The One Notebook Habit (2018)
medium.com
medium.com
At some point I grew tired of googling for a certain command usage in Linux yet again, or the solution to a certain sort-of-rare problem that crops up every couple of months but it would be a waste of effort to memorize what it is. So I started recording it. I have tons of text files filled with solutions, command usages, tips on possible problems/bugs, issues I’ve run into and what caused them, etc. I’ll even take notes on what programming practices seem to lead to issues and my thoughts about it, as well as resources I can find about it about better practices that avoid the problem. Programming, using Linux, learning Starcraft 2, learning guitar, learning a new programming language. I’ve reached a point where if I have to google something a second time, it gets written down.
Hell, I think it makes more sense to turn your question around - why aren’t you keeping any notes? Human memory is abjectly terrible, and becomes worse the more time passes until it’s less a “saved image” and more of a drawing of a painting of a polaroid of an image of a memory, filtered through years of experiences and growth.
For some reason, getting it out of your head into a physical medium helps to reason about it better.
For deeper topics, I totally get it (as in some of the examples you provided), but for snippet things like that, I just don't see the advantage of keeping it in my notes. Hell, the few times I've done that, I forgot it was even in my notes and just Googled anyways. Even bookmarks end up being ignored and I search again rather than finding my bookmark!
I completely understand the inclination though and (perhaps self-contradictorily) I myself use Raindrop to save and organize things I find online. But I rarely end up doing anything with them.
I guess the point is that writing things down makes sense to me when either a) the act of writing itself is beneficial or b) it's more involved than a Linux snippet or the like...something that ends up more like a personal README.
I do hear your points though and genuinely like to hear about other people's process so thank you for sharing.
I spent this year learning how to use Docker and I feel this was the perfect use case. A lot of obscure incantations to do things and the documentation is ... well, extensive. Unless you know exactly what you’re looking for and exactly where it is, it can take what feels like forever to find what you need, when you just want to keep working. Instead, I can refer to my notes within seconds for the exact pre-crafted commands that do everything I need, plus supplementary information about pitfalls and issues I’ve run into.
And the longer it takes, even if it’s just 10-20 seconds longer (and it’s usually minutes longer), the longer it takes to get back into what you were doing before. I try to keep context switches as minimal as possible, and google simply isn’t precise enough compared to a hand-crafted knowledge database with the right tools. Hell, since I use Emacs for nearly everything, I can pretty much switch to my notes immediately. I’ve reached a point where it really annoys me when I have to google, because I know how long it can take to find a workable solution.
- You may find search results that exactly match what you're looking for, but are wrong or useless. They may refer to an obsolete version of the software you're trying to use, or they could take you to a question on Stack Overflow that has no answers, or they may have been written by someone who didn't know what they were doing but just wanted to blog about it.
- Google is distracting. It's filled with ads, and with interesting stuff that you're tempted to click on that's unrelated to what you're currently doing. Your own notes are much more focused on the tasks that you want to accomplish.
There’s a lot of research on this, but in short, most people develop much stronger memories of the things they physically write (typing is less effective IIRC), whether they ever refer back to the notes or not.
Your mileage may vary, but for most avid note takers, that’s the gist of it.
At work, I find note taking to be almost useless for me personally, even though I feel like I’m learning new things each day. Although, I’ve noticed a quirk - whenever I learn something that surprises me, I feel the urge to share it out loud to my coworkers. I feel like that might take the place of writing it down?
Sometimes I feel guilty (?) about the fact that I don’t write as much any more. But, on reflection, I might have just replaced writing with orating...
Running with that idea, maybe oral conversation is an underrated ruminative method: with its great space for nuance and emphasis, and its tight feedback loop between speaker and listener. The only limits are working memory and persistence; if you’re dealing with too many interacting concepts, and your original point doesn’t stick, it’s usually gone forever. Although, maybe those are very useful filters :)
EDIT: fix English
Do you remember why typing would be less effective? Is it something to do with writing being much slower, therefore you have to think about it more while recording it?
Brains normally form memories with all that data wrapped in. Typing on a screen it’s all kind of the same, compared to how different each physical writing experience feels. Those differences give your brain more “texture” to work with in forming a distinct memory and giving you hooks to recall it later.
If you’re interested in this stuff, there’s a very entertaining book about memory called “Moonwalking with Einstein,” which I highly recommend :)
I am not of any importance as a person, but my hypothesis is exactly this. For most of the HN audience, I expect that typing is well within the 70-100wpm range if not more, and at that rate, it becomes much faster to get something out of one's mind and into a system that it doesn't take time to "buffer" and linger.
I somehow personally doubt that actually forming the words on paper is enough to create memories, but I suppose anything is possible given how humans have evolved so far.
I've tried a ton of digital workflows and systems, only thing that came close to a physical notebook was Org Mode.
There's a couple reasons why I like a physical notebook:
1. It's a good log of what you've accomplished in a day. Lots of times I'll have days that didn't feel like much happened, reviewing my notes however brings into sharp relief all the things that I either dealt with or accomplished.
2. There's something incredibly satisfying about striking an item off the list with a physical motion. Hard to explain but definitely something I've noticed.
3. It's a great catch-all that's always on you. I've found an A6 size is just about perfect for this.
4. I review each item from the previous day in the morning, carry though the ones that aren't done, strike off the ones that are. Not only does it put you in the right head-space but also you start to develop a sense for things that aren't getting completed. It's a good forcing function for knowing if you need to dig into something a bit more depth than you previously thought.
5. I tend to work a notebook from both ends. Todo/items to track start from the front to the back, ideas/sketches/anything else I take pages from the back towards the front. Once they meet in the middle I'll retire the notebook and grab a new one.
Haha, I like that!
I have tried many times over the years to use a journal or notebook. It has never felt like anything more than a waste of time, and I gave it genuine, honest tries. It's just a lot easier for me to simply remember what I want to remember in the first place, and if I'm hashing out an idea, I can refine ideas mentally more rapidly than if I involve the written word.
My father, on the other hand, was a fastidious note-taker his entire life. His books are brimming with marginalia, and he was never without a notepad within easy reach at home.
His note-taking vs. my not didn't seem to make any difference in terms of the quality and nature of our ideas; we just used different means to get there.
I will say that now that he is gone, it leaves me with a wistful, warm feeling to be able to look through he more favored tomes and follow along with his thoughts.
Something about the rotary motion of pen on paper, and the way it deliberately focuses my thoughts helps me recall them better. (Also ... people tell me my handwriting doesn't exactly suck :-).)
Another example: In the last two weeks, I've visited four different museums and exhibitions of an artist I'm studying (Peter Bruegel the Elder[+]; 2019 is his 450th anniversary). Based on these study visits, in a good few pages, I jotted down what I learnt so far (on language, art, culture and science), drawings and copperplate engravings I wanted to further study, Dutch proverbs I learnt, several threads to further explore, new things I wanted to learn, relating ideas from Bruegel's work to topics I've learnt from a recent book I've completed, and so forth.
Do give the handwriting thing a try.
[+] https://artsandculture.google.com/entity/%2Fm%2F0h6nl?hl=en
(This Google Culture project has some splendid high-resolution scans of Bruegel's paintings.)
But in reality, I don’t actually revisit my notebooks very often. Their main purpose is to be a canvas on which I work out my thoughts. I’m an external processor, which means I need to get my thoughts out of my head in order to flesh them out. I talk them out often (see my burgeoning YouTube channel) but a notebook is an effective and societally acceptable way for me to work them out while in a coffee shop, during a lecture, or on an airplane.
I tell people often when I am taking to them: “I’m writing while you talk because it helps me listen better.”
Of course 99% of my notes are useless, I just don't know which 99%.
Sadly, my notes are as disorganized as my brain, but I'm doing what I can. I've been trying to make consistent use of Evernote. The only problem is that many of my notes include calculations. Being able to insert a Python cell in Evernote, a la Jupyter, would be the bees knees.
I write a lot (20 books, 1300 blog articles) and I just need to write notes with new ideas, links to resources, etc.
My oldest notes are probably a few years old. Deleting old stuff is easy and feels tidy.
Taking notes also adds another retention mechanism.
Taking notes frees my brain from dwelling on or thinking about something that I don't want to forget.
Taking notes captures me at that point in time. I have stacks of workout notebooks. Writing down my numbers every workout plus how I felt probably gave me the biggest leap forward in my workouts than anything else. I'm doing the same now with BJJ and it really does help.
I do understand your point though. I used to be the same way until it dawned on me that a more general notebook was just like my stacks of workout notebooks, except for my entire life. Now I take notes, journal, etc... whenever I have thoughts rolling around in my head.
The pain point is that it's extremely difficult to find a suitable notebook because most notebooks do not have computer professional as target customers. What I need is something with a lot of tabs, with one tab takes about 10-15 pages. as that's pretty much the amount of pages I need for one small project. But again this might be too much for a notebook because I'd also need to move the tabs to any page, so the only viable solution is to make my own tab notebooks with an ordinary notebook and some stickers.
I think maybe there are some hardware and software out there that allow us to write on a screen with the same flexibility and speed, but so far I didn't find one. Would be very nice if I can write quickly and comfortably in OneNote as it's so easy to tab in an application.
I have a “personal journal” where I write a prose account of my life and take time to process the events and think through what I’m feeling, thinking, and learning.
I find myself more likely to forget things when I write them down, especially in a meeting/lecture/discussion. Maybe it's just because my hand just doesn't go fast enough to get the information down on the page, or maybe I can't concentrate on thinking at the same time I write.
1. Privacy. Anyone who acquires the notebook can read anything in it. I'm not discussing anything particularly important most times, but I'm reluctant to write down things that are...embarrassing or otherwise private if I'm taking that same notebook through airport security, for example.
2. Integrity. Destruction of the notebook is easy, as this author can attest. Spilling water or another substance on the notebook can immediately render it unreadable, which would somewhat be counter to the idea of recording information in the notebook.
3. Perfectionism. I'm sure I'm not the only one who grows really agitated by making errors in ink and then not being able to correct them without striking them out. Pencil is better obviously, but you can tear the pages...
I'm sure that these factors don't affect everyone the same, but for me...they're overwhelmingly influential in my choice not to use a paper notebook. I get the upsides, but the downsides are...really meh.
Now I’m not suggesting you go buy an iPad but if you already have it... it works well for this.
I use Apple Notes but there are plenty of other apps out there.
And if this sounds a little absurd, her chosen notebook weighs more than my iPad with its pencil and keyboard. My iPad is larger by one inch in height and width but also significantly thinner.
You can also download an app like Notability, which can convert your handwritten notes to text.
So many of my physical notes are lost in notebooks that I never bothered to transpose into the digital realm.
With my iPad I get the benefit of handwriting, while also being able to index and search my notes later.
And the great thing is, even with my handwriting, I can read what I've typed.
So I take notes in apps - searchability, persistence, and no need to manually copy data are the big wins of electronic data. That, and ease of writing (and reading). But I've been feeling like I need to consolidate to a single-app habit.
And I do keep a pen and notepad in a "planner"-style wallet, because 1) sometimes it's faster for a quick note, and 2) it can be socially more acceptable to write on paper than type into a device.
So I need to have one-app-to-rule-them-all, and it needs to easily incorporate the occasional hand-written or other paper note.
I'm watching the Surface Neo very closely to see if they bring the same focus of seamless data entry (and offline export hopefully) to it...if so then not only will I buy it, I will issue it the only passport to my home ever to be issued to a Windows 10-based device.
If anyone is linux/unix minded and has used an eink tablet for writing and loved it, please let me know!