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Comment by Fundlab | Hacker News Reader

I would love to hear thoughts on digital vs hardcopy notebooks

I have an ipad pro specifically to use as a digital notebook. I use notability, and discovered I prefer to write on black background with white, red, and blue ink. I skip green as I'm colorblind and will mix it up with red.

I don't know if it is my color deficiency or generally applicable, but the colored ink really pops on a black background. So if I have little annotations that I want to point out on a diagram, that helps.

The iPad Pro with the Pencil is almost a perfect device. I use GoodNotes rather than Notability, but I think the capabilities are roughly the same. It's great to be able to write by hand most of the time, type when I need to, paste images, insert snapshots of white boards, etc...

The OCR is very good too and even my handwritten notes are indexed. I'm not sure if it indexes the text in images though. I used to use Evernote and it did an amazing job of that.

I used to use text files exclusively, then I moved to Microsoft Word so I could paste in images and other non-text items. I missed the handwriting part of it. Something about using those muscles and going slow helps me absorb the material better.

What size of iPad are you using (you and parent post)? I've been considering getting a pro+pencil for this purpose. I like to scribble on paper, but I'd really like archived, searchable copies that don't take up physical space.

I use the 12.9" (?) whatever the bigger size is. The screen is just about as big as a sheet of paper.

For what it's worth, I don't think notability has OCR. GoodNotes appears to though. I might have to give it a try.

I have the 10.5" one.

The rumor for next year's model is that it will get face id and that's something I definitely want.

The one big downside to note taking with an iPad is that it turns itself off frequently. Having to authenticate frequently with the home button is a pain and I think face id would be a lot less intrusive.

FWIW, I still scribble on paper, but that tends to be for very ephemeral things (like a number I need to remember for the next 5 minutes).

Thanks, I ended up going with the 10.5" one. It's the size of the steno pads I scribble on and weighs less than the bigger on. Not a lot of space on my desk either.

I'm gonna give Notes a try for a while and also Notability, because it appears I purchased it years ago.

I have switched away from all apps and mobile devices for anything note-related. I feel like it's not worth trying to adapt my note habits I've had since graduate school just to appease the latest iOS or App idiosyncrasies. I also need to switch between computers and operating systems frequently, so the most reliable device I have is a notebook sitting next to my desk.

I prefer digital because...

1. It can be searched

2. It can be backed up

3. It is accessible from nearly anywhere

It's also incredibly easy to misplace files and forget that you wrote notes altogether. I've lost many notes.txt throughout the years. I've recently forced myself to use Evernote, which for me is better than any file-based system, but it is a bottomless pit with poor discoverability. A physical object doubles as a reminder.

With respect, that seems like less of a problem of digital note-taking in general, and more of a problem of the specific digital note-taking systems you have tried. Using notes.txt files is a bit like writing notes on napkins and leaving them scattered about. I don't know anything about Evernote, but I'd be interested to hear what issues you had.

What works for me is taking notes via email. Backing up, organizing, searching, and distributing email is more-or-less a solved problem, and my note-taking inherits those solutions. I can read and add notes from my phone and from my computer, with the ability to choose from a plethora of applications. I have multiple backups of my email around the world via standard email syncing. My email host has been 100% reliable in not losing my emails, as well. If I want to migrate to a different email host, that is trivial.

That's a solution I might want to try. But how do you differentiate between your notes and the dozens of emails you receive every day? You can filter by sender, but then you often get your sent mail, depending of how filtering is set up in the email client.

I have my notes at work as org files, and simply added them to a git repository.

And in my case, it can be read. Important, as my hand writing is atrocious!

I keep it paper for various reasons. I've played around with digital notes, the main problem is it's hard to sketch stuff quickly, even though I have a nice wacom tablet, and it's horrible with just a mouse or trackpad. And there's always a need it seems to try to edit existing stuff. That's why I use ink. I can't erase and "fix" it.

Digital lets me find things much more easily, but for maths-heavy notes, I prefer hardcopy. I'm not as quick with LaTeX as I am writing, and I couldn't get the hang of using a stylus for maths. Wish I could more easily get the best of both worlds.

Have you tried TeXmacs for math-heavy notes? Thanks to copy/paste, I find I'm quicker in it than on paper, as long as the work isn't too diagram heavy. For simple diagrams, there's a vector image editor built in.

I have lost countless notebooks and other notes on paper. For those I haven't lost, I find it really hard to find what I'm looking for. I started consolidating my note-taking in google docs and haven't looked back.

Seems like you might need a better indexing system -- table of contents in the start of notebooks, and perhaps a directory consisting of copies of those ToCs in a loose-leaf binder for the entire set?

That... sounds like a lot of work

It's part of an ongoing process.

It's a bit of systemic investment which provides future payoffs.

How valuable is your past journaling in the absence of such a system?

How valuable is your past journaling with such a system?

I use a mixture of Vim with text files, and the Windows Sticky Notes app, for my notes. The text files go into a folder related to what I'm taking notes on, and are for longer storage. There's usually other file types in there too, and the folder can be backed up and/or version controlled.

Short-term and quick-access notes are in Sticky Notes, which plaster the desktop on one of my monitors. That's where I keep meeting notes, TODO lists for the next day or two, time-tracking if I'm not putting it directly into my time-tracking app, etc. Generally, none of that is worth saving beyond its immediate usage.

I've rarely needed to refer back to any of this stuff beyond the few days where I'm using it (Sticky Notes) or the duration of a project (text files). I don't delete the text files, but I hardly ever need to refer back to them.

I've been relying very heavily on index cards and finding it well-suited to my needs

https://ello.co/dredmorbius/post/u4dgr0tkxk4tk9npuvex5a

Various other methods are also in use. I've found journals less than intuitive, as there's a distinction between keeping a notebook vs organising/recording routine activities and events that I find difficult to span and/or separate.

Online/electronic systems remain insufficiently flexible for daily activities, though I've gone through several iterations of shell / vim / org-mode systems.

I use both where each excels - paper for capture, org files or what-have-you for persistence.

Interesting. I find paper to be far more "persistent". I have notebooks I kept in high school and college, but have lost most of the digital files from that time, or can no longer read them due to their being in a file format long dead. Corruption also plays a role, as they've moved through a variety of storage media in that time. I find digital works best for me for keeping shopping lists (that sync up with my wife, so we both know what we need and can add things), giving me reminders of appointments and time sensitive tasks, immediate communications, or as a tool for projects I'm currently on (I use org-mode heavily and particularly like its linking features for getting back to config files on remote servers, emails with instructions, etc.). All quite transitory.

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