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 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
I’d rather do that despite the costs. I like the real storage paper requires.
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.
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.
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.
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.
I feel like you have to be exceptionally fast at handwriting or exceptionally slow at thumb typing for handwriting to be faster.
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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
Another option for consideration is a tablet with a pencil stylus and palm rejection (personally, iPad works great for me). It doesn’t feel as nice as pen and paper ofc, but it strikes a nice middle ground since notes are highly editable, organisable and digitally stored. OneNote, as much as I despise Microsoft is really good for this.
There are also options for handwriting to digital transformation though you basically have to use english and have good handwriting that the algorithm can understand otherwise you will end up having to edit a lot.
I like to have a small pocketbook for important notes I want on hand and quickly (basically personal pocket guidelines in my case for the ED and a separate one for EMS), but I prefer taking lecture and study notes on my iPad in handwriting. Although I am slowly trying to create a digital version of my notes in a personal wikipedia style using Obsidian.
Also, not writing with a fountain pen is a disservice to yourself if you handwrite a lot.
Fair points, thanks! I use a surface book, and one note is great
I do enjoy fountain pen writing though, so when searchability isn’t crucial, I stay analog
That said ive seen people with a Remarkable tablet who seem to love it
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.
Yes, pen & paper notes always. I consider myself a techie, but when it comes to learning or remembering, 100% analog, all the way.
As for the why, it’s a bit hard to explain, but the sensory experience of writing - the feeling and sound of the pen or pencil gliding on the paper - and the fact that I write more slowly than I type, which helps me sit with and process the infformation for a bit longer, really helps cement the info in my head.
There’s research that backs you up.
People tend to retain more of their written notes than typed. The act of writing forces you to assimilate and summarize new information on the fly. Typing allows you to take more complete notes closer to a verbatim transcript, but you engage less with what you’ve typed.
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.
Its your sense of proprioception, too. To write something with pen and paper you have to move your hand in three dimensional space, and this does a TON to engrain the information in your head
Because i can scrawl a note faster than opening an app and typing, and i can organise a notebook with a lot less fuss.
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.
I can’t rely on a piece of electronics that might run out of battery, bug out, etc. Note taking on paper is much faster, you can draw anything with any sort of layout, it’s completely free form. Of course it depends on your needs. I know I sketch down a lot because of my line of work, that may not be the case for everyone.
You know that tablets exist?
It’s way easier to lose a piece of paper than a backed up searchable note. Not a problem if you’re super organized but I’m not.
Last time I upgraded my phone, I looked at getting a Samsung Note: I’ve wanted pen input on a phone for so long. Then I considered the extra weight and bulk, and the poor condition of the second hand one I was looking at, and decided I can just just use pen and paper.
I like to be able to scribble things on paper, though my handwriting is terrible. For anything to last long for me, I want it digital, but random thoughts, calculations and stuff, I like paper and pen.
But have you considered the true reliability of paper? Really, even a tablet is a computer that can run out of battery, bug out, etc.
Paper not only has that, but it is also an art form in itself! Writing on a tablet, which can zoom in and out is for me much more awkward compared to the set dimensions of paper and the size of a nib. It also is something that has no feel to it, it’s glass.
No scratch, no feedback and most importantly no feel. Have you ever held high quality pull and pulp paper? In Polish it’s called “Papier czeprany” and I have. It’s like nothing else. Standard copy paper be damned, that thing is a joy to hold, write on and read off of.
Also, paper is different if you have different light. It really makes all the difference for me, and I love sitting under a warm light from a lamp and either writing with a pen or typing it out on a typewriter. Having light blasted onto my face by a screen annoys and tires me out a lot of the time.
It’s not just the practicality that can win out, even though paper does also win for me on that front, it has a charm to it if approached in a way different than just absolute practicality.
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.
Dont need to charge a piece of paper
my notepad/book/paper doesn’t run out of battery and doesn’t lose reception …
EDIT: and my book will last longer than your cloud service
EDIT: and you remember stuff better by writing it down
At work I do that exclusively. It’s faster to make punch lists for jobsites that way
Same, so much quicker to make handwritten notes at work. I also just want to give my hands and eyes a break from using my phone.
Also I don’t have to contend with auto complete
Yes, of course. How can I leave a note for somebody in the living room, or pin it to the fridge if it’s on my PC?
How can I scribble my plans and measurements down quickly without endangering my fancy expensive phone while I’m woodworking? Not to mention I need two hands and need to unlock the phone and find the application etc etc, or I could just pick up the pencil.
And what about my shopping list? Am I going to absent mindedly carry my phone in one hand while I push the trolley and pick up food, basically BEGGING somebody to come and snatch it from my hand and run off with it? Hell no. I use a written shopping list.
These are just some random examples, and I do use my tech to note some things down, most notably if I’m sat at the pc and it’s a tech thing I’ll probably load Notepad++ and save a quick .txt note, I have a lot of those. But for little around the house/going out things, my notepaper is always best :-)
Those are some really bad reasons tbh. A digital shared shopping list is the best invention btw. My wife adds stuff in it and I see it on my phone when I go shopping. Who the fuck is going to snatch a phone out of your hand when you shop? And isn’t a phone a pretty useless item to steal anyway? Most of them can’t be wiped these days.
Because I like small diagrams and schematics. Doing that in an app, especially on a phone, is tricky. And I find that structuring my thoughts on paper just works better than doing it digitally straight away.
Yep. My little Field Notes books don’t send me notifications about emails, and I can toss them around without breaking them. And use a lot of notation and drawing methods that are very slow when typing with my thumbs.
Equations are a shitload faster to write: this is the main reason.
No fucking spell correction.
Every piece of writing is visually unique and looking back at handwritten notes brings back an additional layer of memory (diaries/personal journals eg).
Paper notes can be permanently destroyed with a high level of confidence and low cost if desired.
Written notes can be easily left for/handed to another person (for flirtatious purposes e.g.), or placed semi-permanently in a useful spot.
Electronic notes are great too, I keep my grocery list and whatnot on my phone, but the reasons above are why I also write things by hand.
For those of you that do, join us at !fountainpens@wayfarershaven.eu :)
Ooooooh, that looks nice. I think I’ll join!
