People are not writing using pen on paper any longer | Hacker News Reader

People are not writing using pen on paper any longer

pollieglot.com

4 pointsysfah7 comments

> For the bulk of us, pen and paper are becoming obsolete. We are quickly embracing digital alternatives because they are more efficient and easy to use.

Bullshit. After trying all kinds of "digital alternatives" for note-taking, I went back to pen-and-paper. As a tool, it's more flexible, balanced, and easy-to-use than alternatives. Plus, hand-creating a physical artifact allows one to utilize natural memory for manipulating physical objects (e.g. remembering the information I need is "on the bottom-half of a page roughly in X location, next to a diagram of Y").

Digital technologies are unbalanced tools optimized to favor a particular use case (e.g. fast entry of only text, bulk reproduction, fast transmission, etc.) at the expense of others (e.g. tool-weight, complexity, overstrict schemas, difficulty composing different types of things).

>Bullshit. After trying all kinds of "digital alternatives" for note-taking, I went back to pen-and-paper.

Sure. How does what YOU did invalidate a general observation, and even more so, make it "bullshit"?

The observation about what "the bulk of us" do might be factually correct or not (I'm pretty use it is).

But it's in no way invalidated just because you do something else...

Only absolute statements are invalidated by a single counter-example (or a handful of them).

I understand where you are coming from and I apologize for using the word 'bulk' without providing any data to support it.

There is no denying the flexibility of using a pen-and-paper and the cognitive benefits that comes along with it. However the convenience of using a keyboard on mobile and desktop for daily activities is still significant.

I personally feel using a digital tool like Workflowy, Obsidian.md, or Roam Research brings more creativity to my thinking.

Appreciate your thoughts.

Disagree. I'm still writing all important notes with a pen and paper. Don't get me wrong, I use apps like Evernote or now Notion for daily use, but at the end most of the information there mostly are not revisited after several weeks. Even I usually forgot where I put my notes there.

On the other hands, I write many important notes, business ideas, drawings, or sketches in my paper notebook. I always remember which notebook I put the note about a thing.

Also, the paper notebook is great. No need batteries, no hang/lag, and no need internet.

I appreciate you sharing your thoughts. It feels nice to have a clean discussion like this.

I used to write a lot on paper but the convenience of using a digital tool makes sense to my workflow, personally and professionally.

When I write on paper, it is usually a huge brain dump. And it tends to get messy. However, I learned to be more organized when I used a tool like Notion. I know in which workspace I'm keeping my thoughts and in which workspace I do work. If ever I need to link a certain thought together, I can simply connect the docs using the linking feature.

It's difficult to do so on pen and paper. And I agree, paper notebook is great :)

I would like to use my ipad more for notes, but honestly note taking apps just suck. Procreate is the only app I've used that comes close to capturing what it's like to write on paper, but it's really not designed for that use case. The rest of my writing goes into google docs, commit messages, and markdown files. I am using paper less over time, but I think that may just be a side effect of my work atm.

If you're using ipad for note taking, I'd recommend a tool called Muse (https://museapp.com). It's a bit expensive but it does what it does really well.

Procreate is designed for illustrations and image editing — it's not optimized for note taking so I understand the frustration.

We're the same. I'm using paper less over time, too. And I intend to stay that way.

Appreciate your thoughts!

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