6 ms·
I don't understand the pen/physical notebook thing. It's slow to write, insanely slow to search what you've written, almost impossible to copy or share.
by bufferoverflow 1y ago
I don't understand the pen/physical notebook thing. It's slow to write, insanely slow to search what you've written, almost impossible to copy or share.
- abid786 1y agoIn comparison it’s much faster to draw, infinitely more portable and much less distracting. I use pen and paper for self notes that are throwaway in nature or exploring ideas. For artefacts that are meant to be shared with others I use a computer
- Brajeshwar 1y agoI believe that is the beauty. It makes you be intentional, your mind slows down at a pace that does a double write to your brain (helping you remember better). If remembering with your brain is the RAM, then writing it down is the ROM.
- forty 1y agopeople's brains all work differently and for some of them manually writing help them think better, and apparently your are not in this case. I don't think there is much else to understand.
- kubami 1y agoIn the context of this post it's not about preserving or sharing the thoughts. Writing, in this case, is a "thinking tool". Forcing yourself to materialise the thoughts as actual, written, text helps form clear ideas.
- jes5199 1y agothat’s so alien to me. for me, writing by hand is frustrating to the point of distraction. if I want to think clearly, my best bet is to do it silently, in my head.
- serial_dev 1y agoThat's great if you can do it! To me, if the problem is too complex, or more likely, if I expect to be distracted by family and chores, "building in my head" is not the best option as it all falls apart and need to build it up from scratch (though admittedly faster than last time).
- karn97 1y agoMy brain has enough memory
- raincole 1y agoIt's a road bump that forces you to slow down. Which is sometimes a good thing, like taking a shower or walk.
- specproc 1y agoEach to their own. I wholeheartedly agree with the author. I find it really hard to think deeply at a computer. Too many distractions. The speed of writing and search isn't a problem for me. With the writing, I wish I could write faster, but deep thinking isn't fast anyway. Search, well, 99% of what I write is never looked at again. It's all a process of working things out, committing stuff to memory. Whenever I'm stuck, stepping away from the computer is usually the best way forward.
- sph 1y agoFrom a quick search: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/why-writing-by-hand-is-better-for-memory-and-learning/ https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/why-writing-by-ha... https://stackoverflow.blog/2022/11/23/why-writing-by-hand-is-still-the-best-way-to-retain-information/ https://stackoverflow.blog/2022/11/23/why-writing-by-hand-is... Writing by hand definitely is better for a squirrel brain like me. And searching is overrated, most note-taking is write-only and tends to accumulate without anyone ever reading it back. So optimize for memory retention so you can later form better mental associations with the material, rather than how searchable on a computer it is. Notes on a PC are inert, what you want is to integrate their contents into your brain so you can actually do something with it.
- WalterBright 1y agoWrite on!
- Edd314159 1y agoI also use a notebook and pen constantly as a software engineer - but never when I need any of the properties you just mentioned. It is absolutely the wrong tool for any long-term information store. Ephemeral think-it-through process notes only. Obsidian for anything that should live longer than the current problem I’m trying to solve.
- _thisdot 1y agoI used to have a hybrid setup of paper as an offloading tool + Notion as a knowledge management system. However, since moving to Obsidian, I've never felt the need to use paper. Adding a line item in my daily note is much faster and efficient for me
- bananapub 1y agoSo what? It’s not for any of those things. It’s part of the thinking process, same as having a walk and letting your mind wander or having a shower.
- draven 1y agoI use a notebook. It forces me to slow down. I don´t like to cross/erase blocks of text so I actually think about what I'm about to write before writing it. It helps the same way rubber duck debugging does. Also: I just like writing.
- gofreddygo 1y agoFunny. I was tolling the virtues of my spiral notebook which is always on my desk to a coworker, whom I was trying to get out of some trouble and i got... silence. That notebook is the difference between said coworker and I. She didn't get it. That notebook is the fastest most accessible tool to capture my thoughts. I can state concisely what was discussed in a team meeting last october before any notetaking tool boots up. I know kids names, birthdays and favorite movies of almost all my coworkers which I can glance without switching windows while sharing my screen. the impossibility of such content being legible to anyone else and being shared is a feature I value very highly. i take it where i want, introspect, take notes. No screen. No distractions. I doodle, draw lines, write jokes, whatever. Pages on the right are work things. On the left are my ideas. Index on the first page tells me exactly where to turn to for that idea and mockups i had on filling tedious forms. I know when I'm spinning my wheels. I can see the gaps in my thinking from months ago. I can see patterns in human behavior that I would otherwise have not noticed. The simplicity is a huge advantage. I stopped looking for anything better. I don't try to promote it either (except on rare occasions). Saved me hours.
- MrGilbert 1y agoI think an analog note taking device (woah!) requires more discipline than a digital one. In the digital world, you can always re-arrange your chaos at almost no cost, whereas you are screwed in the analog world. I'm curious: How do you organize your notes? If you mind to share.
- rsclarke 1y agoThe bullet journal method is a popular way.
- gofreddygo 1y agoFirst there's a work notebook and a personal one. both are semi structured, but work one has more structure. first page is always for index, split vertically and you get roughly 80 entries with about 3-4 words each. one for each page that i number as i go writing through the book. index usually has just pointers to days when i get interesting ideas. each right page is for 1 week that i label up top. a small margin is dedicated for recurring meetings. using only the right side allows quickly flipping through. rest of the page is for todos and logs. left pages are for related thoughts, ideas, etc from that week. sometimes overflows but not by much. For wordy stuff, i use pages from the back of the book. I don't use sentences much. Just few words with lines connecting them. Thats pretty much it - index, numbered pages and using just the right side per week. It works wonders for how simple it is. You'll find something else that works for you. Don't overthink this. Just start with a structure and let it evolve. side note - i do use a folder for plain text notes on my work laptop (that i keep open in sublime) for links and text that benefits from copy and paste. i would not care if it all got deleted or leaked out to the world. I also have another folder of interesting bookmarks and articles exported to pdf for reading on a flight on my phone. i have a dozen or so google docs with my thoughts on topics i'm interested in.
- tony-allan 1y agoAll true but I find that a pen and paper and a couple of diagrams help me think and solidify an idea.
- serial_dev 1y agoI took the pen+notebook idea a bit further, I use pen+paper (a sheet of paper). To me, none of the qualities you listed matter when it comes to sketching ideas, thinking about problems, staying on track while problem solving. When I'm done with the task, I read through my notes once and throw it out.
- WalterBright 1y agoI date the handwritten pages and keep them. I've been attacked more than once for copying, the notebook offers acceptable proof of provenance. It serves the same purpose as the lab notebook does for a researcher. The notebook doesn't take up significant room. If you still have a space problem, run it through a scanner.
- WalterBright 1y agoIf you want to get the most out of a physics lecture, leave the laptop at home. Instead, bring a spiral notebook and some colored pens. Write everything down the prof writes on the blackboard. It's remarkable how much of the lecture you'll remember. And when you read your handwritten notes, you'll remember the lecture that went with it.
- guappa 1y agoYeah good luck writing with coloured pens at the speed teachers speak.
- aragilar 1y agoWhy are you focusing on what they are saying, rather than what they are writing (there's an important distinction)?
- WalterBright 1y agoI would copy what they were writing. The professors had 9 blackboards available, and they'd use them all during a 55 minute lecture, and then some. Some would write with their left hand while erasing with the right (!). It was a heluva time for me. Never before or since have I learned so much so fast. Blink and I fell behind. In retrospect, I sorely wished I had set up a cassette recorder and recorded all the audio. It would be a gold mine today, as all those lectures are lost to time. On the other hand, I had no money to buy cassette tapes at the time.
- tonyedgecombe 1y agoI never learnt much in those sort of lectures. Eventually I figured out I needed to study the material before the lecture and use the lecture to cement what I had already learnt or occasionally answer questions that had come up.
- aragilar 1y agoSorry, I was replying to guappa suggesting that they were focusing on the wrong thing.
- pif 1y agoIf you only need to write sentences, what you say makes sense. If you need to draw approximate diagrams, or formulae, or flows, or trees, or whatever else, instead...
- Veen 1y agoThey aren’t optimising for speed, sharing, or searchability. Notes of this type aren’t an inadequate database, but a tool for thinking. Note-takers visualize and symbolise their thinking while they work through a problem. Writing and drawing reduce cognitive load and externalise information so it doesn’t have to be held in memory. Notes also create a useful record of that process so you can see how you got to your solution. Notebooks are just a convenient UI for that process.
- cladopa 1y agoI use A4 sheets of paper, pens with different colours and fluorescent markers. Nothing beats that for me (and I have a iPad Pro with stylus) and I use emacs with org mode too. I use an automatic scanner to store the important papers as documentation. Now you can even send those to gemini or google cloud to digitalise it for cheap. At any given time I have four sheets of paper over my desk that I can see in parallel, but I could have 8 or 10 for complex problems with areas equivalent to engineering or architectural blueprints. Having said that, I can draw and paint very well as I was interested since childhood and had formal training. Probably is not for everyone, but it is for me.
- _Algernon_ 1y agoI mean the obvious example is that you can sketch graphs or figures easily without any additional friction. Very few digital notes allow that.
- wrp 1y agoDivision on this topic reminds me of the division between those who prefer light vs heavy development tools. Some enjoy mastering and wielding powerful tools, but others see them as a distraction.
- Eavolution 1y agoI like it when trying to work things out/design things as I can easily scribble down quick drawings to keep myself right. This is much easier with a pencil and paper than trying to do it on a computer to me.
- jbs789 1y agoMany studies showing it aids recall more effectively than typing or event writing on a tablet.
- Hamatti 1y agoOP here. > It's slow to write Only to an extent. I write fast enough with pen and paper that my thinking is the bottleneck — which isn't really that fast. I don't need to write down everything I think so it also acts as a filter and processor of those thoughts. > insanely slow to search what you've written Compared to digital notes system, sure. But the way I use my notes, I don't usually need a full-text search to find stuff. I remember what I've been working on, I often browse through my notebooks to revisit ideas and most often these notebook notes are kind of a "working copy" where the search relevance is often just for the feature so it only needs to be fast to search for a few days or weeks. I also do copy many of my notes down in digital format too when there's something worth capturing for long term storage for the sake of searching for example. > almost impossible to copy or share 100%. Sharing is not a consideration for me, these are my raw pure thoughts and explorations, they don't often make much sense to other people as-is. Sometimes I may take a photo of a UI sketch or something to share if needed but otherwise when I have something to share, I write it based on my notes rather than sharing my notes as they are.
- roryirvine 1y agoSearching through a physical notebook does take a few moments, but the upside is all of that context you get to drink in during the search. I typically get through a couple of B5 pages a day, so homing in on the thing I want to look at is a matter of opening the notebook to roughly the right fortnight and then flicking through up to a dozen pages in either direction. A tenth of a second per page is enough to scan for major events - what projects was I working on at the time? Were there any major interruptions to my flow, or changes in direction? And then, once I've found the right day, seeing the detail of everything I was doing at the time triggers a flood of memories - I remember all of the conversations, decisions, problems, and ideas that were current at the time of the entry in question. I've tried a number of digital notetaking systems, but none has been able to give me so much context so quickly as a paper notebook.
- hk1337 1y ago> slow to write that's probably the most important thing. it forces you to slow down and think it through and actually absorb it. Searching what I have written in the past would be useless for me because it wouldn't necessarily make sense. It's more about the physically writing it out.