Keep a notebook, on paper

11 Jun 2021

Keep a notebook. Travel with it, eat with it, sleep with it. Slap into it every stray thought that flutters up in your brain. Cheap paper is less perishable than gray matter, and lead pencil markings endure longer than memory.

Jack London

I’m a big fan of storing data in plain text so I carry a 3x5 notebook as a capture device for everything going on in my life. Writing notes by hand forces you to summarize your thoughts before writing and the summarizing leads to better understanding.1 And if you’re stuck on a problem, writing it down forces you to state your assumptions, which may lead to new insights.

You can observe a lot just by watching.

Yogi Berra

For a lack of attention a thousand forms of loveliness elude us every day.

Evelyn Underhill

When we road-tripped from Florida to the Grand Canyon, Bryce, and Zion I used a 3x5 notebook as a travelog along the way. Nothing major, just a few lines every evening who/what/where. Took up little space and turned out pretty neat.

Wed 4/5 Dallas -> ABQ

Thunderstorms and cold front AM Dallas.

L noticed homes and businesses fly the TX flag not the US flag. NW TX beautiful: hills and rock formations, bluebonnets blooming along the road, passing through tiny old towns straight out of a 1950s movie, listening to the Cowboy Junkies @ 80MPH.

Sign at the rest stop:

WATCH FOR RATTLESNAKES

Reflect

We do not learn from experience. We learn from reflecting on experience.

John Dewey, philosopher

Research shows that reflecting on what you learned that day makes you more productive2 and writing about negative experiences reduces intrusive thoughts3 (writing it down offloads your thoughts onto paper, stopping you from ruminating). So writing a few lines every day who/what/where can be really helpful.

Rite In The Rain notebooks

My Every Day Carry (EDC) notebook is the Rite in the Rain top spiral notebook. It’s durable, waterproof, made in the USA, lays flat so you can hold it in one hand and write with the other, and the wire binding doesn’t poke you or rip your pocket. And it’s much cheaper than Field Notes, Moleskine, and other luxury brands.

What to write with

You can’t use water-based ink on waterproof paper, so gel pens and fountain pens won’t do. A Sharpie ultra fine point permanent marker writes OK but it’s kind of fickle: if you touch the page too much the oil from your skin makes the pen skip. A ballpoint pen works if the page is dry. A pencil works even in the rain: RITR sells a rugged 1.3 mm mechanical pencil but any will do.

Field Notes for people who work in the field

RITR notebooks were designed for loggers in the Pacific Northwest so they’re waterproof and durable. They’re so useful to anyone who has to go outside and collect data you can find them at hardware and sporting good stores.

But I have an iPhone

I have an iPhone and still carry a paper notebook for several reasons:

It’s hard to get your data back

Apple likes to create beautiful walled gardens that trap your data so you can’t get it back—at least not easily: with Apple Notes I have to export each note separately as a pdf file and I have thousands of notes. So I wrote Taigen, a digital web notebook. Now I can export all of my notes in plain text—the universal file format—with one click.

Unreliable sync

Apple Notes lost several notes containing irreplacable data. Safari reading lists occasionally won’t sync between my iPhone and MacBook. Reliable sync is super important and it isn’t that complicated: I wrote the sync handler for Taigen and it works fine.

I don’t trust Apple—or anyone else—with my data

My notebook is very personal and I keep it private so I don’t have to self-censor. Lawyers and doctors have a legally-binding code of ethics preventing them from disclosing what they know about me, but there’s no code of ethics among tech companies. Trust me isn’t legally-binding so I need strong crypto and trust the crypto doesn’t have a back door, or strong physical access restrictions.

Carrying a paper notebook in my pocket next to my keys is about as secure as it gets.

Even though I have an iPhone I still carry a paper notebook: among other advantages it gives me a chance to practice my handwriting.

  1. Mueller, P. A., & Oppenheimer, D. M. The Pen Is Mightier Than the Keyboard: Advantages of Longhand Over Laptop Note Taking. Psychological Science, 25(6), 2014. ↩

  2. Di Stefano, Giada, Francesca Gino, Gary P. Pisano, and Bradley Staats. Making Experience Count: The Role of Reflection in Individual Learning. Harvard Business School Working Paper, No. 14-093, March 2014. ↩

  3. Carpenter, S. A new reason for keeping a diary. Monitor on Psychology, September 1, 2001. ↩