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.
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.
This guy notebooks.
And your notes don’t suddenly increase the price of your storage.
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.
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.
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I do. Its much easier
And is somewhat satisfying, especially with a nice pen/pad.
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Oh yes. The actual craft of writing something down with a pencil does wonders for me to actually remembering stuff.
Yeah the note itself doesn’t really matter in my experience, it’s the note-taking itself that helps register stuff.
I always have a notepad next to me while working. The notes on paper somehow guide my workflow.
Yes, at work. Healthcare --> HIPAA All notes shredded at the end of the shift or whenever the patient no longer is on your unit.
I use paper for all my “at the moment notes” it’s just easier because actually unlocking my phone and opening a note app then starting a note takes too long and a lot of the time I need to draw a diagram or something to go along with it. Anything important gets transferred into my onenote from the paper later on. I would like to find a good app to go completely digital but so far nothing I’ve found meets that need as well as just carrying a notebook around.
I love the tactile feeling of writing on paper.
I do both. I use Obsidian to maintain lots of notes and links and such. But I also carry a fountain pen and a notebook in my pocket. I find when I write stuff down in there I tend to remember it more. I also carry an A5 notebook at work to take down work notes and track my todo’s. More productive, looks better in meetings, and I’m less likely to get distracted by notifications or the draw of apps/social-media.
Lots of times I’ll do a drawing of dimensions or an idea, then I’ll take a picture of that and throw it in Obsidian later. Also if it’s a note that I want to keep later I’ll transcribe it into my digital notes.
I just enjoy the act of writing and getting to own a pen that I won’t just lose or loan away. I’ll also pick up old notebooks sometimes and be reminded of things I wanted to do or ideas I had that got missed, and the reminder is way more tangible and impacting that being reminded by found digital notes. It comes with the tactile memories as well.
Yep. I get distracted with my phone. I doodle on my notes. I enjoy writing in cursive, it’s so loopy! I like pens, they’re neat!
I also do bullet journaling, but not very strict to the original style. I just draw my own little boxes.
I pretty much only take notes with pen&paper. Never really thought about doing it otherwise. Seems like it would be much more inconvenient on my phone since I don’t thumb type and I hate laptop keyboards.
I remember it better when I write it out. Typing doesn’t do the same.
The reason is often that writing forces you to already process and abstract the information. Especially if you are taking notes real-time like in a lecture. You will naturally want to shorten the info to write less so you have to process and understand what is the important info, you have to take the info in context of previous knowledge etc. Typing is often much more mechanical, you just need to process the info as it is coming in and transform it into mechanical keypress.
I also remember something about handwriting processing being a nuanced and very separate process from typing, although I am not certain on this. There was also some stuff about reading your handwritten notes triggering memories better than typed notes.
Til, thanks!
For anything I’ll need to share or search, digital.
But for everything else, I remember it better if I commit handwriting to it, and I use fountain pens, it’s a nicer experience.
Your explanation make sense
For me it’s other way around. If I have to write I only focus on writing itself, and not the content. This also often causes me to accidentally repeat words, mix up letters, erase it, repeatedly end up writing the wrong letter because I need to speed up, then I have to leave out a section because I already forgot what I wanted to write.
And in the end I still can’t decipher quarter of my handwriting.
I do physical and digital notes both, just so that information is available in as many places as possible. I need a number to refer to a thing in an email? It’s in a word doc, on a post-it note on my monitor, on my physical and digital calendar probably, and in a spreadsheet. No matter what, I can find the info I need.
And I feel like the actual act of handwriting helps me remember what I’m writing. I’ll take notes during a meeting or a class, never look at them again, and remember the important info. If I don’t take notes, I might as well have not been there lol.
Dont need to charge a piece of paper
I’ll answer with a simple test. Do the following first on your phone and then on a piece of paper:
Design a thing, something physical; a box, a house, a chair, whatever. In addition to the diagram, this note must include a description of the item, the bill of materials, the dimensions and, if applicable, assembly instructions that you could confidently hand to someone else and have them follow. Ideally, you should include the dimensions of the object directly on the sketch itself.
Now give this to someone and see how accurately they can reproduce the item while you go off and make a phone call.
In addition, the mere act of giving that information to somebody else.
On a phone I can obviously text somebody, but what if I’m somewhere with bad signal (and yes, those places often exist), or the person doesn’t have the phone in their pocket right that second (yes, this also happens in places with work where people don’t want to risk the phone in their pocket breaking)?
With a mini notepad, I can rip a sheet of notes off and hand that diagram to somebody else. If it’s work that will take some time doing while following a diagram, having a phone screen locking up because it isn’t being touched is a hassle and going into the settings to change it back and forth is annoying.
For those of you that do, join us at !fountainpens@wayfarershaven.eu :)
Ooooooh, that looks nice. I think I’ll join!
