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Comment by JAFTEM | Hacker News Reader

Surprised no one has mentioned doing this in a physical notebook with a pen. I started doing what the author describes a long time ago to document bugs to come back to later. I soon realized it's just a good way to keep my thoughts organized and be more productive. I tried doing something similar with a text editor but grew tired switching screens or tabs. A notebook is also a bit more accessible than a laptop when you leave your desk. During lunch I can read through my notes.

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I use a physical notebook to record my work too, and I find it very effective. If I sit through a meeting and write nothing down I will inevitably forget everything about the meeting, writing it down helps me to remember it. You can also go back and find out what was discussed before - a surprising number of meetings just retread things which were talked about or even decided upon previously.

I use: Oxford Black n' Red A5 Matt Casebound Hardback Notebook, and UM-153S Signo Impact Gel Pens. I get through one of those notebooks per year on average.

Edit: https://rwmj.wordpress.com/2017/11/24/keeping-a-work-noteboo...

Most likely you love high quality notebooks and writing instruments, and you probably have neat handwriting.

I rather have files that I can understand later, and easily grep as a bonus...

(I do admit that crossing done tasks on a piece of paper feels very good.)

I like to think of blank pages as mini whiteboards. With a multifunction copier i can print out lined, grid paper or specialty layouts and whip it through the scanner once im done with it keeping a digital copy. 3USD buys me 500 pages, and with a laser printer [250USD], toner refill kit, etc. that comes out to less than a cent a page, or 3 cents if I amortize the printer over 10k pages (assuming it breaks once it hits its one month maximum duty cycle, which is stupid conservative).

That plus a nice fountain pen [Lamy Safari 18.7USD], ink [J. Herbin Perle Noir 7.2USD/30ml], mechanical pencil [Lamy Safari 12USD], pencil leads [Uni Nano Dia 0.9USD/20leads], technical pen [Rotring Isograph 16.3USD], and I've got a nice little setup.

“I like to think of blank pages as mini whiteboards.”

This. I never enjoyed drawing diagrams in Inkscape, though my boss swears by it.

I’d much rather draw with pens on paper and then digitise by scanning.

I could see your bosses workflow working as long as he has a library of common elements. For graphs I tend to use yED, which is nice. You know how LaTeX has the mantra that you input the data, and it worries about the layout for you? yED is similar, you add nodes, connect them, and then you chose from one of two dozen layouting algorithms, like "hierarchical", "swimlane", or even "family tree".

I would love for a decent midpoint solution, ie, a way to digitize my notes. A livescribe would be nice, but the issue is that my handwriting is...not too great. I can understand it,certainly, but I'm not sure it would escape OCR unscathed.

> I tried doing something similar with a text editor but grew tired switching screens or tabs.

I've found that using a text editor that supports code folding, and following a markup language that enables the text editor to automatically set fold points, helps navigate log entries more efficiently.

I also use a notebook to jot down tasks, but when a job requires a high number of different unrelated small tasks that are completed rather quickly I've found that a physical notebook actually makes the process very inefficient.

I've done this with a notebook for a long time and it is indeed helpful, especially if I didn't get enough sleep the night before or didn't start my day with a run and I find myself more distractable.

Unless you have a good tablet, like the most recent Surface Pro or iPad. Writing on them feels very good, almost no noticeable lag. That's what finally replaced physical note-taking for me.

I actually I mentioned this 10 hours ago. So no need to be suprised ;)

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