Using Paper for Everyday Tasks | Hacker News Reader

Using Paper for Everyday Tasks

christine.website

208 pointsmayiplease132 comments

Am I the only one that does write down stuff in paper to realize that I never come back to it at a later point? In fact I just throw away all my notes after a few weeks. The only reason I write down stuff is because:

it "liberates" my mind. I can't keep all the details in my brain. Example: designing a system. I can see the system in my mind but at some point I need to dump it to paper, so I can keep thinking about it. The paper, with the design, is discarded later on... the next time I need to continue working on that system, I start from scratch (although it's way easier than the first time). At some point I have the whole thing so memorized that I can start working on it without having to check the notes. I know it sounds counterintuitive, but "it works".

Also, my notes look terrible bad. I don't even care about my handwriting at that point; I only care about "move stuff from brain to paper".

Ya this makes sense. It's like setting up a chess board to study a position vs trying to do it all in your head.

I am the same. I need to write things down by hand to remember them.

Once it is written down i don't need the paper any more.

Totally. This is the main insight from the bullet journal people that the author seems to have reached in her own way. None of this stuff needs to live forever, it's just about managing short term memory and cognitive load.

I use a similar system to the article, just a bunch of checkboxes and stars in my notes. At the end of every day, I review and make sure everything is up to date. A couple of times a week I'll do a deeper review and either do the thing or formalize the work in an issue somewhere. My handwriting is an abomination, but this system has always worked pretty well for me.

I can relate to this. Often times, my notes don't serve as a reference but rather as an append-only stream-of-consciousness intended to reinforce my understanding of something.

I totally agree. Usually, I don't understand, can't read my notes after a months. What I do is that I put old nodes in a bin and leave them for a bit longer, just in case I remember something is in there. After 2 months, I just trash it.

Notes are just a way for me to think, to help my short term memory as you say. That's the best tool to think. Using my computer, even with my beloved Emacs (which is always shown as the best tool for everything :-) ) doesn't come close.

Now, for long term things, I do write them in a computer file.

Also, I don't know why, but writing with a pencil helps me to rememeber things much better than typing them on a keyboard. I'd say it's because the communication between my hands and my brain is more direct, dunno...

I always avoided this habit because I didn't want to accumulate sheets/notebooks; I picked up a Remarkable Tablet in December and it's been a game changer for me. All the benefits of paper-based note-taking with none of the mess, plus I can easily cut/paste/erase/reshuffle stuff, use different line/grid templates, and markup work documents without having to print them first.

For me, paper works for short lived tasks or "I need to get this out of my head for a now" style inbox stuff. Mostly just post-its and maybe a few larger scraps of paper.

Anything long-term or larger in scope I want to have in a digital, searchable, format.

What a lovely piece of writing. It’s good advice.

Index / record cards and a binder clip work wonders for me. I used to write in a notebook but the anxiety of losing it is real, especially when reaching the end of a notebook filled with precious knowledge.

80% of read-usage was for either the current day or the previous day. Deeper history is very useful but often done at my desk. You can keep a rolling N day history with a binder clip. Having pieces of card is very useful too. Rip em up, fold em, flick em when you need to give an impromptu demonstration of how TCP works*.

Get a Fujitsu ScanSnap too: digitising index cards is much easier than digitising bound notebooks, and it now means you can access your note taking history from any device — essential for all the notes that didn’t get converted into project manager tasks but which need to be referenced, retrospectively.

Paper only works for private task tracking so it won’t work for everything but it’s the best tool for the top of the getting-things-done funnel.

*I am a high school CS teacher, former FAANGSWE.

I second the ScanSnap. I have mine scan directly into DEVONthink, and have been in the “scan and shred” camp for a long time now. If paper comes into my hands I think I may possible want keep, I scan it in. Then, everything that I don’t specifically need to keep original copies of gets shredded.

It's the only way to fly.

I like pen and paper for organizing thoughts but find that the expensive notebooks and fancy fountain pens and elaborate formatting "systems" just interfere with the core value of pen and paper notes: there are no rules.

I have a stack of discarded printer paper on my desk. Rough drafts I've printed to proofread, that sort of thing. I make notes and doodles on the back side of these pages, using whatever pen or pencil is handy. If I decide they are worth keeping, I can use a three-hole punch and put them in a binder. Mostly they end up getting shredded and recycled.

There are cases where using a text editor makes more sense. Working through the installation of a piece of software, for example. Much easier to copy/paste from the terminal (or just use 'script' to record it and edit later) than to transcribe shell commands onto paper.

I think that ultimately any paper task tracking method that cannot be summarized within one or two pages of text is turning into that thing you do to procrastinate on actually doing shit, instead of a useful tool to help you decide what you want to do. Once you pass the preamble of "other ways I used to track tasks and why they don't work for me", this method passes that test. :)

Her method looks a lot like the old Bullet Journal method from before it turned into a major part of its creator's business affairs and became the sprawling ecosystem of rules and templates and books and discounts on paper/pens and Instgram influencers sharing the layouts they spent several hours on painting that is "BuJo".

Personally I prefer my variant of the Pomodoro Method from before it underwent a similar transformation; breaking one to-do up by the number of half-hour time units I expect it to take works well for me. Whatever works though. A nice notebook and pen work for me, too. Especially since I persuaded a few who had been bemoaning the excessive sizes of their fountain pen collections to send me some very nice perfectly-functional-but-unloved pens.

I started using a bullet journal some years back and quickly dropped all the rules and artistic spreads for regular notebooks and most recently a pre-printed planner from Japan.

Just went to the Bullet Journal site, wow, there's an app now? There is so much going on there. It's too much. I'm also team fountain pen.

I've been using mostly paper for my notes for more than 15 years. Of course I have a system that works for me, and it has evolved effortlessly over that time through practice. If I had to explain it to you it may sound convoluted, but it's not like I sat down one day and tried to design a complex system from scratch.

Lately I've been writing a lot in paper notepads and I've favored pens over pencils. I don't remember where I heard this idea originally, but there's something about using a pen which makes you grow a bit more comfortable with accepting that errors and mistakes will always happen but you can take action later on to correct those mistakes. With a pencil you often erase your mistakes and pretend they never happened. You're a flawed human, not a flawless writing machine. Expecting perfection from yourself at all times is very limiting. It's better to fill up a notebook with a mix of good ideas and mistakes than to leave it blank.

Depends on what you do. I've been glad to use pencil in the past, since it is water resistant compared to pen. Useful when you spill coffee on your notebook, or leave your hiking journal in the rain like me ...

Or just change pens. You can find permanant markers in a fine tip, artist pens are sometimes waterproof once dry, and different pens are more/less waterproof - though it has been a while since I tested standard pens, and a ball point (or mechanical pencil) is much cheaper than the waterproof options.

I'd think that the bigger problem when leaving a journal in the rain is trying to keep the pages from sticking together as it dries. Probably a lesser problem with the coffee unless you have a major spill.

Fair point! All tools have their uses, go with whatever works best for your situation.

I reach for a light mechanical pencil when I need to sketch a diagram or visualization since I tend to be terrible at estimating how much space will be taken up.

The article recommended Field Notes are water-proof as well, if weather conditions are a concern.

Author of the post here, I use pencil because it's easier for me. Pens work fine (and I've used pens some days) but I mostly use pencil because I prefer pencil. I have a mechanical pencil that I've been getting a lot of mileage out of.

I found some Japanese erasable pens (frixion) at my local Daiso and fell in love with them. .7 and .5 mm tips.

I second using pens over pencils. What I love about paper is that it's hard to delete things you might find useful later.

Same here, plus pencil smears on pages over time if the notebook id kept in a bag or in movement

I keep thinking I’ll like paper, but I just don’t. A few years ago I started keeping a daily journal: not so much a diary with today I feel… but a record like changed the van’s oil. Drove the kid to camp. Called Mom.. [0]

I was using Drafts on my iPhone as a kind of bullet journal, with an action group I wrote. [1] After a year of this, articles like this one convinced me to switch to a paper journal and to get a nice fountain pen. [2] I've done this for about a year and a half now, and when I fill up this current notebook next month, that's it. I'm going back to digital.

Turns out, pen and paper is vastly inferior to digital in every way I care about. Other people love it and that's awesome, but I can't escape the fact that I hate handwriting stuff, and I often cut my thoughts short so I can quit scribbling. Worse, the analog notes aren't actionable. My Drafts workflow turns my day's worth of bullet-style entries into a set of digital diary entries, new calendar events, and tasks in my task manager. I'm already carrying my iPhone with me everywhere [3], so I don't have to remember to drag something else along. If I'm jogging and think of something, I can say "hey Siri, remind me to..." and it makes a note for me without me having to pause and jot it down. Paper seems nice for impromptu drawings, but since keeping a paper journal, I've literally never drawn something in it.

For me, for my workflow, digital is vastly superior. Paper has its strengths, but none of them apply to how I want to use it. I mention all this for the benefit of other people reading this article and feeling vaguely guilty for not toting a paper notebook with them all the time. I think the important part is the note taking itself, not the medium they're recorded with.

[0] As an aside, this is enough for me to remember that day when I look back at it later. It’d be useless for anyone else reading it, but I write for me, not for a hypothetical person who gives a care about what I was doing in 2021.

[1] It got kinda popular: https://actions.getdrafts.com/g/1Sd

[2] Rhodia Webnotebook A5. Lamy Safari, Noodler’s Baystate Blue ink.

[3] None of this applies while on camping trips. I take a paper notebook with me to write stuff down because I don't have to charge it.

The only advantage of paper notebooks I've seen so far is that in certain specific corporate settings, you'll be seen as more professional/serious/"executive".

Otherwise, for me, if you want to do art, then sure, paper like any medium is a valid matter of stylistic choice. And I fully understand the tactile and visual pleasure of choosing and touching and interacting with a finely crafted physical product. But if you want to do practical / functional, digital beats paper the way paper beat clay tablets. Just the sheer convenience of having all of my notes and tasks, EVER, organized effortlessly, on any device I happen to be near, is a pure slam dunk. Shareability, automation, reminders, analysis, updates, backups... list goes on.

(I'll still be more excited to receive a nice paper letter than a quick text, of course :)

Which setting did you have in mind? I’ve brought my iPad with keyboard case to C-suite meetings and felt good about it, but I’m imagining a TV-style board meeting with no electronics to be seen.

You summed up my own relationship with paper very well. I don't begrudge people who use it as their primary system, but all the advantages you describe (plus the fact that I can type for infinity while my hand cramps up after a page of writing) make digital the clear winner.

I still write paper letters to my mom, but typically by printing them from text and including a picture of the grandkids.

On digital devices it's not clear if you're taking notes or writing an unrelated email.

Paper notebooks can't send email, so if a person sees you interacting with it they'll think you're taking notes, which means you're taking them seriously.

Yeah, I could see that. Good point.

I deal with that in other contexts, like Zoom meetings, by narrating what I’m doing:

Coworker: Could you do X for me?

Me: OK. I’m writing a reminder to myself here… type type type

…which seems to get a positive response from people I’m talking to.

I can and happily will second the A5 Rhodia Webnotebook recommendation. They're small enough for convenience, big enough for depth, sturdy enough to stand up to prolonged and heavy use, and full of beautiful Clairefontaine paper on which it's a positive pleasure to write. I've been using them for my diary for years now, and expect to go on doing so as long as I can still get them.

(Fwiw, I like a Decimo better than a Safari, although probably not as a first fountain pen - you want to start with a steel nib, which will be more forgiving as you learn a lighter hand, and the Decimo is both gold-nibbed and fairly expensive among pens that aren't coded "luxury". That said, if you're looking for a change, a Decimo is also light and comfortable to use, and durable in real-world use; I carry mine in my shirt pocket, and the only thing so far to give it trouble was a Labrador who was very excited to see me again for the first time in some years. Some folks do have grip trouble with the pocket clip, but all I can say is it's never bothered me, and the sheer understated elegance of the pen's design - in every way the opposite of the "look at me!" that a lot of more conventional pens convey - is a pleasure in itself, besides.)

Ooh, that’s a beautiful pen! The pocket clip seems like it’d serve the same purpose as the triangular grip on the Safari: “however you want to hold me, this is how you’re going to.” The Safari is the first pen that ever coerced me into holding it the “right” way (instead of my natural “lateral tripod” grip; see https://www.scoopwhoop.com/pencil-grip-names/) and I love it for that. Also, I’d be bummed if I lost my Safari, but seriously upset if I lost a Decimo.

But the Webnotebook is seriously wonderful with a nice pen and ink. It’s the perfectly level of minimal roughness that grabs ink while still feeling utterly smooth.

Oh, I worry about losing mine too, but if I'm doing anything that might pose a risk of it falling out of my pocket, I'll have my backpack with me and can stash it safely there. Other than that, it's either on my person, on my notebook, or in my hand. (Or in the car, if I'm visiting with my friends with the dog. I puppysat her for a week once, during what must have been an impressionable time in her youth - she greets me the same way every time as if it were the first time in years.) I might just be unusually good at keeping track of my things, though!

The clip is useful for the reason you describe, and that serves the user's purpose in a way I think most pen reviewers don't use a Decimo or Vanishing Point for long enough to discover. The whole design intent of the pen is that it should be easy and convenient to use entirely one-handed, and having the clip placed as it is helps the pen nestle neatly between the user's fingers as they change grip from "uncapping" the pen to writing with it.

After a while, just like with any other click pen, you barely have to look at it or even think about it to do it - I haven't done the latter in so long that I had to do the former just now in order to know how I use it at all. Most of the time I just use it. It's pure muscle memory at this point, and the clip is the only reason that can be true - not that the more deliberate process of preparing a conventional, round-sectioned fountain pen for use isn't pleasant in its own right, but the Decimo's lower overhead makes it much better suited to the way I think and write, as well as to regular carry and use with no need for special handling and no more need for special care than, say, my glasses.

(Sheesh, I should get Pilot to pay me a word rate...)

I personally don't like paper much because I write terribly, so either it takes a lot of time, or I can't read half of it. This makes writing either frustrating or useless.

That’s a legitimate issue. Handwriting makes my hand cramp up quickly, and has since elementary school. The moment I was allowed to stop writing and start typing, I leapt at the chance. Turns out I enjoy stringing words together when it’s not physically painful.

My experimentation with fountain pens helped a lot. You have to use a much lighter touch; if you mash a fountain pen against the paper the same way you would a crappy ballpoint, it’d make a huge mess and probably rip through the paper. Being forced to dial the pressure waaaayyyy back, and in the case of the Lamy Safari to hold the pen with a “proper” grip, make writing dramatically more comfortable. But know what’s many times more comfortable than that? Almost any keyboard that’s not completely awful. I’m writing this with an Apple Smart Keyboard Folio, which isn’t even in the same league as my main desktop keyboard, but is still vastly better than any pen I’ve ever used.

Wow that Drafts action thing looks amazing. I’ve not used Drafts much, how does the action group run: you do it manually somewhere within Drafts?

And then once you run it, you archive that day’s notes and start a new one for the next day?

I imported it and m currently trying to find where you run custom actions in ios Drafts.

It’s in the action sidebar (like https://getdrafts.com/assets/img/custom/screenshots/ss-03.jp...). You can type some information into a new draft, then run the “Append to Today’s Journal” action. It’ll find (or create) a new draft with a name like “Journal for 2021-06-26” and append the next of your current draft onto it.

At the end of the day, go to today’s “Journal for …” draft (or run the “Go to Today’s Journal” action to jump straight to it). Then run “Process journal actions” and it’ll process each line of today’s journal draft, then archive the draft.

Each of those actions has a keyboard shortcut so you can run them pretty quickly if you have an external keyboard.

Edit: Actually your reward also includes a bug report. Go to journal and append to journal work perfectly. However, process isn’t creating any tasks in omnifocus. I’ll test the other actions.

Format is:

* Do laundry

Ok, fantastical worked. Drafts opened fantastical. It did not ask to open omnifocus.

—————-

Oh, got it, thanks! I had to click manage in actions then enable your set, now it shows easily and the actions are straightforward.

It’s very hard to tell whether this will be a thing I fiddle with for a couple days and then set aside, or if it changes everything. But this has definite potential to be one of those things that changes everything. (My notes are a mess of notes and todos and never knew how to process well.)

Thanks for making this and for writing up the comments about it!

As your reward you get a feature request haha. If you’re ever adding to this, I would love Reminders support.

Look for a draft called “Quick Journaling settings”. Edit the line “* OmniFocus” to say “* Reminders”. That should make it create reminders instead of OF actions.

I wrote this to mirror my own personal workflow, so I admit that it’s not for everyone. I love how frictionless it made recording everything I needed to record, though. “At the dentist.”, then cmd-opt-A (for “Add”) records that I’m at the dentist. “* Call Joe.”, then cmd-opt-A will remind me to call Joe later.

Oh, if you want to keep (or throw away) the daily journal draft, edit the “Process journal items” action and change the “after success” action.

Edit: After taking a year and a half off from that action group while I scribbled stuff in notebooks, I’m about out of paper and will be resuming development on it very shortly.

Hmm. Have I done something wrong? I entered this:

% Test

* Test

And these are my journal settings

@ Fantastical

* OmniFocus

- Day One

% Reminders

Omnifocus opens, reminders doesn’t

(Note that they aren’t double spaced. Just did that cause Hn doesn’t like lists)

Reminders doesn’t open for me when Drafts sends things to it. If you open Reminders, to you have a Journal list with a new reminder in it?

No, I don’t. I tried making a Journal list too, but nothing went.

However, I tried GoodTask and that worked. And GoodTask syncs with Reminders. So actually, I guess this works perfectly for my use case.

Still not sure what’s wrong with my code for Reminders though

I use 8 pieces of A4 folded in half and stapled. You need a long-necked stapler, (or cotton and thread I suppose) and you're done. It always lies flat. A4 is super cheap. You can print covers or different types of page if you're interested in that kind of thing.

Author of the post here, I looked into that but my handwriting is so bad that I needed to have lines on the paper. It was cheaper to use crappy premade notebooks from Amazon.

Yeah, my note books can look quite messy. I enjoyed your post.

Everything about this is great.

Over the past 15 years, I've tried to break my paper notebook addiction numerous times, and have failed every time. It took a year of interacting with people over screen only to realize why paper has worked better for me (and why I'm going back to it after a year of Roam):

Writing things on paper forces you to be a better listener, AND when people realize you're writing things down, they tend to speak more concisely. It's not that hard to type at the speed of most conversations, but it never feels like it's really listening. Watch people who do it! They nod, type furiously, and when they have something they want to add they will change their facial expression to signal that they want to finish typing their sentence before they want to interject.

Saying "hold on, let me write this down" gives everyone a moment to refocus, and it's a lot more natural to say that than "hold on, let me type this". Plus, it makes it much more natural to revisit topics and let the conversation flow.

Roam, Notion, GitHub Issues, etc are all great for asynchronous communication and coordination, but I don't know that any system will ever beat writing things down by hand for talking with people. (Although, the hype around ReMarkable is tough to ignore...)

As I see it we live through a period where two incredible capabilities remain unreconciled. The free format ability of paper to capture nuance, creativity and complexity in recording information versus the powerful augmentation of search / modify / repurpose existing records that you get with digital tools. Not sure there will ever be something that can support both but it does not sound forbidden by some law of nature

The note taking device like Remarkable or Supernote are getting pretty close.

over the years I've been so dissapointed with pens[0] at some point I've given up. but maybe I will muster the will to try again :-)

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compaq_Concerto

The Remarkable2 tablet uses a pen with disposable nibs, which means you get good writing feedback. In addition, they optimized the e-ink display for writing by minimizing the distance between the display layer and the pen (ie, less gap between the tip and where you see the writing). The device also has generally minimal lag.

If an iPad is 60% of the writing experience, the RM2 is 80+%.

The iPad + Pencil + Notability is the perfect device for me. All I really use it for is note taking, and it has completely replaced pen and paper in my life.

I can search, organise and back up my notes, and also share screen / convert them to PDF and send them to colleagues easily. I can also easily rearrange the page and convert my scribbles to text so other people can understand them.

It was expensive compared to a notebook, but well worth it.

I would love to. The most cumbersome thing about notebooks, even larger ones like A3, is 1) they dont lie flat, and 2) even if (eg. rings) when I want to write on the left page, my hand hits the "spine" between the pages and its not comfortable writing.

When I used paper I got used to have a stack of A4, put a title in one corner, I?d keep them on my left beside the keyboard. There are nice a4 in 4 light pastel colors, easier on the eyes than white, and simple memory cue when looking in the pile.

I’d have cheatsheets and tasks, the task/feature pages with lots of check boxes. I’d keep some cheatsheets for a long time, like css/typescript, and the task ones i would throw away when that feature is done.

Just stating the obvious. All people writing with a fountain pen know that writing in notebooks of any sort is more pleasant when said notebook is rotated 90 degrees, with its spine going across. From left to right.

Then, the angle of the paper to the tip point does not vary across the line.

Surely you mean 45°? 90° is rather extreme.

Not if you're writing parallel to the spine.

I like memo pads, something like this: https://www.jetpens.com/Tomoe-River-52-gsm-Paper-Pad-A4-Blan....

I use the right hand pages only. When I get to the back I flip the book over and, starting from the back, continue using the right hand pages that were formerly on the left.

The ones I use are like 4 inches by 5.5 inches. Really tiny. Easy to deal with.

Sewn bindings will lie flat if the book is thin enough, like 100 pages.

You may like to try wrist-friendly soft-ring notebooks:

https://www.jetpens.com/Kokuyo-Campus-Soft-Ring-Notebook-Sem...

> If the item either can't or won't be done, cross out the - to make it into a *.

How about put a circle around the - to make it a "stop" sign?

Clever one :-)

I love these kind of tips that seem so obvious but that I’d never thought of.

I'll look into that! X is a bit easier for me to write consistently though (really bad handwriting).

How about a middle ground? I've been looking into the new generation of eink devices that are great for notetaking. Remarkable etc Best of both worlds and no more dead trees

Same here. The main benefits to me would be the ability to search and extract notes more easily.

Currently using a pen and paper system that's not dissimilar to bullet-journaling, but adapted to play nicer with unescapable digital calendars etc.

I have one. You still can’t quickly flick back onto last week’s notes, and object permanence issues remain. Will never be the same as paper.

A better middle ground is probably one of those smart pens that automatically digitizes your scribbles, while you’re still using a paper notebook.

While I love my Remarkable 2 for taking notes, journaling, drawing and sharing/exporting the results, it lacks search/discoverability/navigation.

In a physical notebook it’s trivial to flip back a few pages to recall a note from last week. On remarkable that takes a lot more time, and the time cost is paid twice, once for finding the old note, and a second time to get back to the page I was writing. (Imagine working in a single browser window fullscreen without tabs).

I’m still looking for an optimal flow. And I’m gravitating towards something that can ingest remarkable pages, perform OCR and categorise/index the results.

Onyx boox allows split screen

Onyx Boox is a GPL offender though with some other sketchy call-home activity going on. This is a dealbreaker for me.

https://www.reddit.com/r/Onyx_Boox/comments/hsn7kx/onyx_usin...

Eww, I hadn’t seen that. That’s a hard no for me, too.

>In a physical notebook it’s trivial to flip back a few pages to recall a note from last week. On remarkable that takes a lot more time, and the time cost is paid twice, once for finding the old note, and a second time to get back to the page I was writing.

Shelved because I realized 1) This will be much more comfortable on forthcoming (cheaper) AR glasses than on one's phone, and 2) I still don't know how to code, but I imagine that this particular UX problem will shortly be one that is no longer insurmountable.

https://www.instagram.com/p/CFcOov1FV6G/

How many notes do you actually take? It takes about 113kg co2 to produce an iPad[1] and other tablets may produce more as much as 200kg. That's roughly equivalent to the emissions from producing 2000-6000 sheets of paper [2].

But we are not including the running electricity emissions of of the Remarkable, plus the co2 emissions of their cloud service. Plus electronics produce a lot dirtier pollution on disposal than paper.

I taught 4 courses this year, plus research work. And I think I got through about 500 sheets of notes. If I had a Remarkable, it would maybe last 4-5 years. I think lifetime pollution from a tablet like Remarkable is always going to be more than from just using paper.

[1] https://newzik.com/blog/ipad-environmental-report/

[2] https://www.goodenergy.co.uk/good-stats-on-carbon-saving/

Plus paper is recyclable

> no more dead trees

Doesn't paper comes mostly from managed forests? Or maybe you attach a higher value to the life of trees than most people? (which is fine, just surprising to me)

I have used paper but finally with my Remarkable 2 I can keep my paper workflow/feel and don’t waste paper .

The Remarkable looks very useful.

But of course the Remarkable has an ecological footprint too, just like paper has.

A non-zero amount of energy and resources went into manufacturing the device. Extracting and shipping metals/oil/silicone, refining those materials, then constructing the display/CPU/motherboard/other components, then shipping all the components to the assembly site, then shipping the device to the store/warehouse, etc. It’s a lot more complicated than making paper.

Then multiple times per week the device has to be charged, using electricity that might come from a coal power plant in worst case.

I’m not saying one shouldn’t buy a Remarkable. But I don’t think it’s fair to say that the Remarkable is less wasteful than paper before doing a life cycle assessment.

It's not like making paper is energy free. You need to grow the trees, cut the trees using machinery, transport cut trees to factory which is under all likelihood not anywhere close, turn tree pulp into paper, package it, ship it to warehouses before it's actually shipped to the end store to be eventually picked up by a consumer. Not sure what your point actually is, if you want to compare both supply chains then you need to take everything in account, including the amount of paper you'd need over your lifetime in case you did not use any electronic device, the amount of garbage it produces, etc...

Exactly. Hence the comment about the life cycle assessment.

If we use retail price as a proxy for resource use, how many pages of medium quality notebook could you buy for the price of a Remarkable table.

I got about 2 years of notebooks, pencils and erasers for about $50 CAD; so it's got a long way to go lol.

I don't think using paper in a reasonable and conscious manner is "wasting" the paper. Most of the paper waste, I suspect, is from different uses (like printing tons of crap in offices). Thoughts?

Brilliant post!

This system reminds me of Bullet Journaling (https://bulletjournal.com/), which I have used on and off for a long time now. Folks who have adopted Bullet Journaling have come up with some very interesting symbols to capture parts of the day (some which I have found more useful than others).

I do find that any paper-based system breaks down for things that are recurring, and I have to resign and use some calendaring system to accommodate those (think changing the air-filter on the HVAC). I also feel that longer-than-a-day projects are harder to track on paper (If anyone has suggestions here I am all ears). I often find myself thinking of a project, breaking it down, then using paper to take one or two everyday till I feel like I am done.

My approach to finding balance between paper and electronic is

- Use paper daily (for the same reason that the OP suggest). Object permanence is real. I can't tell you how many times I just _remember_ writing something down on the left-hand side near the top that has saved my life. - If a recurring reminder comes through, add it to the list of Todos for today (on paper) - At the end of the day I usually end up transcribing my day into markdown notes (using https://bear.app/)

Over time I have learned that not everything works well in one format (I have been thinking about getting the Remarkable but my god that's steep)—What I end up doing is "linking" from one medium to another.

For example, if I start by writing an entry or a note on paper that I feel will be better described in a diagram or a code snippet I simply put a note on paper telling me to go to Bear (Since all notes are dated this is relatively easy). Or vice-versa—if I doodled out a diagram on paper, I simply put a "See notebook" in my Bear notes.

Looking forward to seeing how others are doing this.

Long term tasks and reminders need to be extracted from the scrawl/sprawl of day to day notes!

Your process of transcribing notes into markdown is good. I prefer to think of it as extracting and summarizing, but full transcription can work well.

I'm pretty similar except for the digital portion software. My final work notes live as an org-roam database because it has really rich linking, export and embed options. Day to day is in paper and the pertinent stuff is "elevated" to digital.

Diagrams get inserted as an image as-is and can be tagged with pertinent info. I do have the benefit of having decent handwriting that most can read as is or be OCR'd.

Good read! My system is similar:

- Yellow (legal) pad for daily todo. Use pen on this pad because it is ok to not keep it neat because the page will be thrown away next morning. So, next morning, tear off the top leaf of yesterday, start no a fresh sheet with the date on top, and transfer any todos that need to be carried forward. Typically, a todo is either done, or not needed, or still pending. The pending ones make it to the fresh page.

- A notebook for note taking. E.g. meetings, or plans etc. I use a mechanical pencil and an eraser with this one. Mistakes and badly written words can be erased and rewritten. When I reference this notebook, it is good to see that things are legible even after a few days.

Summary:

- Legal pad and a pen for tasks. Start a new leaf every morning.

- Notebook, pencil, eraser for notes. Keep it neat, and can be referenced later.

For me, the Rocketbook line of notebooks gives me the best of both worlds. I write/draw in the notebook, then I can scan the pages with the app, and the images land in my Google Drive (configurable). Then when the notebook is full I wash the pages and it's ready to start over.

I’ve turned to using text editor and then paper too, mainly for its simplicity. “Running out of battery” was never a problem for me, but maintenance and getting used to the complex UI of today’s task / knowledge management systems definitely was a painful experience.

Like many others, I have decided to create something new. A tool which would be simple to use just like a text editor / paper but functional like a full fledged app. It’s a hard problem. Though I feel like new approaches are needed, especially because the way the alternative tools are designed today seems a bit obsolete. The 21st century deserves something better..

happy to share the access https://acreom.com/ and receive some feedback.

Is there a high contrast light theme, like pen on paper? I can’t use dark themes.

This is a good writeup. I tried paper, maybe I should try it again.

I think one benefit of this journaling is that you could easily do a personal retro weekly or so and update a digital brag file. As a manager I loved when reports have a brag file, as this helps immensely during a performance review cycle.

Nothing about shorthand. Not that this blog post specifically should have, but it seems conspicuously absent in all blog posts about paper, handwriting, note taking, etc. It's an established idea and demonstrably allows people to take dictation and court reporting at much faster speeds than handwriting - print or cursive.

Why is it such a non-thing, even in productivity/efficiency circles and alternate/quirky circles, why aren't we taught it early on in school where we're expected to go the next decade taking handwritten notes during lectures?

Author here, I've been looking at using Shavian or the like in the future, but most of what I need can be done in information dense notes like (copying from yesterday's list):

    -> debug xesite on xbox
    -> cert for xesite
      - gplay + MS
    + w10 testing 1.10
      · cannot reproduce supposed issue with exit nodes, network issues?

Etc. I've just not put time into something like shorthand yet. I may do it in the future (energy permitting) but it just hasn't come up yet.

Ford improved shorthand looks neat. I'm gonna take a closer look at it. Thanks for the tip!

I read a tiny bit about shorthand and invented my own using some of the principles other systems were designed on during a long weekend. Great investment, lots of fun. I specifically designed notation that could be common across digital and handwritten, and that paid off big.

Have you written anything about that (in longhand!) - what was in the design for digital/handwriting crossover?

I haven't written about it before, but happy to share.

The way I made the crossover work is that normal text was all lower case alphanumeric. This is similar to Teeline shorthand, from which I borrowed ideas heavily. Because all symbols were alphanumeric, it could work in either medium.

The next step was to figure out how to make this effective in handwriting. Typing letters is easy, but writing them varies in difficulty/time. Again I borrowed from Teeline. I created a written symbol for each character that minimized pen strokes. "k" for example is just a sideways "v," which saves the vertical stroke. "m" is just an arch. I also ignored unnecessary letters, so the word "letters" could be shortened to "ltrs."

The final step was finding a way to shorten the most common English words and character strings. I came up with 2 mechanisms: capitalization and spacing. This turned out to be really flexible. A "g" just means "g," but "G" can mean different things depending on whether it's in a word or spaced alone. So in a word it replaces "ing," but standalone it is the word "get." So let's say I wanted to write the sentence:

"I am going to the store to get a bag of potatoes."

I could type this:

i gG t T str t G a bg ptatos

(A final question you might have: how did I capitalize those handwritten symbols? I decided not to make a whole other set of unique symbols, but instead just put a little apostrophe, as in (m'), or "m prime.")

EDIT: I have also started using some of the symbols on the keyboard to symbolize project planning, and I use these in handwriting too. "%" is chance or odds, "!" is an experiment or prototype, "^" is a decision.

Now I think I see what you mean - "work digitally" meaning a shorthand you can use with a keyboard? Rather than one you could hand-draw on a tablet and then use an OCR style thing.

It's not phonetic, but it's got some of the same approaches like -ing suffix being a single symbol.

Interesting, thanks :)

I find myself feeling naked whenever I'm too far from a pen and paper. I take most of my structured notes on a computer, but paper is where I think through ideas. I can draw diagrams, do math, and organise thoughts visually more easily on paper than digital.

I also hate taking notes or writing much more than a text on my phone, so I enjoy having a notebook or looseleaf paper wherever I am.

Somewhat of a random note, but what's up with the WebMention trackbacks at the bottom of OP? I'm not seeing any outright malicious/spam links but there's a lot of redundancy, and unhelpful anchor texts like "Bridgy response" in some links, whilst other links from the same service manage to excerpt the mention correctly.

That's a bug in my web mention scraper! I've been meaning to fix that but I have had bigger things to worry about.

I only use paper to capture the 3-5 most important things du jour. All the other notes go into Bear.app — Tried all-paper a gazillion times but if you work a lot with links, visual inspirations, code snippets, etc. it just doesn't make sense — no matter how much I love sharpening that Blackwing pencil.

Sounds nice, but I can barely read my own handwriting and my hand starts to hurt after writing like one word.

I have the same problem, I tried so many ways of holding a pen, but nothing works. Like you said, it starts already after writing one sentence or something like that. Made my schooltime really complicated.

How tightly do you hold your pen? That’s a lot of people’s cause of hand strain.

It should be held as lightly as possible. Ideally someone should be able to lean over your shoulder and pluck your pen/pencil straight out of your hand with next to no resistance.

I like using paper for notes, TODOs, drafts, doodling, etc. Especially I like that tactile feeling when I roll a (mechanical) pencil in my fingers. As of paper: I prefer notebooks with tear-off pages, and love to crumple and throw them out when completed ))

I kinda use Google docs in same manner. I have separate documents for different professional projects and personal goals. I use them in append mode only, and simple colors to differentiate to-do and done items- red/black.

I keep trying this. I have a coffee cup full of pens, a stack of 3x5 cards, and Post-It notes not 6" from my mouse hand. I just hardly reach for them.

It takes 21 days to form a habit. Keep pushing!

I've had the habit of having these things next to me for six months.

It's just not useful to me.

I keep a pen and a $.79 spiral notebook on my desk. When it fills up, I run it through the scanner and toss it, then buy another one.

The only thing that's important is getting thoughts out of your head.

Apparently Richard Branson uses a very similar method.

Paper is still the best :p

> Paper doesn't vanish into the shadow realm when I close the window.

No, but it can vanish when you open the window. :-)

I feel bad but that page feels super cringy.

And its surprisingly hard to just ignore it. why?! :|

I like the aesthetics. But I use Emacs and org-mode, and don't mind using plain text for everything.

> And its surprisingly hard to just ignore it. why?! :|

That sounds like a you problem. It doesn't really affect my reading. Sure it's more creative than the usual corporate blog style but I don't mind.

IMHO, making records (flammable ones that exist in only one place and don't automatically back up and replicate) by smudging dark schmutz on to dead tree pulp is barbaric.

It's barbaric even when done with a printer. It's extra barbaric doing the smudging with your low resolution meat claw.

I carry a portable battery powered bluetooth thermal printer with me in my handbag. The only thing I will handwrite is my signature.

I love the idea of wasting trees because you just prefer to write things down on paper.

Been in the workforce for decades and I've met more than a handful of people who love writing things down and, of course, drawing stuff.

I've had a guy justify not taking notes because he didn't have a pen and paper on hand...WHILE having an online meeting. On a computer.

Now, these people don't have much in common but they tend to advertise this behaviour as benefitial to me and we always end up resenting each other.

In my experience, the same people often fill the white boards with incomprehensible junk. Again, for my benefit...

Edit:downvotes are not surprising. Waste is good, people. Waste is good.

Anyway, didn't have much sleep last night, so I am a bit cranky

You seem to have strong negative feelings about this.

But I very much struggle to take reasonable notes on a computer. Something feels “limiting” in a way, even if I’m consciously aware that you can reasonably do everything on a laptop that I would use paper for, and there are benefits like search-ability.

For writing notes I feel flexibility and freedom to redirect my future attention to different parts of the text or accentuate different sections with emphasis or tag a task to be done (with a diamond, in my case).

It’s also the case that if I need to break out into a logical diagram I can easily do so.

There’s something to be said for how it’s viewed by others too… writing notes looks focused. Tapping into a laptop looks distracted.

It is limiting. Doing a diagram on a computer is tedious, and even math notation is slow.

Depends. If you throw the paper away then sure, it's waste.

But... if you keep it then suddenly you're doing carbon capture. Saving the environment one bad meeting at a time. Or riveting collections of todo-done.

But yeah the idiots who use the "I don't have paper therefore can't take notes." They're the worst.

There's no way, currently, for digital to compete with the precision and tactile feel of paper. One day we may get there, we are advancing remarkably quickly (pun intended).

I think it's certainly remarkable too.

Any use of resources has an ecological impact that needs to be weighed against the benefits.

Same with driving a car, eating meat, buying a new shirt instead of second hand, buying new furniture instead of second hand, flying, buying disposable diapers for your kid instead of textile diapers, etc.

There’s nothing special with paper in this regard.

You are right. Also please note that I do not drive a car, nor do I consume meat. Also, I take great lengths to avoid single use items or use them multiple times.

None of it makes me a better/conscious person but I felt it was necessary to address some of your points

I applaud you for this!

Just out of curiosity, do you use toilet paper?

Or do you use a bidet? or do use textile napkins that you wash regularly?

I take a shower immediately after a dump

Have you done the math on this?

My gut says this seems, worse somehow.

Using a 9 l/min shower head for a 6 minute shower results in 54 litres of water being consumed. 54 litres heated from ambient (say; 15 deg C) to shower temperature (say; 40 deg C) requires 1.6 kWh of energy.

Most toilet paper is recycled so it’s a matter of figuring out how much the recycle process consumes per roll, then dividing it by the amount of average toilet paper segments a person uses.

EDIT: Lloyd Alter of the website treehugger.com reports that making a single roll of toilet paper requires 37 gallons of water, 1.3 kilowatt/hours (KWh) of electricity and some 1.5 pounds of wood.

So a whole roll is less than a shower, but I guess it also depends how the energy is being generated; because there are indications that toilet rolls are not entirely recycled, most use some amount of virgin wood.

Anyway, my point is not "you're wrong", my point is that it's a lot more nuanced than people think, and often the "green" solution can be less green but make them feel better.

I simply answered the question. I have zero doubt taking a bath is worse than using sane amounts of TP

A bidet uses far less water than a shower.

Look, quite a lot of new timber is used to produce toilet paper. But OP was complaining about people cutting trees to take notes. Seems reasonable to ask if they also have a problem with toilet paper, which probably will use more wood pulp over the life time than their notebooks ever will.

Still using an "ancient" pocket filofax (the one with 4 rings), I don't even buy paper for the notes anymore: it's easy to find discarded one-side printed on A4 brochures/presentations etc, I cut them to size via a guillotine cutter and bob's your uncle, its just for notes etc then once filled: shredded and off to the compost

As a consumer, the trees are already wasted. Nothing you can do will change that fact.

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