HN Explorer

The Simple Pleasure of Taking Notes

28 points by jsomers ↗ HN
I'm not sure of the causal direction, but my mood and productivity both seem to shoot up whenever I take playful notes throughout the day. Here's how I do it:

1. I always have a pen(/pencil) and 3x5" notecard on me.

2. One side of the card is for to-dos (i.e., don't go to bed until you finish these N things), and the other for observations, questions, funny quotes from professors, books I should read, things to write about, etc.

3. When I'm bored or at least once at night, I go through the day's notes and (a) act on the easy ones, and (b) put the idea stuff in a text file for later.

I find that having a simple way to take notes keeps me on the ball and intellectually engaged. It may be a bit weird to whip out a note-card in public, but I've found that tons of stuff I didn't think was worth jotting down ends up being a gold mine later on.

13 comments

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yan
I keep a small moleskine for medium to large notes. I keep small sheets of paper in my back pocket at all time to jot down something to do later today or tomorrow and cross out when done.

I also catch myself implementing some GTD tips.

brianlash
Yeah, I bought some molesinke cahiers for the same purpose. Simple and lightweight, and they take a good beating.

Still, I don't think I'd buy them again. Seconding Yan's sentiment, a notecard (or napkin!) is all you need in moments of inspiration.

pgebhard
I find that a moleskine seems too nice to use up with my chicken-scratch quick notes. I tend to like the feeling of crumpling up a post-it after completing the task on it. I can't cleanly do that with a moleskine. Tearing the page out of those things really makes it less pristine and formal-looking.
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pavelludiq
I tried to start taking notes, but im pretty chaotic and didn't seem to like it that much. And my handwriting is so horrible that i couldn't read some of them. I take notes from time to time in Knotes on my pc, but rarely and only when i find some idea that i think i might start working on sometime in the future(0.1% of those started, and only half finished). I just checked and i saw that i was supposed to by myself some beer last week :D
delano
I write on anything. I have a deal with myself that whatever I'm noting doesn't have to be correct or even interesting. Just the act of writing it down is enough.
bprater
I'd love suggestion for something that would fit in a regular jeans or cargo short's pocket. I love moleskins, but the hard cover makes it tough to stuff in your pocket and sit down.
talkaboutadate
I use the back of business cards. They're tough enough to sit on, easy to carry and small enough not to write too much.
tyn
For me, my notecard is my mind
ComputerGuru
Same here, but PostIt Notes are my best friends (instead of note cards) :)