
Spending 15 bucks on a notebook is the best investment you can make right now - DvdMgr
http://www.magr.in/blog/2015/8/28/journaling
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AdmiralAsshat
This article seems more about logging what you do, not about buying a physical
notebook. The medium chosen is irrelevant without a system. I know plenty of
people at work who keep all of their notes on random notebooks, but they're
not at all organized. Some of them quite literally just turn to the first
clean sheet of paper within the notebook to jot down notes about the program
they're working on, the meeting they were just in, their grocery shopping
list, etc. If I ask them about it an hour later they will spend a few minutes
flipping through the notebook to find it, if they find it.

By contrast, I keep a daily log of everything I'm working on with a series of
time-stamped Notepad files in a "Work Logs" folder on my work laptop. That's
the system I developed after about two weeks working here, and four years
later I can still open up stuff from 2011 if I need to. The fact that it's in
plain text makes it easy to search through the directory as well for words or
phrases.

I'm not saying my method is better than what the author has chosen, it works
for me. It could easily be an Evernote notebook if I felt like it, provided
that there was some organization method. That is its functional value.
Everything else that the article seems to dwell on--tactile feedback,
"mindfulness", the tangible growth of the journal as you fill out more pages--
these all seem geared towards simply making you _feel_ productive rather than
actually be productive.

~~~
zzalpha
Well, there is _one_ clear benefit to a notebook: studies indicate it results
in better long-term retention in memory. For example:

[http://pss.sagepub.com/content/early/2014/04/22/095679761452...](http://pss.sagepub.com/content/early/2014/04/22/0956797614524581.abstract)

Now, personally, I actually use a mix. I'm in a managerial position, so my
work tends to be divided between longer-term goals and interrupt-driven
activities. For the former, I keep a list in Vim
([https://github.com/aaronbieber/vim-
quicktask](https://github.com/aaronbieber/vim-quicktask)).

For the latter, I write them down on physical paper.

I won't claim there's any merit to this system, it just happens to work for
me.

Incidentally, I wouldn't dismiss things like "mindfulness" so easily.
"Mindfulness" is more easily understood as concentrating and focusing on the
task at hand, doing it with care and deliberation. There's something to be
said for the slower, more methodical process of physical writing (and may be
linked to those memory retention results I mentioned previously).

For example, it's one of the reasons I tend to do focused reading on paper,
away from the computer. That is, if I'm reading a technical paper, analyzing a
report, etc, even if I have a digital copy, I tend to print it out, leave my
computer behind, and read it in a quiet place where I can be "mindful" of the
process of reading without distraction.

~~~
DvdMgr
That's an interesting article.

The point you make about mindfulness is exactly what I wanted to express, just
written in a much clearer way. Thanks for the comment!

------
TurboHaskal
Why do all these Moleskine and fancy pen lovers have to sound like fucking
Patrick Bateman? Jesus.

~~~
hoopism
I write crap on my hands.

If it's real important I email myself a reminder.

It doesn't looks cool at parties and coffee shops... but my laundry gets done
and I usually remember my wife's birthday.

I wish I could placebo myself into believing a fancy notebook would make me a
better version of myself... I am sure it works for a lot of people... I have
tried... I feel like an idiot trying to find reasons to write crap down.

------
runj__
I've had a Moleskine notebook in my bag for the past 4 years, it was just this
year I started using it almost every day. TODO:s, quick calculations, poems,
the start of a novel. The feeling of pen to paper is difficult to compare to
anything else.

I enjoy writing on a good keyboard as well but it really is two different
kinds of writing. Finding a good pen was difficult since I am prone to losing
things and didn't want to spend astronaut money on something I would just
misplace. I'm using a Muji 0.5mm black gel pen right now which really suits my
needs.

The way the ink flows out when you keep the pen to the paper for a bit, how it
shows where you took a moment to think. How thin strokes shows how you wrote
something in a hurry. Black boxes throughout where I decided on a different
word or spelling. Pen and paper shows the work and tells more of the story.

~~~
zzalpha
On pens: don't balk at spending money on a good one. Like you, I have
traditionally had a history of losing pens. Like, all the time.

But after writing with my boss' fountain pen, I was so enamoured with the
thing I went and bought a Lamy Al-Star. As far as fountain pens go it's cheap,
but it's still a $60 pen.

And guess what happened? I started being a hell of a lot more thoughtful about
where I put the thing. After all, it's a $60 pen. You're a lot more careful
with a $60 pen. :)

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jobigoud
I write between one and ten pages in my journal every day. I quit paper more
than ten years ago though. The arguments for analog in the second part of the
article are dwarfed by the advantages of digital in my opinion I mean, search?
backup? classification? highlighting? filtering?

I think a note-taking system is the type of application that is so close to
your mind and so personal that it should evolve with you. For the past two
years I've been using my own streamlined/lightweight application. It has a
minimalist UI (basically a tree view outliner and a rich text box), a reduced
feature set, it is maintenance free, and it grows with me. It is full of
personal conventions, shortcuts and whatnot. When I don't have access to it I
feel a piece of my brain is missing.

You start developing a system to organize, then you fine-tune it, you find
patterns in your own notes and you "officialize" them, turning them into first
class organization atoms. When you do that for long enough, it completely
diverges from any other persons systems.

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ececconi
Funny, I use a lot of technology products to systematically track what I do in
a structured way: Foursquare, Calendars, Asana, Evernote, Fitbit, etc.

I use a physical journal for exactly the opposite reason. It's my non-
systematic way of thinking. What I write in it is unstructured and very
personal. I like it because it's what I do, think about, and reflect on when
I'm not thinking about the boundaries of the system I'm recording something
in.

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matwood
I agree with the points, but not for $15. Spiral notebooks are ~$1? I have a
stack of spiral notebooks journaling my workouts going back almost 10 years at
this point.

~~~
jeremysmyth
...and I've a stack of spiral notebooks jotting my daily notes going back
about 15. Any phone call, I take a couple of lines of notes. Any meeting,
there's another few lines (or a few pages depending).

Flight numbers, names of people I speak to, todo items, commitments, it's all
there. Usually things end up getting transferred to something else (a planner,
a contacts application, my multi-kb "notes.txt" file), but that first scribble
doesn't need me to handle lockscreens or login passwords or bootup time, and
it might be exactly the sort of thing I need to pull me out of trouble weeks,
months, or years later.

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douche
He lost me completely when he started talking about using fountain pens to
justify buying an exorbitantly overpriced notebook. Really?

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XM49inJV49gg
Aside from the amazon referral link, this is so much bullshit. Next he will
start recommending type writers and raw milk.

~~~
HipstaJules
Wow, very well argued!

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mariusz79
Mole Skin? Nah. Vela Workings engineering notebooks are the best. Highly
recommended.

~~~
HipstaJules
It's written Moleskine.

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nathanvanfleet
Uh huh, good suggestions + amazon affiliate link.

