Is paper now dominated by writing on a blackboard/whiteboard, and taking photos of what's worth keeping before erasing and rewriting?
Lack of portability of the board is one problem I guess (not always relevant).
If there was some kind of app that could recognize the content and make it searchable, that would indeed have most of the advantages of paper.
(Most chalkboards/whiteboard don't spark as much joy as high-quality paper/pen in my opinion, but I reckon a good blackboard with good chalk does?)
Or you can use Obsidian or a similar notes software, where you can search, crosslink, and cross-reference in any way you please.
This not as satisfying as writing on paper. I agree that lines are dehumanizing, and I think visual variety of writing and sketching is good for the soul and for thinking.
But actually finding and using your old notes is also priceless.
This system requires having your laptop handy in most circumstances, but your phone is adequate for brief uses. And it's easy and free to sync across at least two devices, maybe a little more complex for more.
Yes, there's a lot lost by not being able to quickly hand-sketch. You can draw on paper and put the photo in but I don't do that for some reason. But typing or talking is generally faster than handwriting.
And again, actually finding your old notes or thoughts is huge.
I move that we think of paper and notes software as complements. Certainly, notes software is much better for almost any purpose where you're actually going to be referencing the notes repeatedly. But for the purpose of "make the neurons in your brain fire good", paper still can't be beat.
(This post was written by first scribbling on paper and then retyping and editing in, umm, Obsidian.)
Right. The post did inspire me to maybe get a new notebook for the first time in years for that reason.
I've been using Obsidian exculsively, but it's really reduced how much diagramming I do. To me the speed does make up for being forced to write on lines and in a limited number of styles. I haven't really gotten skilled enough in it to quickly diagram in its editor.
I'm not sure there's much other advantage to paper for making neurons fire good. I wonder if it puts you into thinking mode based on associations or something? Or if staring at a blank page on which you can write or draw anywhere evokes a more openminded and analytical state for anyone?
I'd hate to convince you to stop using paper, but I use this Obsidian Excalidraw plugin for making drawings and I find it to be reaaallllly fast: https://github.com/zsviczian/obsidian-excalidraw-plugin
It's kinda clunky but fundamentally I find it incredibly "non-frustrating" compared to all other tools. I guess you can try the editor in your browser here: https://excalidraw.com/
I installed it and did like one or two test diagrams and then never again. I should get back to it because it did seem good.
I’m setting a 2 minute timer to write this comment. Because this type of post is crack for me, and I would write all day on this topic.
If you’re in class, take notes on this. I take notes formatted as questions and answers. With check boxes. I can easily then add those to Anki and check them off later.
Anyway, that’s the timer. I’m stopping myself now lest I waste the day. Thank you for this post! Very Cortex podcast.
I'll speak up for notecards: I use binder clips to sort them by category or date once in a while. While they are a bit small for complex or detailed drawings, in a pinch you can lay them slightly overlapping (perhaps with a little tape on the back) and get as big a sheet as you want. They won't replace my sketchbook for doing portraiture anytime soon, but that's a minority of my paper time.
Overall, I love this post and I like hearing other people's approaches to paper!
I am a big fan of Moleskine note books. I use one every day in my work even though I transcribe my notes etc onto my Mac at the end of the day/week (depending on tasks/topics). IMHO it encourages more thought/expression. I alway use a pencil but love fountain pens when I am writing something that might be cherished by others. Some colleagues clearly think I am making more work for myself but I am convinced that it is complementary. Thank you for writing this post.
Paper is good. Somehow, a blank page and a pen makes the universe open up before you. Why paper has this unique power is a mystery to me, but I think we should all stop trying to resist this reality and just accept it.
Also, the world needs way more mundane blogging.
So let me offer a few observations about paper. These all seem quite obvious. But it took me years to find them, and they’ve led me to a non-traditional lifestyle, paper-wise.
For a huge percentage of tasks that involve thinking, getting some paper and writing / drawing / scribbling on it makes the task easier. I think most people agree with that. So why don’t we act on it? If paper came as a pill, everyone would take it. Paper, somehow, is underrated.
But note, paper isn’t that great as a store of information. You can’t search, cross-references are iffy, and it’s hard to copy or modify. Nobody I know really looks at their old paper notes very often. So don’t optimize for storage. Optimize for thinking.
Say you want to do some thinking with paper right now. How would you do it? If you have no system in place, you’ve got some problems: What paper should you write on? Where does it go when you’re done? These are small problems, but they add friction. If you have to solve them, maybe you won’t bother using paper.
So solve them. Your “system” could be, “Write on a notepad and throw the pages out at the end of the week.” Fine! At least you’re using paper now.
Some pens and paper spark more joy than others. Use them. This is not frivolous. When more joy is sparked when you scribble, better thinking follows.
There are many other dimensions of user experience. Personally, I find paper with lines to be crushing and dehumanizing. But I recognize this is not a human universal.
Or, say you decide to write in a notebook. Good. But have you noticed that most notebooks either (a) close if left alone on a table or (b) have spirals or wires that are wider than the notebook itself and get crushed if the notebook is left in a bag between two books, meaning the pages don’t turn right, diminishing joy and therefore thinking?
Probably somewhere in the world there’s someone with three notebooks labeled “work”, “hobby”, and “journal” and every time they want to write something it’s obvious which notebook they should use. But I’ve never met such a person and one imagines they spend their time sorting their underwear drawer or whatever rather than reading pseudonymous existential angst/science blogs.
I’ve tried many times to have different notebooks dedicated to different subjects. But I always find things run together and endless edge cases come up requiring new notebooks and I end up carrying multiple notebooks around and the whole thing is such a hassle that paper sparks no joy at all.
In college, my “system” was to steal paper from printers (justified as “printing blank documents”), scribble on it, and then leave unstapled stacks of paper everywhere to get lost or crumpled in bags. Looking back, this wasn’t that bad.
Later on, I tried notebooks. Many kinds of notebooks. All the notebooks. But none made me happy. Besides the categorization and crushed wires problems, I sometimes (often) write things and later decide they are wrong and cross them out and write, “dynomight why are you so dumb and bad? why?” It drove me crazy to have this “trash” sitting around in the notebook. I tried having separate scratch paper and only copying the good stuff into the notebook, but this was too much work. I never found a solution.
Also, I loooooove having lots of paper all visible at once. (As I write these words, seven sheets are splayed before me.) Loose-leaf paper makes this easy, but notebooks make it impossible.
Then I decided to go all-in on notecards. The idea was that I could quickly try things, move the cards around, throw away stuff that was wrong, etc. And I could keep a stack of them in my jacket pocket, helpfully decreasing my social status.
This is something wonderful about notecards. The fact that they’re so small somehow reduces the mental threshold to start writing, which leads to more paper usage and more thinking. And unlike a notepad, they’re durable and “permanent”.
Still, they’re small. It’s annoying to write/draw anything substantial. Worse, I found my life was gradually filling with stacks of notecards. I tried buying photo albums and stuffing the cards into them, but this was a huge chore and those albums are expensive and gigantic and heavy. The piles kept accumulating. I couldn’t beat them.
My current system, the first one I actually like, is this: