With so much note taking apps nowadays, I can’t understand why does anyone still write notes with pen and paper. You need to bring the notepad, book or that paper to retrieve that information, and most of the time you don’t have it in hand. While my phone almost always reachable and you carry when you go out. For those still like to do handwriting, there’s many app does that and they can even convert it to text notes.
So, if you still write notes with pen and paper, why?
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a notebook and pencil in my shirt pocket are faster to open than a phone app
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handwriting is faster than thumb typing
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I can sketch an electrical diagram on paper way faster than anyone can with a stylus on some janky phone screen.
3.1) Even if there was a stylus/screen combination with the same haptics, fidelity, and input recognition speed as pencil on paper, it wouldn’t be 0.78€
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I can toss the notebook and diagrams to anyone working on a project with me with zero worry that they’ll drop it, forget it, or look around in the rest of it
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I can tear out a page and hand it to anyone instantly, instead of finding out what messaging app we have in common, copying (or screenshotting) the note and pasting it in an app
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I can insert a note into a physical book, stick it to the inside of a toolbox lid, a wall next to an electrical junction, inside a breaker box, or any other surface, and always have location-aware reminders waiting for me when I need them.
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With minimal environmental control, my notes are effectively immortal. I have notebooks of measurements and diagrams of most rooms, wall cavities, pipe runs, electrical runs, cable pulls, and dimensions of various equipment that have outlasted hard drives, backup tapes, and a few cloud storage companies.
I feel like you have to be exceptionally fast at handwriting or exceptionally slow at thumb typing for handwriting to be faster.
This guy notebooks.
This is the correct answer. I don’t take many notes personally myself, but your comment made me think I really should carry around a small notebook in my pocket.
This. Plus as a subjective thing: I personally remember stuff more easily when I write them down compared to typing. Also my written notes mix bullet points, regular writing, arrows and connections, without having to “switch mode” or install plugins.
I still use note-taking apps, sometimes as primary, sometimes as secondary tool.
Also, notes taken with pen and paper never run out of battery, or need to be charged. They’re powered by basically any light source.
On the flip side, they don’t come up in a mass search. I have so many notes. If it doesn’t come up in a search it mine as well not exist, I’ll never find it.
And your notes don’t suddenly increase the price of your storage.
No, it’s more of a subtle, inflationary pressure.
For me, it’s the act of writing, the memory it helps solidify, and… being an FP nerd.
Can I take notes on a phone? Sure, but I wouldn’t use a personal device for work notes, ever. Between my privacy, customer privacy laws, and separation of concerns. I’ve no compunctions at all, though, about sharing an A5 notebook between journal, work notes, personal notes, and reminders.
Digital text notes take up practically no storage space. You’ll spend more on new notebooks to write in over a year than digital storage space for the exact same content
Uh, except for buying more notebooks and writing utensils, which, if your text files are large enough to suddenly increase the price of storage (or even need to pay for text storage), you’re going to need a whole lot of.
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My handwriting is the perfect encryption. Nobody else can understand it. Lol.
@nutbutter The algorithm is especially harder to decrypt if you don’t write that often. I can tell it from my personal experience, lol.
Hi Steve! How are you doing?.. Good!..No last night was great! , yes I’m in the office…I need to pick up the stuff for the birthday party? Ok no problem, can you send me the address? …oh you driving, okay let me write it down… Hold on, I will put you on the loudspeaker so I can open my notes application… please don’t say anything embarrassing, I have like 10 co workers around me… Uh-um…
Yes, usually when in meetings. It’s 99% a society/conventional thing, but looking and typing on your phone while talking to someone will often be perceived as rude. Taking notes in your paper notebook though usually will come off as being attentive and interested.
100% agreed, especially true with clients.
IDK why exactly but typing notes during a consult is impersonal.
I do consults with my notepad flat on the desk so clients can see what I’m writing. I often draw diagrams for them.
Sometimes i need to hand info to someone, or paper is just nearby, or i need to draw a diagram.
I do have an ipad, but if you are brainstorming with other people, they don’t always know how to use it/touch the wrong thing.
All other notes are digital, because i am bad at keeping track of pieces of paper.
Because you remember it better when you actually write it out instead of just using a keyboard. And you can draw diagrams with ease. Most styluses are inaccurate and one dimensional, and buying a phone with actual proper stylus support in both the display and stylus itself is expensive. You could buy a separate technical device just for note taking with proper stylus support and have it upload notes to the cloud so you can access it at all times, but that requires a constant internet connection and mobile data is expensive. And then you have to carry this seperate device with you in the same way you’d carry a much cheaper physical notepad anyways.
Hell yeah i do, i’ve been keeping a notebook for scheduling and journaling for the last 5 years and it helps my thought process so much.
The biggest thing for me, i dont control the apps, so if an update breaks my apps, i’d be out of luck, but that cant happen with a notebook. My notes will always been as i wrote them.
I’ve even gone through writing with gel pens, to fountain pens, and now i just use pencils cause it’s just better over all.
I could get philosophical about it too. I remember what i write, my mind paces itself better as i commit to paper vs typing on a keyboard or screen. We have that primordial need to scribble on something, and i get to indulge it when i write:
- coffee
- milk
- rice (big bag)
Everyone should try it, with a simple caveat: keep it cheap. Write in cheap books with cheap pens and paper, then buy better as the cheap shit starts to fail on you. Some paper is really bad for ink, some are bad for pencil, somehow there’s some that worse for both. Some pencils have terrible erasers, but dont dwell on those choices.
Unfortunately nobody makes a cheap spiral bound, square ruled notebook. Certainly not one which stands up to 0.5mm pencils well.
I spent the money on the Leuchtturm 1917 notebooks after trying to make moleskines work. I do not regret it, nor the work that brought me there.
I’m left handed so spiral bound is out for the most part
+1 for pencils, I’m a Dixon Ticonderoga man for life
They used to be so good. I think the Sanford people bought them. Cant say how it affected quality tho as I’ve moved to metal barreled mechanical pencils and am in love with the Pentel Kura Toga rn
I tried many times to “go digital” at work, using different apps and methods, but it comes down to 3 things: I take notes and jot down ideas nonlinearly. For example, I’ll start taking a note from a meeting or lecture, then have an idea that I’ll jot down elsewhere, but go back to the original note to finish it then go and complete the idea. It’s stupid, but it works for me. The second is that I infrequently need to review my notes that are written since they get committed to memory. Unfinished ideas are different. Third, I can find notes faster when I wrote them vs typed them. I have a photographic memory. My desk is a huge mess, but I can usually find what I need because I remember it’s physical location in the pile.
One thing paper helps me with is free-form thought externalizing.
When you limit yourself to text, markdown, or sometimes even a digital pen/drawing app, I feel like it requires a bit of effort to use which allows ideas to slip from my mind.
With a pen/pencil and paper, I can write, draw, and connect about as fast as I can think. I can crumble the page and refine the idea over and over until something I like is there.
For work I used to have an agenda with notes but over time I realized it’s impossible to actually keep organized and have the most important things be the most easy to find. I moved to onenote and never looked back.
For personal notes I use a tablet with pen because it’s fun to write by hand without wasting trees and it still being digital it’s easier to organize and move information around.
Depends on the situation, but yes, I still keep notes with a mechanical pencil and an A5 spiral graphing paper notebook. I do use an electronic notebook (Joplin) for some things, especially if what I am working on will end up in a document or if I need to include screenshots, links, or other embedded items, but for general notes, paper. And, there are places I go that do not allow technology, so having the smaller notepad has come in very handy.
I use a tablet for most my notes but there’s a pretty obvious reason for paper/pen - you don’t have to charge a notebook.
I use a mechanical pencil. Pentel 205 for life baby.
Dont need to charge a piece of paper
Most of my writing is in pen and paper, I eat through a 200 page composition book about every year. I also do writing on shared drives, like Google docs mostly, and I have grapheme notepad installed on ever electronic device that I own, and I use it fairly often. Something about handwriting makes it easier to get started, maybe its my art/drawing background. I also write in cursive, and people seem to think my handwriting is nice. Admittedly I have practiced letters since grade school, which is kind of unusual I think. Maybe not, I just don’t have as many type/font/lettering conversations as I might like
