in 100 years people will look at the "paper age" as we do see the era when people carving information in stones.
Why paper is worse:
* you cannot easily edit/alter information that has been already created
* it is hard to replicate and distribute
* version control is non existent (except book keeping)
* due to the replication problem and accessibility the information on it is not durable (at least not as durable as s3)
* collaboration is hard and not possible over the long distance
* security it terrible (even with all the stamps and hand signatures)
I know that paper might sound tempting sometimes, but I blame the schooling system which enforces kids to use it. We are trained to use paper first that's why it might seems easier. To learn how not to use paper (I don't use it at all for over 3 years) is really hard, it requires to change the workflows, mindset and attitude towards the information. But at the end of the day, it is really worth it.
Paper records can last for hundreds of years without the support of any expensive infrastructure. I wouldn't bet on things that are stored on s3 being available hundreds of years from now.
Some of paper lasted for hundreds of years. How much of information didn't survive during that time period?
Information on s3 might not last for hundreds of years, but AFAIK the Voyager satellite didn't ship the information about our specie on paper.
Whereas, the older tech that lasted so long used simple components on older, process nodes with careful engineering practices. The better ones were also extremely costly with Voyager being a good example at $800+ million.
But we're just dealing with simple physical facts about paper here. All you need is a safe place to store it. S3 doesn't run without constant and costly maintenance.
> due to the replication problem and accessibility the information on it is not durable (at least not as durable as s3)
We have documents that are thousands of years old, and digital archiving is far from a solved problem. Still, I think going back to paper is insane and this is a total puff piece about people longing for olden days. I'll add one significant item to your list: search! If I had to go back to flipping through endless pages of notebooks to find that one margin entry I made during a customer meeting about some edge case requirement I'd go mad.
A durable storage may be less prone to use data due to say, a fire or a flood, but it's way easier to lose data if it's just overwritten. Overwrite a file in-place and it's pretty much gone (good thing most editors don't, but create a temporary file then rename it, so old data still can be scrubbed from HDD). That had happened to my files a few times, but never had such experiences with paper.
Not to say commodity-grade paper may easily outlive commodity-grade HDDs, magnetic tapes or CD-R's. I still have my notes from university, but all the CD-R's I've burned around the same time are unreadable, and I've replaced dying HDDs quite a few times over past years. And paper is probably easier to recycle (although not sure about this).
Nice documentary about it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NdZxI3nFVJs
Only once you have an idea what you want to represent, and how you want to represent it, do software tools that rigidly enforce that systematization of your written data become helpful instead of hindrances. I have dozens of different pieces of software for composition, to store data into hundreds of formats, none of which I'm wholly satisfied with.
With paper I know when I run into the limitations of paper, they are either my personal limitations and/or the bounds of what humans have figured out how to do. In software, I can see the design decisions standing between me and what I'd really like to be able to do. I can't move my pen and just do it anyway, I'd have to waste years of my life creating a competing software package.
Even though my overall choice is still to be all digital, I have to face the downsides of that trade-off every goddamn day.
Maybe have a Microsoft surface or another tablet with a stylus for when you want to "have that paper feel"
This is why I'm hoping for a surface phone this MWC. Then I could use Full OneNote, outlook, excel etc instead of the current cut down apps.
Sure, if you're sending a letter. But as long as you maintain physical control over your paper it's far more secure than anything stored on a computer.
There's a reason Russia's FSB bought typewriters instead of a thought-to-be-secure computer system for the storage of its most sensitive secrets.
No, it's not super-secure, but it stops most casual snooping attempts. Taking off (and reattaching) a seal without breaking it is quite a bit of work if you choose the right wax.
In fact, I had to fax a hand written letter (yeah, don't ask) the other day and realized I'm now almost illiterate with this thing. I could draw very well as a kid, but my handwriting was always pitiful. But after years of neglect, the thing was illegible. I pity the poor person that would have to decifer the hieroglyphs.
In sum, good riddance paper.
This is sort of the point of pen/paper - slows you down, makes you more contemplative. Plus, with a little practice I'm sure your handwriting would improve.
Plus, and this the real killer, the start up cost in time of using a tablet and graphic stylus are enormous compared to having paper and pencils handy on my desk. A cheap memo pad in my brief case is also handy. I've tried using my phone, but keyboard input on a phone, while I'm sitting somewhere away from office requires a minimum dedicated effort.
A lot of stuff gets lost when you have to overcome those startup costs. Even unlocking my phone with the thumb sensor contributes to me _not_ reaching for my phone when I've had a thought.