

Sync to Paper - rg81
http://robertgreiner.com/2013/03/sync-to-paper/

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skore
Huge fan of paper as well. I think Merlin Mann called it the "ultimate
ubiquitous capture".

A lot of people just keep thick journals, but I like A6 cards that I compile
into slim exercise books. I just capture anything that comes to mind on a
card[1] and let them sit on a pile. Then, after some time, enough stuff has
accumulated and I review the cards and compile them.[1]

It has the sweet spot of not having to commit to something big (meaning it
circumvents the urge to make it perfect, usually preventing you from writing
it down in the first place), is reasonably flexible if you use masking tape to
glue in the cards (there are some books that I could take apart completely and
reuse) and can be stashed and sorted easily.[2]

[0]
[https://plus.google.com/photos/111011776153281260419/albums/...](https://plus.google.com/photos/111011776153281260419/albums/5774980113163525217/5774980173127280498)

[1]
[https://plus.google.com/photos/111011776153281260419/albums/...](https://plus.google.com/photos/111011776153281260419/albums/5833097033292752561/5833097035081483170)

[2]
[https://plus.google.com/photos/111011776153281260419/albums/...](https://plus.google.com/photos/111011776153281260419/albums/5833327148912323025/5833327151210469890)

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itstriz
The other part of this that I find helpful is that using paper is faster for
many things, like small UI sketches, than using a PC. I also find that writing
things down makes me think about the problem, whereas I can type up notes
without paying attention to what I'm doing.

~~~
rg81
Yeah, that's a great point. The guys at 37signals also recommend using a fat-
tipped pen or marker to prevent you from trying to get too detailed.

~~~
psweber
Using ink forces the ideas out, too. No erasing and fiddling with things.

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jamesjporter
Whiteboards are my preferred method for this sort of thing. The building I
work in is actually awesome for this; the safety shields (mol bio lab) at the
end of everyone's desks double as whiteboards and the windows are write-on-
able as well.

I also know a guy who used to have a piece of whiteboard paper glued the back
of his laptop so he could close it and quickly sketch something out if he
needed to, his desk is also covered in the stuff.

~~~
andrewflnr
I wonder if there's a market for a dry-erase iPad case.

~~~
ximeng
Apparently, yes: [http://www.ubergizmo.com/2012/04/bowden-sheffield-
minimalist...](http://www.ubergizmo.com/2012/04/bowden-sheffield-minimalist-
ipad-cases-are-an-ipad-lovers-delight/)

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dan-g
I am a huge proponent of this -- I rarely start a project without sketching
something out on paper first. It helps me get my thoughts straight.

In a similar vein, I was reading an interview with Donald Knuth the other day,
and while I can't find that exact instance, he was quoted saying:

> "The speed at which I write by hand is almost perfectly synchronized with
> the speed at which I think. I type faster than I think so I have to stop,
> and that interrupts the ﬂow."

\-- from (PDF warning) [http://jmlr.csail.mit.edu/reviewing-
papers/knuth_mathematica...](http://jmlr.csail.mit.edu/reviewing-
papers/knuth_mathematical_writing.pdf)

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Daiz
Having some paper and a pen can certainly do wonders - just last week I was
working on something involving a lot of trigonometry (collision detection in a
game), and being able to visualize and think about it on paper helped _a lot._
Quick visualizations are probably one of the best use-cases in general.

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andrewflnr
For me at least, part of it is getting a fresh start on the idea. Rewriting
stuff usually makes it clearer. Temporariness and the unlimited feeling of
paper help with freeing up your mind to just let stuff loose.

Among other problems though is that sometimes the stuff you write turns out
not to be that temporary, and that's often the times when rewriting it in
digital form is useless. I'm trying to figure out how to design a digital tool
that's better than paper in these respects.

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claudius
> Writing things down on paper is also painful

Training helps here definitely.

> You can also see more of it at one time.

And this is probably the most important property of paper to me. You can have
five to six full A4 pages easily visible, which, with appropriate handwriting,
cover the content of ten to twelve 1.5 x 3 m² blackboard or God-knows-how-many
notebook displays.

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greenyoda
Paper is great for thinking because it doesn't distract you or interrupt you.

~~~
gizmo686
Paper might not distract me, but paper and a pencil can keep me distracted for
hours.

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jazzex
Can you explain this? I will sit for hours with just a pen and paper and not
be able to come up with anything worthwhile ideas or thoughts. What do you do?

~~~
greenyoda
I sometimes try using pencil and paper when I'm stuck on a specific problem.
For example, if I'm trying to debug an algorithm, I might draw examples of the
possible states the data structures could be in to make sure I've figured out
all the edge cases.

Also, if I'm working on a project and can't figure out which of a dozen
possible things to do next, I write down lists of tasks. These will eventually
get transferred to digital form, but I find that circling important things and
drawing arrows between them is a lot quicker on paper than messing around with
some user interface on a computer, and this lack of friction promotes a state
of flow.[1] If I get bogged down with data entry, it's easier to forget an
item that came up while writing down another item.

[1] <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flow_%28psychology%29>

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epynonymous
i was thinking that this article would be about dropbox and 3d printing! agree
with the author about his points, however, the title really got me thinking,
what if you could store things to paper, it's a relatively cheap medium, take
qr codes as an example, stored to paper (or image file), reproducible via bit
for bit. tun out of hd space? print

~~~
gizmo686
I'm not sure printing data is as cheep as you think it is. I did a quick back
of the envelope calculation: From [1] I got an upper bound of 1,800 DPI in
printers From [2] I got that ink costs 0.0062 $/in^2

Using those numbers, the cost of ink comes out to be about $5.83 per megabyte.

On the other hand, a quick Google search for "hard drive" got a sponsored
result for $80 1-terabyte drive from Newegg, comming out to $0.0000762 per
megabyte.

