I’ve tried various, numerous electronic means of note taking.
So far, none of them seem to “stick” – I always always always seem to come back to pen and paper.
Perhaps if I didn’t have a thing for fountain pens, I wouldn’t be so attached to handwriting everything.
Even though the paper notebook is rather less convenient than an electronic one in terms of searchability, the pleasure of handwriting always seems to win over the convenience factor.
When I leave my paper notebook in the wrong place so I don’t have access to my plans, it is so utterly inconvenient. Logic tells me I should get over this irrational attachment and just do the smart thing. Put them all in the cloud. Tag them. Archive them.
I keep telling myself electronic would be more efficient.
So periodically I do go back to some previously tried electronic method. Or I try a new app – maybe this will be the one that wins me over. For a while it seems to work, but eventually, inevitably, I start missing the pen and paper, yet again.
Funny how I don’t seem to miss the dead tree book, when it comes to reading. It’s been, what, a couple of years since I started reading ebooks? No sign of me going back to paper books…
Perhaps I could cure myself of the urge to scribble by only allowing myself a ballpoint pen and coarse scratchy unpleasant paper to write on. But that would seem like punishing myself for no real reason. Do I really needto be cured?
This post was drafted using a Noodler’s Ahab fountain pen with a semi-flexible nib, and Noodler’s Heart of Darkness black ink.
3 Comments
Ditto. (Not really surprising, I guess.)
Do you like the Ahab?
I hear you! I do a mix of both.
I use a Moleskine notebook for to do lists and weekly planning. When I’m at work, I block out chunks of time in my diary so I get reminders for the urgent stuff, and so I can attempt to stick to a time limit. I decided not to do this over my sabbatical and instead, I made myself a printable weekly planner that I use to block out time for specific tasks. I’m loving not having my calendar ding at me all day. Plus, it’s so much more satisfying crossing something off a physical list!
I briefly made lists in Bamboo Paper to mix writing with tech. But then a small child destroyed a to do list, so I gave up on that quick smart.
I take notes in EverNote and I think the reason this works for me is because I’ve stopped worrying about tagging stuff. I often don’t even worry about choosing a specific notebook, but just save into my default notebook (except when the note is to be shared – then it goes in the right place so the sharers can see it). When I used to tag every note and file it in the right notebook, I got overwhelmed and couldn’t use it. But there’s really no need to tag when you’re searching the full text, and even with hundreds of notes, it’s not hard to find what you’re after.
As for whether you need to be cured: hell no! You’re our flexnib!
“Noodler’s Heart of Darkness black ink” – even if I did not know what that was I would tell you to use it – it sounds beautiful!