This is a good writeup. I tried paper, maybe I should try it again.
I think one benefit of this journaling is that you could easily do a personal retro weekly or so and update a digital brag file. As a manager I loved when reports have a brag file, as this helps immensely during a performance review cycle.
I’ve turned to using text editor and then paper too, mainly for its simplicity. “Running out of battery” was never a problem for me, but maintenance and getting used to the complex UI of today’s task / knowledge management systems definitely was a painful experience.
Like many others, I have decided to create something new. A tool which would be simple to use just like a text editor / paper but functional like a full fledged app. It’s a hard problem. Though I feel like new approaches are needed, especially because the way the alternative tools are designed today seems a bit obsolete. The 21st century deserves something better..
I only use paper to capture the 3-5 most important things du jour. All the other notes go into Bear.app — Tried all-paper a gazillion times but if you work a lot with links, visual inspirations, code snippets, etc. it just doesn't make sense — no matter how much I love sharpening that Blackwing pencil.
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.
You seem to have strong negative feelings about this.
But I very much struggle to take reasonable notes on a computer. Something feels “limiting” in a way, even if I’m consciously aware that you can reasonably do everything on a laptop that I would use paper for, and there are benefits like search-ability.
For writing notes I feel flexibility and freedom to redirect my future attention to different parts of the text or accentuate different sections with emphasis or tag a task to be done (with a diamond, in my case).
It’s also the case that if I need to break out into a logical diagram I can easily do so.
There’s something to be said for how it’s viewed by others too… writing notes looks focused. Tapping into a laptop looks distracted.
Depends. If you throw the paper away then sure, it's waste.
But... if you keep it then suddenly you're doing carbon capture. Saving the environment one bad meeting at a time. Or riveting collections of todo-done.
But yeah the idiots who use the "I don't have paper therefore can't take notes." They're the worst.
There's no way, currently, for digital to compete with the precision and tactile feel of paper. One day we may get there, we are advancing remarkably quickly (pun intended).
Any use of resources has an ecological impact that needs to be weighed against the benefits.
Same with driving a car, eating meat, buying a new shirt instead of second hand, buying new furniture instead of second hand, flying, buying disposable diapers for your kid instead of textile diapers, etc.
There’s nothing special with paper in this regard.
You are right. Also please note that I do not drive a car, nor do I consume meat. Also, I take great lengths to avoid single use items or use them multiple times.
None of it makes me a better/conscious person but I felt it was necessary to address some of your points
Using a 9 l/min shower head for a 6 minute shower results in 54 litres of water being consumed. 54 litres heated from ambient (say; 15 deg C) to shower temperature (say; 40 deg C) requires 1.6 kWh of energy.
Most toilet paper is recycled so it’s a matter of figuring out how much the recycle process consumes per roll, then dividing it by the amount of average toilet paper segments a person uses.
EDIT: Lloyd Alter of the website treehugger.com reports that making a single roll of toilet paper requires 37 gallons of water, 1.3 kilowatt/hours (KWh) of electricity and some 1.5 pounds of wood.
So a whole roll is less than a shower, but I guess it also depends how the energy is being generated; because there are indications that toilet rolls are not entirely recycled, most use some amount of virgin wood.
Anyway, my point is not "you're wrong", my point is that it's a lot more nuanced than people think, and often the "green" solution can be less green but make them feel better.
Look, quite a lot of new timber is used to produce toilet paper. But OP was complaining about people cutting trees to take notes. Seems reasonable to ask if they also have a problem with toilet paper, which probably will use more wood pulp over the life time than their notebooks ever will.
Still using an "ancient" pocket filofax (the one with 4 rings), I don't even buy paper for the notes anymore: it's easy to find discarded one-side printed on A4 brochures/presentations etc, I cut them to size via a guillotine cutter and bob's your uncle, its just for notes etc then once filled: shredded and off to the compost
How about a middle ground? I've been looking into the new generation of eink devices that are great for notetaking. Remarkable etc
Best of both worlds and no more dead trees
While I love my Remarkable 2 for taking notes, journaling, drawing and sharing/exporting the results, it lacks search/discoverability/navigation.
In a physical notebook it’s trivial to flip back a few pages to recall a note from last week. On remarkable that takes a lot more time, and the time cost is paid twice, once for finding the old note, and a second time to get back to the page I was writing. (Imagine working in a single browser window fullscreen without tabs).
I’m still looking for an optimal flow. And I’m gravitating towards something that can ingest remarkable pages, perform OCR and categorise/index the results.
>In a physical notebook it’s trivial to flip back a few pages to recall a note from last week. On remarkable that takes a lot more time, and the time cost is paid twice, once for finding the old note, and a second time to get back to the page I was writing.
Shelved because I realized 1) This will be much more comfortable on forthcoming (cheaper) AR glasses than on one's phone, and 2) I still don't know how to code, but I imagine that this particular UX problem will shortly be one that is no longer insurmountable.
How many notes do you actually take? It takes about 113kg co2 to produce an iPad[1] and other tablets may produce more as much as 200kg. That's roughly equivalent to the emissions from producing 2000-6000 sheets of paper [2].
But we are not including the running electricity emissions of of the Remarkable, plus the co2 emissions of their cloud service. Plus electronics produce a lot dirtier pollution on disposal than paper.
I taught 4 courses this year, plus research work. And I think I got through about 500 sheets of notes. If I had a Remarkable, it would maybe last 4-5 years. I think lifetime pollution from a tablet like Remarkable is always going to be more than from just using paper.
Doesn't paper comes mostly from managed forests? Or maybe you attach a higher value to the life of trees than most people? (which is fine, just surprising to me)
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.
But of course the Remarkable has an ecological footprint too, just like paper has.
A non-zero amount of energy and resources went into manufacturing the device. Extracting and shipping metals/oil/silicone, refining those materials, then constructing the display/CPU/motherboard/other components, then shipping all the components to the assembly site, then shipping the device to the store/warehouse, etc. It’s a lot more complicated than making paper.
Then multiple times per week the device has to be charged, using electricity that might come from a coal power plant in worst case.
I’m not saying one shouldn’t buy a Remarkable. But I don’t think it’s fair to say that the Remarkable is less wasteful than paper before doing a life cycle assessment.
It's not like making paper is energy free. You need to grow the trees, cut the trees using machinery, transport cut trees to factory which is under all likelihood not anywhere close, turn tree pulp into paper, package it, ship it to warehouses before it's actually shipped to the end store to be eventually picked up by a consumer. Not sure what your point actually is, if you want to compare both supply chains then you need to take everything in account, including the amount of paper you'd need over your lifetime in case you did not use any electronic device, the amount of garbage it produces, etc...
I don't think using paper in a reasonable and conscious manner is "wasting" the paper. Most of the paper waste, I suspect, is from different uses (like printing tons of crap in offices). Thoughts?
I like using paper for notes, TODOs, drafts, doodling, etc.
Especially I like that tactile feeling when I roll a (mechanical) pencil in my fingers. As of paper: I prefer notebooks with tear-off pages, and love to crumple and throw them out when completed ))
As I see it we live through a period where two incredible capabilities remain unreconciled. The free format ability of paper to capture nuance, creativity and complexity in recording information versus the powerful augmentation of search / modify / repurpose existing records that you get with digital tools. Not sure there will ever be something that can support both but it does not sound forbidden by some law of nature
The Remarkable2 tablet uses a pen with disposable nibs, which means you get good writing feedback. In addition, they optimized the e-ink display for writing by minimizing the distance between the display layer and the pen (ie, less gap between the tip and where you see the writing). The device also has generally minimal lag.
If an iPad is 60% of the writing experience, the RM2 is 80+%.
The iPad + Pencil + Notability is the perfect device for me. All I really use it for is note taking, and it has completely replaced pen and paper in my life.
I can search, organise and back up my notes, and also share screen / convert them to PDF and send them to colleagues easily. I can also easily rearrange the page and convert my scribbles to text so other people can understand them.
It was expensive compared to a notebook, but well worth it.
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.
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 ...
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.
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.
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.
- Yellow (legal) pad for daily todo. Use pen on this pad because it is ok to not keep it neat because the page will be thrown away next morning. So, next morning, tear off the top leaf of yesterday, start no a fresh sheet with the date on top, and transfer any todos that need to be carried forward. Typically, a todo is either done, or not needed, or still pending. The pending ones make it to the fresh page.
- A notebook for note taking. E.g. meetings, or plans etc. I use a mechanical pencil and an eraser with this one. Mistakes and badly written words can be erased and rewritten. When I reference this notebook, it is good to see that things are legible even after a few days.
Summary:
- Legal pad and a pen for tasks. Start a new leaf every morning.
- Notebook, pencil, eraser for notes. Keep it neat, and can be referenced later.
This system reminds me of Bullet Journaling (https://bulletjournal.com/), which I have used on and off for a long time now. Folks who have adopted Bullet Journaling have come up with some very interesting symbols to capture parts of the day (some which I have found more useful than others).
I do find that any paper-based system breaks down for things that are recurring, and I have to resign and use some calendaring system to accommodate those (think changing the air-filter on the HVAC). I also feel that longer-than-a-day projects are harder to track on paper (If anyone has suggestions here I am all ears). I often find myself thinking of a project, breaking it down, then using paper to take one or two everyday till I feel like I am done.
My approach to finding balance between paper and electronic is
- Use paper daily (for the same reason that the OP suggest). Object permanence is real. I can't tell you how many times I just _remember_ writing something down on the left-hand side near the top that has saved my life.
- If a recurring reminder comes through, add it to the list of Todos for today (on paper)
- At the end of the day I usually end up transcribing my day into markdown notes (using https://bear.app/)
Over time I have learned that not everything works well in one format (I have been thinking about getting the Remarkable but my god that's steep)—What I end up doing is "linking" from one medium to another.
For example, if I start by writing an entry or a note on paper that I feel will be better described in a diagram or a code snippet I simply put a note on paper telling me to go to Bear (Since all notes are dated this is relatively easy). Or vice-versa—if I doodled out a diagram on paper, I simply put a "See notebook" in my Bear notes.
Looking forward to seeing how others are doing this.
I'm pretty similar except for the digital portion software. My final work notes live as an org-roam database because it has really rich linking, export and embed options. Day to day is in paper and the pertinent stuff is "elevated" to digital.
Diagrams get inserted as an image as-is and can be tagged with pertinent info. I do have the benefit of having decent handwriting that most can read as is or be OCR'd.
I kinda use Google docs in same manner. I have separate documents for different professional projects and personal goals. I use them in append mode only, and simple colors to differentiate to-do and done items- red/black.
I would love to. The most cumbersome thing about notebooks, even larger ones like A3, is 1) they dont lie flat, and 2) even if (eg. rings) when I want to write on the left page, my hand hits the "spine" between the pages and its not comfortable writing.
When I used paper I got used to have a stack of A4, put a title in one corner, I?d keep them on my left beside the keyboard. There are nice a4 in 4 light pastel colors, easier on the eyes than white, and simple memory cue when looking in the pile.
I’d have cheatsheets and tasks, the task/feature pages with lots of check boxes. I’d keep some cheatsheets for a long time, like css/typescript, and the task ones i would throw away when that feature is done.
Just stating the obvious. All people writing with a fountain pen know that writing in notebooks of any sort is more pleasant when said notebook is rotated 90 degrees, with its spine going across. From left to right.
Then, the angle of the paper to the tip point does not vary across the line.
I use the right hand pages only. When I get to the back I flip the book over and, starting from the back, continue using the right hand pages that were formerly on the left.
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".
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.
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.
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.
IMHO, making records (flammable ones that exist in only one place and don't automatically back up and replicate) by smudging dark schmutz on to dead tree pulp is barbaric.
It's barbaric even when done with a printer. It's extra barbaric doing the smudging with your low resolution meat claw.
I carry a portable battery powered bluetooth thermal printer with me in my handbag. The only thing I will handwrite is my signature.
Nothing about shorthand. Not that this blog post specifically should have, but it seems conspicuously absent in all blog posts about paper, handwriting, note taking, etc. It's an established idea and demonstrably allows people to take dictation and court reporting at much faster speeds than handwriting - print or cursive.
Why is it such a non-thing, even in productivity/efficiency circles and alternate/quirky circles, why aren't we taught it early on in school where we're expected to go the next decade taking handwritten notes during lectures?
Author here, I've been looking at using Shavian or the like in the future, but most of what I need can be done in information dense notes like (copying from yesterday's list):
-> debug xesite on xbox
-> cert for xesite
- gplay + MS
+ w10 testing 1.10
· cannot reproduce supposed issue with exit nodes, network issues?
Etc. I've just not put time into something like shorthand yet. I may do it in the future (energy permitting) but it just hasn't come up yet.
I read a tiny bit about shorthand and invented my own using some of the principles other systems were designed on during a long weekend. Great investment, lots of fun. I specifically designed notation that could be common across digital and handwritten, and that paid off big.
I haven't written about it before, but happy to share.
The way I made the crossover work is that normal text was all lower case alphanumeric. This is similar to Teeline shorthand, from which I borrowed ideas heavily. Because all symbols were alphanumeric, it could work in either medium.
The next step was to figure out how to make this effective in handwriting. Typing letters is easy, but writing them varies in difficulty/time. Again I borrowed from Teeline. I created a written symbol for each character that minimized pen strokes. "k" for example is just a sideways "v," which saves the vertical stroke. "m" is just an arch. I also ignored unnecessary letters, so the word "letters" could be shortened to "ltrs."
The final step was finding a way to shorten the most common English words and character strings. I came up with 2 mechanisms: capitalization and spacing. This turned out to be really flexible. A "g" just means "g," but "G" can mean different things depending on whether it's in a word or spaced alone. So in a word it replaces "ing," but standalone it is the word "get." So let's say I wanted to write the sentence:
"I am going to the store to get a bag of potatoes."
I could type this:
i gG t T str t G a bg ptatos
(A final question you might have: how did I capitalize those handwritten symbols? I decided not to make a whole other set of unique symbols, but instead just put a little apostrophe, as in (m'), or "m prime.")
EDIT: I have also started using some of the symbols on the keyboard to symbolize project planning, and I use these in handwriting too. "%" is chance or odds, "!" is an experiment or prototype, "^" is a decision.
Now I think I see what you mean - "work digitally" meaning a shorthand you can use with a keyboard? Rather than one you could hand-draw on a tablet and then use an OCR style thing.
It's not phonetic, but it's got some of the same approaches like -ing suffix being a single symbol.
132 comments
[ 4.3 ms ] story [ 125 ms ] threadI think one benefit of this journaling is that you could easily do a personal retro weekly or so and update a digital brag file. As a manager I loved when reports have a brag file, as this helps immensely during a performance review cycle.
Like many others, I have decided to create something new. A tool which would be simple to use just like a text editor / paper but functional like a full fledged app. It’s a hard problem. Though I feel like new approaches are needed, especially because the way the alternative tools are designed today seems a bit obsolete. The 21st century deserves something better..
happy to share the access https://acreom.com/ and receive some feedback.
How about put a circle around the - to make it a "stop" sign?
I love these kind of tips that seem so obvious but that I’d never thought of.
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.
Been in the workforce for decades and I've met more than a handful of people who love writing things down and, of course, drawing stuff.
I've had a guy justify not taking notes because he didn't have a pen and paper on hand...WHILE having an online meeting. On a computer.
Now, these people don't have much in common but they tend to advertise this behaviour as benefitial to me and we always end up resenting each other.
In my experience, the same people often fill the white boards with incomprehensible junk. Again, for my benefit...
Edit:downvotes are not surprising. Waste is good, people. Waste is good.
Anyway, didn't have much sleep last night, so I am a bit cranky
But I very much struggle to take reasonable notes on a computer. Something feels “limiting” in a way, even if I’m consciously aware that you can reasonably do everything on a laptop that I would use paper for, and there are benefits like search-ability.
For writing notes I feel flexibility and freedom to redirect my future attention to different parts of the text or accentuate different sections with emphasis or tag a task to be done (with a diamond, in my case).
It’s also the case that if I need to break out into a logical diagram I can easily do so.
There’s something to be said for how it’s viewed by others too… writing notes looks focused. Tapping into a laptop looks distracted.
But... if you keep it then suddenly you're doing carbon capture. Saving the environment one bad meeting at a time. Or riveting collections of todo-done.
But yeah the idiots who use the "I don't have paper therefore can't take notes." They're the worst.
Same with driving a car, eating meat, buying a new shirt instead of second hand, buying new furniture instead of second hand, flying, buying disposable diapers for your kid instead of textile diapers, etc.
There’s nothing special with paper in this regard.
None of it makes me a better/conscious person but I felt it was necessary to address some of your points
Or do you use a bidet? or do use textile napkins that you wash regularly?
My gut says this seems, worse somehow.
Using a 9 l/min shower head for a 6 minute shower results in 54 litres of water being consumed. 54 litres heated from ambient (say; 15 deg C) to shower temperature (say; 40 deg C) requires 1.6 kWh of energy.
Most toilet paper is recycled so it’s a matter of figuring out how much the recycle process consumes per roll, then dividing it by the amount of average toilet paper segments a person uses.
EDIT: Lloyd Alter of the website treehugger.com reports that making a single roll of toilet paper requires 37 gallons of water, 1.3 kilowatt/hours (KWh) of electricity and some 1.5 pounds of wood.
So a whole roll is less than a shower, but I guess it also depends how the energy is being generated; because there are indications that toilet rolls are not entirely recycled, most use some amount of virgin wood.
Anyway, my point is not "you're wrong", my point is that it's a lot more nuanced than people think, and often the "green" solution can be less green but make them feel better.
And its surprisingly hard to just ignore it. why?! :|
That sounds like a you problem. It doesn't really affect my reading. Sure it's more creative than the usual corporate blog style but I don't mind.
Currently using a pen and paper system that's not dissimilar to bullet-journaling, but adapted to play nicer with unescapable digital calendars etc.
A better middle ground is probably one of those smart pens that automatically digitizes your scribbles, while you’re still using a paper notebook.
In a physical notebook it’s trivial to flip back a few pages to recall a note from last week. On remarkable that takes a lot more time, and the time cost is paid twice, once for finding the old note, and a second time to get back to the page I was writing. (Imagine working in a single browser window fullscreen without tabs).
I’m still looking for an optimal flow. And I’m gravitating towards something that can ingest remarkable pages, perform OCR and categorise/index the results.
https://www.reddit.com/r/Onyx_Boox/comments/hsn7kx/onyx_usin...
Shelved because I realized 1) This will be much more comfortable on forthcoming (cheaper) AR glasses than on one's phone, and 2) I still don't know how to code, but I imagine that this particular UX problem will shortly be one that is no longer insurmountable.
https://www.instagram.com/p/CFcOov1FV6G/
But we are not including the running electricity emissions of of the Remarkable, plus the co2 emissions of their cloud service. Plus electronics produce a lot dirtier pollution on disposal than paper.
I taught 4 courses this year, plus research work. And I think I got through about 500 sheets of notes. If I had a Remarkable, it would maybe last 4-5 years. I think lifetime pollution from a tablet like Remarkable is always going to be more than from just using paper.
[1] https://newzik.com/blog/ipad-environmental-report/
[2] https://www.goodenergy.co.uk/good-stats-on-carbon-saving/
Doesn't paper comes mostly from managed forests? Or maybe you attach a higher value to the life of trees than most people? (which is fine, just surprising to me)
But of course the Remarkable has an ecological footprint too, just like paper has.
A non-zero amount of energy and resources went into manufacturing the device. Extracting and shipping metals/oil/silicone, refining those materials, then constructing the display/CPU/motherboard/other components, then shipping all the components to the assembly site, then shipping the device to the store/warehouse, etc. It’s a lot more complicated than making paper.
Then multiple times per week the device has to be charged, using electricity that might come from a coal power plant in worst case.
I’m not saying one shouldn’t buy a Remarkable. But I don’t think it’s fair to say that the Remarkable is less wasteful than paper before doing a life cycle assessment.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compaq_Concerto
If an iPad is 60% of the writing experience, the RM2 is 80+%.
I can search, organise and back up my notes, and also share screen / convert them to PDF and send them to colleagues easily. I can also easily rearrange the page and convert my scribbles to text so other people can understand them.
It was expensive compared to a notebook, but well worth it.
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 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.
It's just not useful to me.
- Yellow (legal) pad for daily todo. Use pen on this pad because it is ok to not keep it neat because the page will be thrown away next morning. So, next morning, tear off the top leaf of yesterday, start no a fresh sheet with the date on top, and transfer any todos that need to be carried forward. Typically, a todo is either done, or not needed, or still pending. The pending ones make it to the fresh page.
- A notebook for note taking. E.g. meetings, or plans etc. I use a mechanical pencil and an eraser with this one. Mistakes and badly written words can be erased and rewritten. When I reference this notebook, it is good to see that things are legible even after a few days.
Summary:
- Legal pad and a pen for tasks. Start a new leaf every morning.
- Notebook, pencil, eraser for notes. Keep it neat, and can be referenced later.
This system reminds me of Bullet Journaling (https://bulletjournal.com/), which I have used on and off for a long time now. Folks who have adopted Bullet Journaling have come up with some very interesting symbols to capture parts of the day (some which I have found more useful than others).
I do find that any paper-based system breaks down for things that are recurring, and I have to resign and use some calendaring system to accommodate those (think changing the air-filter on the HVAC). I also feel that longer-than-a-day projects are harder to track on paper (If anyone has suggestions here I am all ears). I often find myself thinking of a project, breaking it down, then using paper to take one or two everyday till I feel like I am done.
My approach to finding balance between paper and electronic is
- Use paper daily (for the same reason that the OP suggest). Object permanence is real. I can't tell you how many times I just _remember_ writing something down on the left-hand side near the top that has saved my life. - If a recurring reminder comes through, add it to the list of Todos for today (on paper) - At the end of the day I usually end up transcribing my day into markdown notes (using https://bear.app/)
Over time I have learned that not everything works well in one format (I have been thinking about getting the Remarkable but my god that's steep)—What I end up doing is "linking" from one medium to another.
For example, if I start by writing an entry or a note on paper that I feel will be better described in a diagram or a code snippet I simply put a note on paper telling me to go to Bear (Since all notes are dated this is relatively easy). Or vice-versa—if I doodled out a diagram on paper, I simply put a "See notebook" in my Bear notes.
Looking forward to seeing how others are doing this.
Your process of transcribing notes into markdown is good. I prefer to think of it as extracting and summarizing, but full transcription can work well.
Diagrams get inserted as an image as-is and can be tagged with pertinent info. I do have the benefit of having decent handwriting that most can read as is or be OCR'd.
When I used paper I got used to have a stack of A4, put a title in one corner, I?d keep them on my left beside the keyboard. There are nice a4 in 4 light pastel colors, easier on the eyes than white, and simple memory cue when looking in the pile.
I’d have cheatsheets and tasks, the task/feature pages with lots of check boxes. I’d keep some cheatsheets for a long time, like css/typescript, and the task ones i would throw away when that feature is done.
Then, the angle of the paper to the tip point does not vary across the line.
https://www.jetpens.com/Kokuyo-Campus-Soft-Ring-Notebook-Sem...
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".
Once it is written down i don't need the paper any more.
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.
No, but it can vanish when you open the window. :-)
It's barbaric even when done with a printer. It's extra barbaric doing the smudging with your low resolution meat claw.
I carry a portable battery powered bluetooth thermal printer with me in my handbag. The only thing I will handwrite is my signature.
Why is it such a non-thing, even in productivity/efficiency circles and alternate/quirky circles, why aren't we taught it early on in school where we're expected to go the next decade taking handwritten notes during lectures?
The way I made the crossover work is that normal text was all lower case alphanumeric. This is similar to Teeline shorthand, from which I borrowed ideas heavily. Because all symbols were alphanumeric, it could work in either medium.
The next step was to figure out how to make this effective in handwriting. Typing letters is easy, but writing them varies in difficulty/time. Again I borrowed from Teeline. I created a written symbol for each character that minimized pen strokes. "k" for example is just a sideways "v," which saves the vertical stroke. "m" is just an arch. I also ignored unnecessary letters, so the word "letters" could be shortened to "ltrs."
The final step was finding a way to shorten the most common English words and character strings. I came up with 2 mechanisms: capitalization and spacing. This turned out to be really flexible. A "g" just means "g," but "G" can mean different things depending on whether it's in a word or spaced alone. So in a word it replaces "ing," but standalone it is the word "get." So let's say I wanted to write the sentence:
"I am going to the store to get a bag of potatoes."
I could type this:
i gG t T str t G a bg ptatos
(A final question you might have: how did I capitalize those handwritten symbols? I decided not to make a whole other set of unique symbols, but instead just put a little apostrophe, as in (m'), or "m prime.")
EDIT: I have also started using some of the symbols on the keyboard to symbolize project planning, and I use these in handwriting too. "%" is chance or odds, "!" is an experiment or prototype, "^" is a decision.
It's not phonetic, but it's got some of the same approaches like -ing suffix being a single symbol.
Interesting, thanks :)