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Comment by sdevonoes | Hacker News Reader

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".

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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.

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 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 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.

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