[HN Gopher] Just use fucking paper, man
___________________________________________________________________
Just use fucking paper, man
Author : tobr
Score : 118 points
Date : 2024-08-27 17:59 UTC (5 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (andy-bell.co.uk)
(TXT) w3m dump (andy-bell.co.uk)
| JohnFen wrote:
| This is why, after a lot of experimentation, I decided to stick
| with paper as well. All of the other alternatives bring
| significant friction and other downsides, with very nearly no
| benefit to me.
| jasonwcfan wrote:
| My handwriting is barely legible, even to my self. So I'll stick
| to Notion, thank you very much.
| normie3000 wrote:
| Mine too, but I rarely read my notes.
| java-man wrote:
| I write a lot of notes, on many devices, some of them are
| commands or urls so they need to be copied. And I do need search.
| hilux wrote:
| I'll use paper when they invent handwriting I can read.
|
| Bonus: the handwriting is searchable.
| gumboshoes wrote:
| I still use the "hipster PDA":
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hipster_PDA
| Bedon292 wrote:
| I hadn't seen that before, but I kind of like it. I keep a
| stack of blank index cards on my desk for writing down lists of
| priorities and things and they end end up with them scattered
| around. Restack them up and review priorities, consolidate, and
| things like that on occasion. A binder clip to keep some with
| me and organized would be nice. I have a notebook I keep with
| me, but end up with lots of clutter and flipping around without
| the ability to toss old cards. May have to experiment with it
| some.
| lemonberry wrote:
| Hipster PDA, yellow legal pad, and sticky notes.
| al_borland wrote:
| The modern commercialized version of this is Ugmonk's Analog.
| lelandfe wrote:
| $100 for some index cards and a tray, $40 for a resupply of
| index cards. Now that's a business model.
| silveira wrote:
| Hobonichi Techo.
| auggierose wrote:
| I think if you prefer paper over tools like Things, which I like
| very much, then you are probably super organised already in the
| first place.
|
| I mean, how do you organise all that paper??
| johndavidback wrote:
| I keep a little pocket notebook. Moleskin makes them and
| others. One of them is just for to-dos, I keep another for
| ideas.
| PhasmaFelis wrote:
| Yeah, if you only need to write down a few lines of tasks every
| day, that's lovely for you, but to me this reads like a dude
| commuting to work on a bicycle telling a semi trucker that he
| doesn't need that big engine.
| squidbeak wrote:
| Toss them in recycling bins when the todos are complete?
| akshayrajp wrote:
| I use a simple todo.txt and have everything I need on there. I
| use notepad to work with it.
|
| I get shit done.
| happytoexplain wrote:
| I also prefer just a txt file or pinned Keep note for todo
| lists, but I maintain about a dozen different lists, and not
| everything gets done. Occasionally I will do an audit and
| remove things.
|
| Are you just in a scenario where you have absolute control over
| what you do and on what timeline?
|
| If not:
|
| Do you ever lose track of older items (i.e. forget about them
| for a long time because your eyeballs don't land on them)?
|
| How do you decide when to remove something that isn't done?
|
| Alternatively, if things never enter the list faster than they
| leave, how do you predict whether something will or will not
| violate that rule at entrance time?
| jjeaff wrote:
| My problem with paper is that I can't keep up with paper. I will
| lose it several times a day, and inevitably, I will lose it
| permanently after a year or two. I need the sync and findability
| that an app on a device affords.
| trzy wrote:
| If your project TODO lists are stretching into years, it's time
| to get a better project management system. I recommend paper.
| lpapez wrote:
| Absolutely.
|
| If an item has been on your TODO list for years, it's most
| likely not worth doing anyway.
|
| Might as well lose the paper upon which the item is written.
| paulddraper wrote:
| > I will lose it several times a day
|
| This is me.
|
| Skill issue notwithstanding.
| happytoexplain wrote:
| This is unrealistic. If I didn't accept TODO items older than
| a year, or even five years, I never would have built my
| fence, fixed my stairs, set up my home lab, learned iOS
| development, digitized my family's old photos/videos, or
| innumerable other things, because for each of those things, I
| had 10 to 100 more mundane but more time-sensitive/higher-
| priority things to do.
|
| You can manage long-term lists without losing items to the
| abyss by using prioritization techniques.
| stronglikedan wrote:
| I'm pretty sure you're conflating two different types of
| todo lists - long term and short term. Paper is great for
| short term.
| 015a wrote:
| I feel that you're being unrealistic, not the parent
| poster: Turning every aspect of your life into a jira
| ticket straight up isn't healthy (I'm using "jira" here as
| a stand-in for "any process management system, digital or
| physical"). I don't feel that writing yourself a reminder
| to "fix stairs" is normal or a desirable process. At best:
| This feels similar to a CEO writing a jira ticket to "make
| website faster"; you've brought an unactionable outcome
| into process management, rather than the specific
| actionable steps (e.g. a shopping list).
| wwweston wrote:
| 15 years ago while resisting the smartphone shift I got myself
| a passport case to use as a combined wallet and portable
| notebook to write things down in. It worked reasonably well and
| certainly had some robust advantages but honestly so do cross-
| device syncd apps that I've used since smartphone adoption.
| thih9 wrote:
| If it was important, you wouldn't lose it. It's a feature; sort
| of a garbage collection.
| viraptor wrote:
| Assuming that judgement is in any way involved in situations
| like that is a mistake. At the very least for ADHD-i people
| like me.
| stocknoob wrote:
| Tape an AirTag to your paper notebook.
| barbazoo wrote:
| > but for todo lists, all of the above are way too complicated.
|
| I think their point was specific to to-do lists which usually
| aren't around for that long and in my experience rarely need to
| be searched.
| mwcremer wrote:
| As @kabdib says, "You can't grep paper."
| squidbeak wrote:
| His use case it todo lists. Do you often need to grep todo
| lists?
| akira2501 wrote:
| I rarely need to. The things I'm writing down have a shelf life
| of at most one week. I also draw pictures and diagrams which
| you can't grep anyways. The Tops brand Steno Pad has been a
| feature on my desk for the last 30 years. If you use it
| linearly it's somewhat self indexing and going "back in time"
| to find things is much easier than you'd expect.
| pj_mukh wrote:
| And now its,
|
| "I can't turn my paper into a Vector DB to build a RAG pipeline
| and connect it to a voice chat so I can "talk" to my notes"
| :'D.
| marcosdumay wrote:
| You can't delete stuff from the middle of it; You can't write
| stuff at any random place at any random time and have it appear
| in your workplace; cutting and pasting involves actual scissors
| and glue...
|
| Paper is a lot of extra work for the only gain to pretend you
| are doing something simple.
| mempko wrote:
| I've been using supernote, it's pretty much paper.
| snowstormsun wrote:
| vim + markdown files <3
| Sirikon wrote:
| If a friend asks me how to get organised, I always tell them to
| use pen and paper as a first step.
|
| You might use it just for a day or two, but something clicks in
| your head, you find your workflow, and now you're able to use
| more specialised tools.
| thibaultamartin wrote:
| Paper is a sturdy tool; it doesn't run out of battery, it's
| interoperable... it beats apps in many aspects.
|
| But as soon as you need automation, it's a different story. I
| couldn't rely only on paper notes to keep track of my work.
|
| Obsidian has been very useful to keep track of my list of tasks
| and report what I'm doing. I would spend much more time doing all
| that with paper.
|
| Details of my setup at
| https://ergaster.org/posts/2024/07/16-obsidian-contractor/
| pillefitz wrote:
| Flagging emails as "to be read later", keeping track of responses
| I'm waiting for, reminders, ... all tricky to do when using
| paper.
| agiron123 wrote:
| Love this.
|
| I sit here at my desk with post it notes scattered everywhere,
| organizing my thoughts and things to do for the day. Something
| about being able to physically move them around and cross things
| off just makes it easier for my brain to work.
|
| The problem with this workflow is getting it into the apps that I
| use to organize my life. These change from time to time, but
| Sunsama is the clear winner for me at the moment.
|
| PostIt has a great app to use your camera to organize your notes.
|
| I've also found that Apple's FreeForm has a fantastic feature for
| scanning. Over the weekend I scanned hundreds of old post-it
| notes of mine that I was trying to declutter, yet some of them
| had important thoughts that I wanted to stash for later. I used
| Freeform to scan all my notes.
|
| Next up I'll try feeding this to a model and see if it can
| organize my notes and create action items from them.
|
| Come to think of it, I could have done none of this and just
| organized the notes by hand while scanning them :)
|
| Maybe I should try turning my computer off next time and just
| thinking before I do something.
| Bedon292 wrote:
| I have tried various ways to deal with organizing thoughts and
| tasks, and always end up spending too much time trying to
| optimize and make the system better when I do it in a digital
| way. For me, it seems like it is better to just disconnect from
| the electronics and do it by hand.
| aught wrote:
| I love the postit app. Happy to see it mentioned
| kepano wrote:
| There's only one method of doing to-dos that has worked for me.
| This method can be used with paper, Obsidian, Apple Notes, or any
| other app.
|
| Every week I create a weekly note, and write my to-dos for the
| week. I may add more items to it during the week. If any items
| didn't get done I roll them over to the next weekly note or drop
| them. That's it.
|
| I usually write my to-dos from scratch without looking at the
| previous week's list. This helps me decide which items I should
| drop. If I can't remember a to-do it probably wasn't that
| important.
| ejs wrote:
| I do the same, and I'll probably automate it soon since I use a
| fresh markdown doc.
|
| The only thing that remains the same is the header has 'yearly
| goals'.
|
| It's easy and I can jettison the previous week's unfinished
| tasks (hey they didn't get done so were they really
| important?).
| SubiculumCode wrote:
| There is only one method that works, and it is whichever one
| you have somehow managed to actually do on a routine basis.
| lbittner wrote:
| Check out the app called "Tweek". Its exactly what you
| described here with very little extra fluff.
| al_borland wrote:
| Also NotePlan (on the various Apple platforms). Can go by
| day, week, month, and year, with files stored in a directory
| of markdown files.
|
| Edit...
|
| I just looked at Tweek, it seems more similar to TeuxDeux,
| than NotePlan. But NotePlan seems more like what the
| grandparent was talking about (at least in my
| interpretation).
| t_mann wrote:
| Why not a single, permanent file?
| mattnewton wrote:
| Not the op, but I do this too because looking at most of the
| list and deciding what gets copied over is necessary to
| remove stale items.
|
| (It also creates snapshots that roughly show if the list is
| growing much faster than things are being done and signals I
| need to shed load)
| al_borland wrote:
| I find history useful. What did I do last week? When did I
| work on project X?
| EasyMark wrote:
| Ihave a simple "note" on my iPhone and I do similar thing with,
| I reevaluate if I really need to do it and if I do I roll it
| over, otherwise it gets deleted. Between this and my calendar
| list, I try to simplify lol
| winternett wrote:
| Writing notes only on paper in a properly secured notebook is
| about to make a big comeback as more and more people realize
| that it's fast becoming the only way to prevent AI/ML from
| indexing and leaking their original IP to the corporate world.
| Sending an email or making a social media or discord post is
| fast becoming the best way to snitch out your ideas to random
| unknown parties and IP thieves.
| iwontberude wrote:
| I have heard it is also how NSA secure their personal
| passwords, they keep them in a little black book because
| there is no scalable attack to get access to them at rest.
| walterbell wrote:
| _> no scalable attack_
|
| On-demand RICO says hello,
| https://westworld.fandom.com/wiki/RICO
| nrr wrote:
| I'm not and never have been NSA, but I nonetheless have a
| sordid past with what is arguably a related line of work.
| This is how I manage my passwords.
|
| In environments where regular rotations are required, I
| print off a new "biscuit" via `(date ; pwgen $PWGEN_FLAGS)
| | lpr`. I then append to the candidate password something
| of a personal identifier that only I know.
| njb311 wrote:
| And because a little black book might be carried in a
| pocket and potentially misplaced or stolen, some teams use
| a system of small self-adhesive pieces of paper, each with
| just a single password on it, that are attached to the
| front of the PC. This in turn is secured by a cable lock to
| the desk.
| walterbell wrote:
| _> snitch out your ideas_
|
| s/ideas/canaries/
|
| https://canarytokens.org/
| al_borland wrote:
| This is the only thing that works for me as well.
|
| At work I do it daily, and also have a notes section. That way
| I can go to any day (in Obsidian's calendar) and see what I did
| that day if/when needed. I also have a fresh scratch pad each
| day instead of a giant tab in my editor that holds onto things
| for months or years without context. Reminders kind of work as
| well. If I'm doing something today that needs follow up in 2
| weeks, I pre-make a placeholder note for 2 weeks from now with
| the to do, and when I get to that day I see it.
|
| It took me about 15 years trying every tool and system under
| the sun, and then I stumbled across doing this organically
| based on what I felt I needed. It's been going good for several
| years now, which is something I've never been able to say
| before. That said, I'd be lost without the calendar view, it's
| very helpful for me.
|
| At home, I tried this, but it's too granular. I tried weekly,
| that even seemed too granular. I'm at the point where when I
| feel like getting some stuff done, I make a list, and keep that
| list until it's done (or things age to the point they don't
| matter). Then some time goes by until I need another one.
| zooi wrote:
| I've tried many note taking methods, including paper, and none of
| it really fit my needs. So I wrote my own application, just for
| me, with nobody else in mind. It's perfect and I recommend
| everyone to do the same.
| bprater wrote:
| Try different writing devices, too. I love gel pens and
| mechanical pencils.
| OldGuyInTheClub wrote:
| I tried to keep a simple table in Apple Notes and it got
| frustrating, fast. Couldn't control formatting and it would
| randomly change font sizes. Looked at alternatives and was
| confronted with more complexity - looks like notes are just the
| entry point to mindmaps/braindumps/network diagrams of thought
| processes. Creating a table in Markdown is even less fun that
| creating it in Notes.
|
| Now I just track my blood pressure on paper.
| hughesjj wrote:
| I've got one of those withings with Bluetooth, loving it so far
| bee_rider wrote:
| I tried but I can't figure out how to call the compiler on my
| hand-written notes.
|
| I actually think it would be really interesting, if I could point
| a camera at my notes and somehow have it spit out a Matlab code
| or something like that. But I'm not sure how it would work. It
| would need to understand at least that the things in the brackets
| are sub-matrices...
| viraptor wrote:
| Listing the simplest apps, down to Apple Notes as complicated has
| got to be a troll.
|
| I'm sure there are people who prefer paper for good reasons. But
| there are no reasons with justifications listed here. Just a very
| short personal opinion.
| 015a wrote:
| Tbh I don't assign weight to anyone with the opinion that Apple
| Reminders is too complicated.
| arabello wrote:
| I prefer paper when I need to reason deeply, with drafts and
| schemes. Once my thoughts on paper mean something, I organize
| them digitally.
| simonw wrote:
| If my organizational systems aren't backed up to the internet
| they're useless to me.
|
| I use Apple Notes for scratch notes and GitHub Issues for
| everything else and I couldn't be happier.
| acyou wrote:
| Paper is good if you are solo. I tried Notion, waiting inside the
| grocery store 30 seconds for it to boot up or load or update or
| whatever on mobile, gave up on it for day to day tasks. Google
| Keep is still king. Am I going to be able to consistently pull
| down a text file from a server on mobile? How will I share a
| paper shopping list with others?
|
| What cheap hosted service should I be using that lets me CRUD my
| text files on mobile + desktop and share with others?
| piva00 wrote:
| > How will I share a paper shopping list with others?
|
| I usually send a picture of it to my partner.
| BlueTemplar wrote:
| Which even works without an Internet access !
| aatarax wrote:
| Paper is great for transient stuff that is relevant for at most a
| week or two, but it really goes downhill when you try to capture
| information you'll want to revisit in the future. Paper is great
| for todo lists and in the moment notes, but not so great for
| knowledge base building.
|
| I used to struggle with a lot of tools before too and now use
| org-roam for longer term notes. The linking model helps a lot
| with just _writing_ the stuff down and not worrying about how to
| organize it too much in the moment.
| brcmthrowaway wrote:
| What about the reMARKABLE 2?
| switchbak wrote:
| Paper is great, but good lord I tire of these "Just do X", "Stop
| doing Y", "Z considered harmful", kind of posts. So overconfident
| and devoid of context, this shit gets really old after a while.
| Reminds me of JWZ or (gack) Zed Shaw.
|
| I LOVE paper. I also like whiteboards. I also like being able to
| search through my megabytes of notes for something silly I was
| wrestling with 2.5 years ago. It might be in a TODO list even.
| I'm messy, I don't care to try to organize such things, but (rip)
| grepping still provides value. I don't want to "just use fucking
| $ANYTHING", thanks very much, man.
| fragmede wrote:
| I have a remarkable for this. because yeah, just use paper, but
| like, we live in the future
| allenu wrote:
| I still use digital tools for documenting my projects and keeping
| track of long-term tasks, but I agree with the author that papers
| just fucking works for most things. I sketch out designs on
| paper. I treat as an ephemeral medium.
|
| Lately I've taken to jotting down lists of things on my mind on
| index cards so I can carry those around and refer to them without
| the distraction of a phone. The nice thing is that space is
| limited, so I can't take on too much at a time. Constraints are a
| good thing.
| deltarholamda wrote:
| Now we can have a robust debate on the best paper and writing
| utensils! Some will advocate for top-spiral notebooks, some
| composition books, others will proclaim nothing beats a
| Moleskine.
|
| Then the fight moves to pens vs. pencils. Fountain pens and
| carpenter's pencils will slug it out for supremacy in the
| comments. One lone maniac will die on the quill hill.
| 082349872349872 wrote:
| wax tablet? (much better write endurance than paper)
| 6510 wrote:
| I haven't tried it but clay seems pretty cool.
| 082349872349872 wrote:
| The story I last heard about the origin of writing goes
| something like this:
|
| - people use clay tokens to keep track of their
| herds/inventory
|
| - these tokens get put into clay balls for
| security/transaction grouping
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bulla_(seal)#Origins
|
| - to avoid breaking and remaking the clay balls all the
| time, people record on the outside of the ball symbols
| indicating which tokens are on the inside of the ball
|
| - at some point, some bright person realises that all you
| need to do is make the second set of symbols on a tablet;
| as long as you have them recorded, all the balls and tokens
| are just legacy
| aught wrote:
| you can try to pry my fountain pen out of my cold dead hands
| thx wrote:
| I use Apple Notes but it drives me sooo crazy that you can't
| left/right swipe between Notes
|
| How is that even possible
| galleywest200 wrote:
| My regularly sweaty hands say that digital notes are great. My
| non-home-owning self says that not carrying around boxes upon
| boxes of my notes for review later in life is the way to go.
| BenFranklin100 wrote:
| If I didn't have to travel regularly I would use paper. Next best
| thing is OneNote with a tablet/iPad and pen. Just set it up like
| you would with a bunch of paper notebooks. Searchable, flexible,
| and lightweight. Obsidian/Notion sounds great but are rigid.
|
| My only nod to electronic organization is a simple todo app like
| Things or Todoist.
| algebra-pretext wrote:
| For todo lists, I agree and at most a plaintext file or the
| Reminders app on your phone is enough. For daily notes though I
| feel like Obsidian is only as complex as you want it to be. My
| vault for work notes is mainly a haphazard bunch of copy-pasted
| snippets and chat records pasted in an auto-dated daily note, and
| it's saved me a bunch of times when I've needed to go back and
| search something.
| mnky9800n wrote:
| As a scientist I keep organized in the following ways:
|
| * I text myself on slack random idea I have about various
| projects
|
| * I regularly use a white board to write down the current state
| of all my projects, where they are at, what needs to be done
|
| * I have a notebook that I write todos in for day to day things
|
| Also these things are basically interchangeable. I have had
| several different thoughts about how to make a better
| organisation system through software. But so far I didn't come up
| with one that i would abandon my research to spend the time
| writing organisational software instead.
| fitsumbelay wrote:
| I grew up taking copious handwritten notes and making pencil-to-
| pen sketches so I get it but sometimes markdown's just as fast
| for list making and edits are no-mess. The closest I've found to
| the two is the Boogie Board but IMHO as far as being its best
| self -- some temp/limited storage, levels of undo, maaaaaybe cut-
| n-paste? -- it's still about a microcontroller hack or addition
| away from awesomeness. At any rate, perhaps the headline could be
| dialed back to "Just use f-ing paper (for now), man"?
| danfunk wrote:
| 100 percent agree. I keep a todo list, in a notebook, copy undone
| items over every two or three days to a fresh list. It reminds me
| what's not getting done. It is easy to look at. I feel a sense of
| accomplishment. It reduces my stress to put an item on the list
| for later. I can look at non digital, simple, complete synopsis
| of my work and get an instant gauge on how things are going.
| ilamont wrote:
| I once worked for a founder who used paper lists. The guy was a
| billionaire in a very advanced field, but his office workflow was
| based on a small sheet of note paper with crossed-out tasks.
|
| At the time, I used Wunderlist (later To-Do) for work and home
| lists. I also had a simple scratch pad in a text editor as well
| as PDAs prior to that.
|
| I came back to paper. In the 90s, before I got a PDA, it was a
| small black notebook I kept in my pocket. These days I use
| printer paper. I start with a blank sheet on Monday, copy over
| the stuff from the previous week that I didn't complete, and then
| add new items for the week. On the right margin, I make notes of
| longer-term projects and invoices to send out, as well as some
| "home" to-dos usually relating to kids.
|
| I find it's easier to add new items without opening up an app and
| navigating to the right file. I can also jot down quick notes or
| facts or phone numbers without having to go through clicks and
| keyboard shortcuts and arrow keys.
|
| If I'm on the road, I'll use a text file on my laptop. I also
| still use To Do for a few personal lists (like recipes) but it's
| no longer part of my daily work routine.
| malux85 wrote:
| The problem that I have with paper is refactoring.
|
| Creating my todo list, investor update lists, company admin info,
| idea explorations, and everything else always involves me
| evolving the idea continuously and shifting things about as the
| structure changes.
|
| With paper this means using an eraser until I end up with a
| crumpled mess, or laboriously rewriting it all over and over.
|
| I like the tactile nature of paper, if only I could select chunks
| by dragging and erase (fully) without wrecking it.
| gspencley wrote:
| > I like the tactile nature of paper, if only I could select
| chunks by dragging and erase (fully) without wrecking it.
|
| I'm not seriously suggesting that you do this, but the term
| "cut & paste" originated from a concept that predates digital
| text editing ;)
| mkatx wrote:
| I get it, but had to move away from paper.. the simple fact that
| you cannot move stuff around without erasing stuff leads to
| disjointed notes.
|
| For when I need to write by hand, I moved to a reMarkable digital
| tablet. For notes, I've been experimenting with obsidian/logseq,
| and it's been going good. For task management , I gotta recommend
| Super Productivity, it's just fantastic.
|
| I just couldn't live the sticky note life anymore...
| dunefox wrote:
| I love paper, but it's difficult for me to organise the notes
| properly, I have no search function, screenshots, links, endless
| canvas, etc.
|
| I already own a Remarkable 2 but I really don't like it - it's
| not much more than an e-ink college block. After almost two years
| they added the function to draw straight lines, meanwhile I still
| can't search in handwritten notes - not even after converting
| them to text. You can add tags and the search works for them, but
| don't add a tag and you won't easily find the page.
|
| So, I'm thinking about buying the Samsung Tab s9+ for studying
| math and sumerian, but generally also for planning. I find just
| having all my notes, pdfs, etc. with me, combined with smart
| features like search is invaluable.
| xp84 wrote:
| I'm an incredibly satisfied owner of the Galaxy Tab S7 here,
| and I recommend that product line.
|
| I'm also a primarily "Apple" household but the iPad's
| multitasking is absurd, whereas with DeX mode you get a full
| windowing system that works sanely. I love my Tab :)
|
| Also I'm pretty sure that it came with the S pen in the box -
| which works super well. A joy to write with.
| dunefox wrote:
| I'm only waiting for the s10+ to be released, so that I can
| maybe get a discount on the s9+ (currently ~850EUR). Yeah,
| the pen is included, which is great compared to the iPad. Can
| you recommend apps for note taking?
|
| There's a paper-like screen addon by Samsung that apparently
| provides a similar writing feel as the Remarkable or paper -
| I might get that as well.
| nunez wrote:
| iPad Pro for handwriting is god tier. Can't do better IMO.
| al_borland wrote:
| I ordered a Daylight tablet. I'm still waiting for it to ship.
| I'm hoping for a good reading and writing experience, with the
| benefit of rich options for apps vs just what comes from the
| OEM, like with Remarkable.
| BlueTemplar wrote:
| E-ink tablets come in all kinds of functionalities :
|
| https://ewritable.com/best-e-ink-tablets/#Best_Dedicated_Not...
|
| > [...]
|
| > The native note-taking software has some really nice and
| unique features that I find really useful. For example, when I
| start a new page, I write the title at the top, and then lasso-
| select it and turn it into a heading and the Supernote
| automatically builds me a Table of Contents based on my
| headings. I can also draw a five-pointed star anywhere on the
| canvas to mark the page as important and then do a search for
| all my stars so that I can action them. There is a touch-
| sensitive swipe bar on the right-hand bezel which brings up a
| quick access menu whatever I am doing so that I can quickly
| flick between notebooks and documents. And the handwriting
| search feature is supremely fast.
|
| > [...]
| _emacsomancer_ wrote:
| I think "use paper" is good for lots of things. But if I'm trying
| to quickly make notes of lots of things, I end up not being able
| to find things. Org-roam (or some other similar system) is what
| I've found to be a good substitute for paper.
|
| The thing about both paper and Org-roam/Emacs, is that it's under
| your own control, and can be tailored to meet your own actual
| needs, not how someone else thinks you should do things. That's
| where Apple Notes etc. fall down.
| QuantumGood wrote:
| Workflowy is also good, keeps getting better. Used it for many
| years with a small team, but mostly for myself.
| MountainMan1312 wrote:
| I'm also an org-roam and paper guy, but I've designed my system
| to be platform-agnostic. It's all in the naming conventions.
|
| Files are named hierarchically with periods. I have top-level
| categories that have changed little over the years. `con.` for
| concepts, `lit.` for documents, `proj.` for projects... you get
| the point, I'm not listing all of them unless someone really
| just wants me to.
|
| My go-to example is always Star Wars. `lore.sw` is my top-level
| Star Wars note. I also have `lore.sw.chron` which is the
| chronological watching order. There's also `game.sw` which
| contains a list of Star Wars games I've found.
|
| This extends to non-note files as well. For images of something
| I use `.img.[date].#.[ext]`, so for example I have some
| pictures of my cat named `ppl.neck.img.2024.03.15.1.raw`. I
| have a video of him murdering a bird too,
| `ppl.neck.vid.2024.05.22.murdering-a-bird.mp4`... As you can
| see, sometimes I replace the number with a nice title.
|
| The modularity of it all is great. I can add anything anywhere
| at any point in the hierarchy without having to re-name things.
| I name things exactly what they are. The hierarchy can be
| sparse, parent notes don't have to exist. I can name something
| `stuff.something.i-dont-know.gif` without having any notes for
| `stuff.` or `stuff.something.`
|
| I have notes on paper as well, and they use the same system,
| with the hierarchical name printed in bold at the top of the
| paper. `self.passwords` is a paper note for obvious reasons. I
| also keep most of my `sys.internal.` documentation on paper
| because my computer might not work when I need it most, though
| a lot of them do have computer versions which I just print out
| when I change because it's too much to write by hand.
| MountainMan1312 wrote:
| Replying to my own comment here. I decided to list all of the
| top-level categories because it's something I'm kind of proud
| of, as it seems to be able to categorize anything I can throw
| at it:
|
| agenda.: single file, my main TODO. I can also add `.agenda.`
| anywhere in any hierarchy to make a topic-specific agenda.
|
| archive.: I just slap `archive.` on the front of any filename
| I want to archive.
|
| con.: notes about concepts
|
| cook.: my cookbook
|
| film.: movies, shows, etc.. Contains both notes and actual
| films
|
| game.: game notes, downloads, old versions, mod version
| archive, skins, settings exports, etc.
|
| grp.: social groups, movements, governments, companies,
| religions, etc. Mostly notes from school and research from
| work, but some political stuff too.
|
| home.: my house
|
| inbox.: single note, anything can go in here for later
| processing if I'm feeling lazy
|
| journal.: journal, organized by date (journal.2024.08.27).
| Hasn't been used in years.
|
| lang.: languages of all kinds; spoken, programming,
| everything. There's `lang.lisp` next to `lang.latin`
|
| lit.: literature, documents, etc.. Organized as
| `lit.author.series.document.chapter`. I have a lot of books.
|
| log.: logs, never used this one actually
|
| lore.: research about fictional worlds (I'm into
| worldbuilding)
|
| meta.: about this collection
|
| music.: playlist dumps, song downloads
|
| ppl.: people
|
| prod.: products
|
| proj.: projects
|
| school.: school stuff, organized as
| `school.institution.course.unit.chapter.assignment.document`
|
| self.: me
|
| social.: social media
|
| soft.: software
|
| sys.: my systems
|
| veh.: my vehicles
|
| Bonus: I also have `woodheart.` for my worldbuilding project,
| which contains a copy of most of the above categories within
| it.
| IAmGraydon wrote:
| For personal to-do lists, I just use the Notes app on iOS.
| cheema33 wrote:
| Like many others here I use paper for short term stuff. I use a
| small 5x7 spiral notebook with a #2 pencil. Anything that is not
| a very short-term todo item, goes in Obsidian.
|
| I do love Obsidian. I am sad I did not discover it sooner and
| suffered through OneNote.
| mrichman wrote:
| Ctrl+F doesn't work in a notebook, and I can't paste in
| screenshots.
| kjkjadksj wrote:
| >and I can't paste in screenshots.
|
| Well, you literally could
| MissTake wrote:
| Everyone is different and what works for one person, will be an
| abject failure for another.
|
| Not sure why the OP feels the need to be so vehement in their
| opinion.
| jp191919 wrote:
| Tasks app from F-droid for to-dos, and Nextcloud Notes for the
| notes
| system2 wrote:
| Things I tried:
|
| -Actual physical whiteboard
|
| -Notepads (moleskine, amazon branded notepad, all colors, fancy
| stuff that is $20+)
|
| -Obsidian with a bunch of plugins including Exalidraw (I wish
| flowcharting could be easier but still sucks compared to yED)
|
| -Google Keep (I use it on my iPhone and sync with my computer
| when needed. I only use it before homedepot or some hardware
| store shopping. I don't use lists for grocery)
|
| -One Note
|
| -Wacom Intuos Pro with other 3rd party drawing / note taking apps
|
| -My own website (Wordpress with notetaking plugin to have it on
| the "cloud")
|
| -Perfex CRM
|
| -Asana (still use it for client projects with limited access to
| them)
|
| -My own Kanban mutation
|
| -Microsoft Notepad in a dedicated folder for notes (was probably
| the longest-running among all other methods)
|
| -yED Graph (still use it for client presentations with basic
| flowcharts)
|
| -Google Calendar with excessive notes
|
| -365 Word With fancy plugins
|
| -Notepad++ since it doesn't delete if I don't save the document
| (MS Notepad brought it with win11 though)
|
| Nothing worked out but I am forcing myself to use Obsidian in a
| Dedicated monitor and never move it. I think I am getting close
| to liking it. I don't know what's wrong. These apps are SO
| CLUTTERED. And real paper is not searchable. I have a shelf
| dedicated to 1/5 used notepads.
|
| Additionally, I thought I didn't like writing with a pen. Then I
| dedicated a very good chunk of my life to finding the perfect
| pen. So far G2 and Jetstream are my favorites. I used zebra in
| the early 2010s because I thought "If police are using it, it
| must be good". It wasn't that good. I needed flow.
| patrickmay wrote:
| Since you've tried almost everything else, I recommend Things 3
| if Obsidian doesn't work out for you. It's the simplest of the
| ones I've tried other than paper.
| system2 wrote:
| It appears to be for apple only. I am a win/linux guy,
| unfortunately.
| Animats wrote:
| Next we'll see people wanting filing cabinets.
| dingnuts wrote:
| yeah sure let me write important Jira links into a notebook by
| hand, that'll be better than keeping them in a plain text file
| behiri wrote:
| I use org mode for personal note taking and todo lists, and it
| has been working very well for me. for projects I put a TODO.org
| inside the docs folder and any TODO and bugfixes goes there (a
| simple todo.txt can do the same)
|
| paper has never worked for me, it's hard to keep track of it and
| others can easily read it.
| arkaic wrote:
| I have a todo.txt for work, but otherwise, I just Google Keep for
| everything. Not gonna have my physical notebook everywhere with
| me as I go, so I need something cloud based. Keep is just simple
| AF to use. No rich text editing or anything more complIcated than
| a checklist.
| whack wrote:
| This would have been perfect if the author had written the essay
| on paper and then uploaded a picture of it. What a missed
| opportunity
| unsignedint wrote:
| Aside from my notoriously illegible handwriting (which becomes
| even worse after just a few seconds, but more on that later), my
| main gripe with using paper is that I end up with smudges all
| over my hand--being left-handed doesn't help. The smudging often
| makes my already hard-to-read handwriting even more of a mess.
| (This issue even contributed to my struggles in English classes
| back then.)
|
| These days, the only time I use pen and paper is during language
| interpretation sessions. It helps me retain very short-term
| memory, but afterward, I can hardly make sense of any of the
| notes I took.
|
| For everything else, I rely on apps. I currently use OneNote.
| I've tried various solutions, but I found OneNote strikes the
| best balance between online and offline functionality--it's saved
| me many times in situations with spotty or slow international
| roaming.
| BlueTemplar wrote:
| Get a different brand of fountain pen recharges ?
|
| Use a pencil instead ??
| clircle wrote:
| I don't understand how note taking is such an impassioned subject
| on this site.
|
| But fwiw, what works for me is to have notes everywhere. I take
| notes in a journal, ephemeral notepad, emails, texts to myself,
| apple notes, and orgmode. I just want to have lots of
| accessibility.
| carlosjobim wrote:
| > I don't understand how note taking is such an impassioned
| subject on this site.
|
| Neurotic people thinking that they are going to organize their
| existence on this earth.
| allenu wrote:
| It (note-taking tools) really is a big thing among this cohort.
| I think there's this deep belief that if you just had the right
| organizational system, you could get more done and be more
| productive. Having gone down that line of thinking before, I
| get the appeal, though I think it's overrated when it comes to
| actually being productive. But man it feels good to play with
| new toys.
| piva00 wrote:
| Can echo the feeling, it's magical thinking that "only if I
| had the perfect organisational system I'd unlock my
| potential". It's a trap, and I fell for it for a while when I
| was younger.
|
| Nowadays I gave up on all the
| Notion/Evernote/orgmode/whatever-tool-someone-is-peddling
| with systems of systems, tagging, etc. to organise oneself.
|
| I realised after getting a bit older that pen and paper is
| the system that works for me, just a nice notebook, without
| pressure to use it for everything, no rigid system but a
| system that organically evolved for myself; keep it
| accessible wherever I'm that I might need to take notes, and
| it just flows while being easy to use _for myself_.
|
| I think that looking for the perfect amazing organisational
| system is just another form of procrastination. I'm very
| happy for the people who manage to have found a very neat
| system for themselves, searchable, available on every device,
| etc., but it's not for me.
| omoikane wrote:
| I believe it's a form of bikeshedding[1]. Not everyone might be
| experts on AI or gaussian splats or whatever, but taking notes
| -- everyone did that, so everyone can comment on that.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bikeshedding
| bengale wrote:
| Obsessive organisation can be a form of procrastination.
| al_borland wrote:
| I think it's a common shared problem and everyone is looking
| for the no-compromises solution.
|
| For me...
|
| - One trusted place for all the notes (something that the stuff
| everywhere model lacks... things get lost or end up being hard
| to find)
|
| - Portable, avoiding lock-in. The assumption is the usefulness
| of the notes will outlive any closed platform.
|
| - Multiplatform, with sync. To make it easy to have that one
| trusted place, and it always be accessible.
|
| - Modern features... can't sketch too well in markdown and
| embedding stuff is tedious and doesn't seem like it will scale
| well over time without tooling. But tooling brings back the
| lock-in issue.
|
| And probably some other stuff. The perfect system doesn't
| really exist. Compromises need to be made. Each person makes
| different concessions, while many of us jump from tool to tool,
| system to system, hoping to have it all, but ultimately living
| with constant pain and disappointment.
|
| I've given up. I'm use Obsidian and work and the Apple stuff at
| home. If/when I need to migrate off Apple, I'll deal with it
| then. Switching every few months sucks.
| jarbus wrote:
| I literally just use a giant text file for everything, with only
| a specialized vim macro for inserting the date.
| Almondsetat wrote:
| Has the author considered you can just write on a tablet with a
| supported pen?
| neuralRiot wrote:
| Writing notes by hand helps rembering them.
| mdotk wrote:
| Emails to myself and snoozing combined with inbox-zero.
| rerdavies wrote:
| Obviously written by somebody who never experienced the Peak-
| Paper complexity of task management using DayTimer organizers.
| The curse of having to carry your 5"x7" $150 leather-bound
| personal planner with $200/yr worth of planning pages which did
| not fit in your pocket everywhere you went...
|
| This way leads to madness!
| nunez wrote:
| I don't understand why Notion is so damn popular. It's a textbook
| example of "jack of all trades; master of none."
|
| It has databases that allow you to create many different views of
| things, but actually using this capability is one of the most
| frustrating things ever. No keyboard shortcuts; actions that
| you'd typically do in Excel don't work here; every table is its
| own page, even when it doesn't need to be; and so on.
|
| You can also create a plain old table within Notion, but all of
| the complaints above apply here. Why even have a table object
| when it's going to just be a gimped database?
|
| It has static web page hosting built in, but so does Confluence
| and other wikis.
|
| If you try to use Notion off-line, it randomly won't show you
| changes until you're back online.
|
| ---
|
| That said, paper is great for worm (write once, read many) type
| data but is inflexible and really difficult to search through
| later.
|
| Journaling is a great example.
|
| It is easy and tempting to start with a paper journal. Feels more
| personal and connected. However, when you want to know how you
| felt on this day five years ago, or you want to find a pattern to
| explain moods that don't make sense, you'll spend ages sifting
| through notebooks. That's assuming that you haven't lost them.
|
| Apps work so much better here.
|
| I started journaling in 2014 but started journaling _daily_ after
| discovering Daylio in 2021. I use Day One now.
|
| I regret not having used an app for this everyday.
|
| There are so many moments of my life that I lost or don't
| remember very well because I wanted to "handwrite my journals"
| despite, often, not having the time to do so. Journaling has
| helped me understand why I feel things and when and gave me a
| great first step towards fixing them.
|
| I will say that trying to modify a table in Notion makes me want
| to throw my Mac into the ocean and go back to paper and
| briefcases.
| stranded22 wrote:
| I tried many times to like Notion but it is far too complicated
| for my needs. It felt like procrastination, a tech version of a
| bullet journal. Spending too much time designing the system,
| and not enough actually using it. It felt like there was too
| much potential and flexibility, if that's possible - whilst
| being really crap at what I was looking for (todo list with
| notifications / offline personal document storage).
|
| So its ticktick + one note (used to have Evernote until they
| mucked it up).
|
| I've tried journaling but never feel like I have enough
| interesting things to document. Have you tried Apple Journal?
| Do you have templates you recommend?
| nrr wrote:
| "It felt like procrastination, a tech version of a bullet
| journal." There's a lot out there that certainly falls under
| what I call "procrasturbation," but the Bullet Journal is
| ironically the thing I've stuck with the longest. Ryder
| Carroll came up with a formalization of the concept more
| recently, but I've been using it since 1999, prompted by the
| removal of our backpacks due to Columbine.
|
| I think the thing that a lot of folks miss is that it's a
| framework that's meant to grow incrementally with how you go
| through life and work.
|
| Without a bag to keep everything together, I got tired of
| misplacing my notebooks, one for each class, so I started
| living out of only one at a time, which then led me to set up
| a sort of table of contents and numbered pages so I could
| find things. It also let me cope with my as-yet-undiagnosed
| OCD and ADHD by giving me the permission just to start at
| whatever page and treat the bound pages as a linked list
| instead of an array. (Bonus: the table of contents became a
| sort of allocation bitmap.)
|
| Homework due dates and holidays and birthdays begat calendars
| of various sorts, inconsistent study habits begat habit
| trackers, notes from class meetings begat dailies wherein I
| braindump about whatever, etc., but none of that happened
| overnight. It built up over months to years.
|
| Journaling is about the stuff you want to remember later so
| that you can reflect on it. Most of my entries involve doting
| on my cats (so many days where I'm just like, "Valerian was
| an aggressively cuddly purrbucket again" or "Laureline
| brought me another sock from the hamper") and, like, "on a
| lark, I dug out my old ThinkPad to find it actually isn't
| inoperative."
| perihelion_zero wrote:
| Endless mountain of todo lists on desk: Index cards. Put them in
| a box when there are too many and let the unreasonable goals
| expire. (Optional: Trade them with your friends after a year.)
|
| Personal notes: A waterproof mini-notepad.
|
| Personal notes I don't care about: Sticky notes.
|
| Movie scripts, math problems, and complex functional diagrams: A
| full-size sheet of paper taken from the nearest printer.
|
| _This comment sent from my Sticky Pad 5._
| bitbasher wrote:
| I have always found pen and paper to be far more satisfying to
| check things off and it brings clarity better than a digital note
| or Kanban board.
|
| I use a single sheet of paper every day. I write down 2-4 things
| I want to get done that day and any small tasks I need to do (ie,
| reply to x email).
|
| The rest of the paper is for notes or thoughts throughout the
| day.
|
| At the end of the day I take a new sheet of paper and write the
| next days tasks and notes. I then toss the old page in the trash.
|
| Every. Fucking. Day.
|
| Works like magic.
| fortran77 wrote:
| I use paper for my daily to-do. I take a 3x5 index card and write
| what I need to do that day.
|
| If I can't fit it on the card, I know I don't have a chance to
| get it all done; in this way it's self-limiting.
| nightowl_games wrote:
| I literally just have a single text document called todo.md that
| I write the date and what I want to do in it and then cross it
| out when im done.
|
| its good for remember what I was working on yesterday to keep a
| smooth continuitity. Helps me get 'back on task' quick.
|
| Its seriously just a single document with like 5 bullet points in
| it each day. I barely ever scroll down. Latest day is always at
| the top.
| jcul wrote:
| I agree on using paper, it's the only thing that works for me.
|
| But I use a rocket book so I'm not going through endless notepads
| and can optionally backup to PDF.
| bengale wrote:
| I try and keep it simple. Little reporter notebook so I'm not
| using devices in meetings and things like that.
|
| Then I transcribe whatever needs to be a little more long term at
| the end of the day/week into either Apple notes or reminders.
| Then rip the pages out and bin them.
|
| Im tempted to get something like todoist to organise reminders a
| little better but I'm cautious that it's the road to
| procrastinating.
| al_borland wrote:
| > Im tempted to get something like todoist to organise
| reminders a little better but I'm cautious that it's the road
| to procrastinating.
|
| Don't do it. I've been down that road. Giving up and simply
| using Apple Note/Reminders is so much easier. I envy people who
| just use the first thing that falls in their lap and go with
| it. It's all good enough. Nothing is that much better to make
| it worth the hunt.
| Beijinger wrote:
| I use simplenote.com with the nvpy client. Both are free.
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