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Comment by petargyurov | Hacker News Reader

> Buy a whiteboard and write the goals for the day on it, for instance

As a solo dev the biggest productivity booster for me, from a physical and mental aspect, was purchasing a whiteboard. It honestly feels like some sort of hack. Prior to having one I would use pen and paper but that didn't quite scratch my itch - if I made a mistake I would have to scribble it out and that space was now wasted. I can't quite explain why but on a whiteboard my brain juices just flow. Made a mistake? Wipe it off. Need more space? Wipe it off (or purchase additional whiteboards).

My high school maths teacher once said something that has stuck with me since - "When you're stuck on a problem, start fresh on a blank piece of paper." - he must've meant a whiteboard ;)

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The Frixion pens they sell in Japan are incredible for this. They're truly erasable, not like the shitty ones I remember from my childhood. The multi-color pens are especially useful. All the fun of brainstorming and erasability, without the bad smells and imprecise lines of whiteboard markers.

http://www.frixion.jp/lineup/work.html?pid=product_ball-3-sl...

I've used those. I would say that they're not perfectly erasable and it still takes more effort to erase compared to a whiteboard.

I think the biggest thing here is the size of the canvas and the speed at which you can make changes. Sure, markers can be messy and smelly, I will give you that. Regarding the imprecision: when I am brainstorming I am not looking to be precise and I would argue that noone should be aiming for that; prototyping should be messy and quick to mutate.

>I would say that they're not perfectly erasable and it still takes more effort to erase compared to a whiteboard. I think the biggest thing here is the size of the canvas and the speed at which you can make changes.

Some FriXion colors do erase less well than others.

But to address your concern about effort to erase I recommend trying a little butane torch lighter. Little puffs (quick clicks) of a lighter on the FriXion ink is very effective as an eraser. A continuous flame strafed across a page will erase large areas without damaging the paper.

While a lighter might seem a bit inconvenient its much less cumbersome than carrying around a white board and eraser.

I would never use those to write something important in a notebook. I did this and left it in my bag, the sun shone on the bag and because of the heat most of my notes got erased. Well because friction = heat, so it was the same thing.

I had the same experience, still use them. Most ball point pens are not archival safe anyway, so to remove the guess work I scan my important stuff with my phone's camera anyway. It's my go to method for creating a graph for what I'm writing anyway.

But if I were in uni or something and were forced to maintain multiple projects at the same time(modules) I would probably opt for something else.

Ball point might not be safe for archival, but I can still read the stuff I wrote as a child 30 years ago; the stuff I wrote with fountain pen and its water soluble ink, not so much.

Lately I've grown super fond of "micro" liners, which are 0.3mm water-based ink pens. To me, their feeling when writing is awesome. BUT IT IS WATER BASED. So even a light rain can wreak havoc on my notes.

Ball-point pens don't feel the same, and the colors don't stand out as much to me. I've accepted the fact that water is a dangerous thing to my notes now.

> BUT IT IS WATER BASED. So even a light rain can wreak havoc on my notes.

Water based != water soluble when dry

I would suggest you try similar pens with a different ink. Staedtler Pigment Liner and Sakura Pigma Micron pens (both of which come in 0.3 mm) use water based pigments which are waterproof when dry and archival. They both survive rain quite well in my experience and are used for outlining by some artists who then apply water color paints or other water based media without the dried ink bleeding.

There are also waterproof fountain pen inks. Platinum Carbon and Noodler's Bulletproof Black are two good ones.

For a common counter example to a water based substance being water soluble once dry consider water based exterior latex paint.

Will look into them, thanks for the pointer :)

Unfortunately every pen of this kind I've used suffered from being water soluble after dry, so I just assumed all where.

Exactly. I tried erasable pens in elementary school and they were more problems than they were worth. Dead tree carcasses are unfortunately "cheaper" than losing work. :'(

Haven't tried it myself, but from what I've heard, putting the paper/notebook in the freezer should bring back the ereased stuff

Yup this works, I use Frixion pens and have done this. On the other hand, if you take your notebook out in freezing temps your erased writing might reappear!

Cold makes "erased" notes to appear, nothing disappears in reality.

You mean I can put my old, blanked out by sun, notes in the fridge and they will reappear ? If that works you made my day, sir !

Incredible indeed. Please update to let us know if it worked!

It worked for me (I was trying to prove someone else wrong.)

It worked ! I'll check if it stays dark but my notes have been restored ! Thanks !

So cool, thanks for sharing.

Freezer for sure.

You can get it back by throwing it in a freezer, at least I was able to when I should prove someone wrong... :-)

(pilot frixion, blue, bought in Norway)

Here's[1] a proof I recorded a long time ago. Enjoy my notes on virtual memory.

[1]: https://youtu.be/hM4-4G36H7U?t=31

Yea, but if you reuse the paper, it becomes an accidental palimpset with all the layers visible.

For the original stated purpose of "whiteboarding", they're great. And like others stated, you can recover what you wrote if you really need to by cooling the paper past a certain threshold.

They sell them everywhere, under the PILOT brand.

Be careful with those. Their ink is erasable because of the heat generated by friction (hence the name), which also mean content can be erased by other heat sources or in some situation like a notebook put in a car parked under the sun in summer. Moreover, doesn't seems super durable, so for notes that much be keep for long time, it is also not the best solution.

The reverse is true though, try putting it in the freezer and you'll see ;). Erasing them doesn't actually remove the ink, it just make it transparent.

Here's some good low odor dry-erase pens in bulk ($20 USD for 60)... because I lose them, or the monster that also steals remotes and New Zealand from maps has a taste for whiteboard markers too.

Not an affiliate link

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07NXVH31G

I picked one up almost 3 years ago for my home office. Also happened to document the process of building one here: https://nickjanetakis.com/blog/build-your-own-8x4-foot-white...

I don't mind spending money but it's hard to pass up $15 worth of materials at home depot and 20 minutes of work instead of buying a pre-made whiteboard for $200.

If anyone is curious, even ~3 years later with a decent amount of usage it works great.

The only problem with hardware store melamine is the performance degrades quickly and they ghost badly with almost any brand of marker that remains on the board for a week or so.

I’ve tried a bunch of hacks including wiping the board with WD40 and have since moved on to glass write boards when and where I can.

I’ve had times in my career where I didn’t have $200 to spend, and the hardware store option is great, but $200, in the end, is a small price to pay if you use the board for more than a year.

> The only problem with hardware store melamine is the performance degrades quickly and they ghost badly

I've had mine for almost 3 years and it's holding up just fine using EXPO markers (also listed in the post). I haven't counted an exact number of times I've used it, but it's a lot. Hundreds of times for sure. I just make sure to clean it semi-regularly which takes about 20 seconds once a month. Maybe yours wore out quickly because you didn't clean it?

I've had the same experience with melamine. I'm currently liking my 3M stick-on whiteboard surface. I think it's mainly made for resurfacing old whiteboards, but I just stuck a sheet on my wall and it has been great: https://www.post-it.com/3M/en_US/post-it/ideas/dryerase/

But it looks like they've discontinued the larger sheets? That's a shame.

Protip for hardware store melamine boards: get a Mr Clean Bar, and use it to erase things regularly. Mr Clean is basically a melamine sponge (no, really), so it works exceptionally well on the hardware store melamine.

For what it's worth, not all melamine boards appear to be the same in this regard. I covered a wall of my office in 4x8 sheets from Home Depot. It held up great. So a few months later I covered another wall, but bought the melamine from Lowes this time. The stuff from Lowes was borderline useless after a few weeks.

Dunno how useful this is as I have no idea how to identify the actual brand/manufacturer of the "good" ones...

$200?!?

The whiteboard that I've been using for the past six or seven years cost me $15 - $20 depending on whatever the exchange rate was back then. I could go measure it, but it's about 40 cm tall by 60 cm wide.

> $200?!?

Google around for 8 foot x 4 foot whiteboards (244cm x 122cm). The pre-made solutions are all in the ~$200 USD range.

I see. That is significantly larger than what I use personally, but at 12 times the area it does explain 10 times the cost.

My problem with those boards was that they would not erase at all. It didn't matter which solution I used, the only one that did anything was Goof-Off, which still took a bit of scrubbing for things that had been left on the board for a little while.

> on a whiteboard my brain juices just flow.

Maybe standing up is also key in making your brain juices flow? Or the act of stepping away from your desk. (Assuming that's your setup)

I have a whiteboard that takes me 5 steps to reach and that definitely helps me

There have been studies that show walking gives a cognitive boost with respect to creativity. Some related to increased blood flow.

For me it's that act that helps, plus gathering stimuli you don't have at your desk which may bump you over a hurdle.

Whiteboards only tend to help me when I get to a problem I can't hold in short-term/working memory.

My PhD supervisor had me do all my writing in pencil. I still do it to this day. Being able to erase is great, but I prefer the permanence and limitless space of paper.

try a fountain pen with erasable blue ink

I had no idea that erasable ink (for fountain pens) is a thing. That’s awesome!

Invented by Pelikan in weimar germany!

You're going to need this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ink_eraser

(We called it 'ink killer' in school, you were however not allowed to use it the first few years after switching to ink from pencil.)

addendum: And you can get ballpens with the ink as well.

I highly disliked them, the result always looked off to me. At some point in school, I reverted to just striking through everything.

Yes, and they smell like pee

Erasable blue ink tends to fade away after a few month/years if the paper is left a bit exposed to air or humidity, since the eraser uses a chemical that is also present in the atmosphere. So be careful if you intend to use it.

Whats even more awesome: The ink is not erased, but literally made invisible by manipulating the molecues in the ink "responsible for the color". By reverting this chemical process, the ink can be made visible again!

I too still use pencil and paper

I have an absolutely huge project folder split into hundreds of topics, and a master ToDo in Excel used as a kind of Kanban/white board, with development notes in Word.

It's clumsy AF - the Excel part works, the Word part could be better - but it's a working solution of sorts, with everything synced across all my devices so I can make some notes on my Macbook while out and then pick up the thread at my desk later.

I tried all the usual alternatives - Trello, Org Mode, paper notebooks, real white boards, and so on - and so far this is the most productive.

take that UML

I had the opposite experience in research. I switched from pencil to pen. Reading later (e.g. 15 page math derivations) I could see some of the dead ends I took and mistakes made, while still following the thread.

Additionally, some research results should be stored in an immutable material.

I have the Trello desktop app staring me in the face all day from a third otherwise-redundant screen, it serves me well to know what is top of the to-do list. A whiteboard is on my to-buy list however.

I started working remotely a few months ago and I've been considering buying a whiteboard instead of the pen and paper approach.

Your post convinced me that it's a good thing to explore, thanks!

Also convinced me! Thanks as well.

For me, whiteboard plus phone camera equals flow. Idea -> snap -> iterate -> snap -> ...

I just use a Google Doc. It allows me to link to details, paste images, etc... ... and if I actually need to diagram: draw.io.

I add a new section for each day in bold, and then list todos beneath.

It's the only productivity habit I've ever kept for more than a year.

This is how I justified getting a Surface Hub for the wall. White board for work, TV at break time. Also nice large screen for watching virtual conferences and training videos.

I have an iPad pro with the "Goodnotes" app installed, I don't miss either whiteboard or paper

I move a lot so i'm carriyng a nice rollable sheet of pvc whiteboard.

Are there any large standing whiteboards that people would recommend?

I don't need either, my brain is enough. I sincerely believe if you eat and breathe this, you don't need either.

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