I work in habitat restoration. I spend a lot of time outdoors, but most of my notes are just from my normal meetings. If I’m on my phone taking notes, I have to stare down at my phone and it takes me out of the meeting. I have ADHD and find my phone very distracting. But I can write quick notes on paper without having my head down.
I also just prefer physical notes. I have tried everything under the sun with digital note-taking, but nothing beats the flexibility and reliability of pen and paper. I have a great binder-based note-organization system.
I am honestly shocked that so many people NEVER use pen and paper notes? It is very normal in my field.
Speaking for myself, my handwriting is far from elegant. In university (40+ years ago) I developed a sort of mashup of cursive and printing, since speed of transcription was fairly typical.
I adore the look of top tier handwriting. I even got into calligraphy when I was in HS.
Since my career has taken me deep into the world of tech, I’ve become twitchy at the possibility of a single point of failure, ie, one copy of something is equivalent to no copies of something, 2 copies of something is equivalent to 1 copy, etc.
As such, I’ll take casual note (eg, my to do list for my ADHD) using Google Keep, so that I can access it and update it from my phone or one of my laptops. For the grocery list, it’s Alexa. For professional notes, it’s a combination of Obsidian and Syncthing.
Speaking of Obsidian, I first learned of it while watching a video of anPhD student describing her massive manual note taking system, following a particular system manually, and then discovering Obsidian.
In your case, yeah, I see no reason to change. It works for you.
Yeah, paper note-taking does mean scanning right away when you’re back in the office. But the reality of field work is that you might lose the data if you took them on a tablet, too. I’ve worked jobs where there was no service until we get into the office, so the data just lives on the device until it is uploaded.
I am using Obsidian for a particular project, I’m using it to organize a history research project I’m working on! I think it’s a cool tool, I would just go crazy if I had everything organized on my computer. I end up hyperfocusing more on the organizing system itself, or get distracted on the computer/phone… and the physical notes I can make cute and aesthetic much more easily which makes me feel warmly about my to-dos. I tried to do a digital PDF notebook with hyperlinks and everything, but I just felt like I was spending too much time fiddling around with on my note-taking and organization.
Paper stationary is a lot more popular in Germany and Japan, oddly enough. A lot of jetpens products come from those countries … the most sought after notebooks are Japanese and Germans have great pens.
Your tone is condescending as fuck, so I don’t know why I’m bothering to reply because you’ll undoubtedly just shoot insults at me too, but… I live in 2024. I work in tech, too. I almost exclusively use paper as a note taking, problem solving, and brainstorming tool. Digital tools simply don’t compare in my eye. There is an inherent freedom of immediate expression and a special mental retention value that comes with pen on paper that I have tried and failed to sufficiently replicate on a computer despite attempts of great effort. I’d definitely prefer if I could instantly backup and organize and search and sync without a scan+tag process, but it’s all inferior to me. The most capable people I work with also have a shockingly common tendency (>65%) to share this preference, too. I envy the others’ ability to work purely digitally, but do notice how they spend substantially more time and effort in “administrative overhead” with their digital knowledgebases in comparison to my analog squishy world, to just end up producing similar overall output.
You just prefer it, a notebook won’t survive a 50ft fall into water, an iPad with an OtterBox might, even if it didn’t my notes will, I just grab another iPad.
I promise you I’ve used both, pretty sure I had to write in pencil for mine and I’m sure you can argue the minutia back and forth all day, however objectively, the iPad is a more versatile writing tool than a notebook.
I have a colleague that insists on using pen and paper. He has draws and draws full of random scraps of paper which apparently have important things on them.
He’s even gone out and got expensive paper which is apparently made from stones? and is there for waterproof, It does appear to be waterproof but I’m not convinced it’s made out of stone. He has a phone and a Laptop, and an iPad Pro with a stylus, and he refuses to use any of them.
Yeah because he can never find anything. He knows he wrote it down, but he doesn’t know where it is or what it said, and because it’s not on a computer you can’t just search for it. He’s a pain.
Even if he just scanned in the results of his spider scroll at least we’d have something. Although it still wouldn’t be searchable because it would just be a picture but I bet OCR could probably do something about that.
You can totally be disorganized on a computer too. My paper notes are organized in a binder by context.
Idk sounds like the guy just has untreated ADHD or something. Life’s too short to be mad at someone for being kinda bad at their job. You’re all just workers together.
Also writing speed doesn’t really matter anymore. Most situations where writing speed used to matter now needs typing speed instead.
I don’t buy this. I take notes on paper all the time, what am I going to have my laptop or phone in my face during every conversation?
What are you doing that having a pen and paper is normal but your phone or laptop isn’t?
I work in habitat restoration. I spend a lot of time outdoors, but most of my notes are just from my normal meetings. If I’m on my phone taking notes, I have to stare down at my phone and it takes me out of the meeting. I have ADHD and find my phone very distracting. But I can write quick notes on paper without having my head down.
I also just prefer physical notes. I have tried everything under the sun with digital note-taking, but nothing beats the flexibility and reliability of pen and paper. I have a great binder-based note-organization system.
I am honestly shocked that so many people NEVER use pen and paper notes? It is very normal in my field.
I find this fascinating. Props to you, of course.
Speaking for myself, my handwriting is far from elegant. In university (40+ years ago) I developed a sort of mashup of cursive and printing, since speed of transcription was fairly typical.
I adore the look of top tier handwriting. I even got into calligraphy when I was in HS.
Since my career has taken me deep into the world of tech, I’ve become twitchy at the possibility of a single point of failure, ie, one copy of something is equivalent to no copies of something, 2 copies of something is equivalent to 1 copy, etc.
As such, I’ll take casual note (eg, my to do list for my ADHD) using Google Keep, so that I can access it and update it from my phone or one of my laptops. For the grocery list, it’s Alexa. For professional notes, it’s a combination of Obsidian and Syncthing.
Speaking of Obsidian, I first learned of it while watching a video of anPhD student describing her massive manual note taking system, following a particular system manually, and then discovering Obsidian.
In your case, yeah, I see no reason to change. It works for you.
Yeah, paper note-taking does mean scanning right away when you’re back in the office. But the reality of field work is that you might lose the data if you took them on a tablet, too. I’ve worked jobs where there was no service until we get into the office, so the data just lives on the device until it is uploaded.
I am using Obsidian for a particular project, I’m using it to organize a history research project I’m working on! I think it’s a cool tool, I would just go crazy if I had everything organized on my computer. I end up hyperfocusing more on the organizing system itself, or get distracted on the computer/phone… and the physical notes I can make cute and aesthetic much more easily which makes me feel warmly about my to-dos. I tried to do a digital PDF notebook with hyperlinks and everything, but I just felt like I was spending too much time fiddling around with on my note-taking and organization.
Paper stationary is a lot more popular in Germany and Japan, oddly enough. A lot of jetpens products come from those countries … the most sought after notebooks are Japanese and Germans have great pens.
Congratulations on finding a single exemption to the rule.
The rest of us are living in 2024
Your tone is condescending as fuck, so I don’t know why I’m bothering to reply because you’ll undoubtedly just shoot insults at me too, but… I live in 2024. I work in tech, too. I almost exclusively use paper as a note taking, problem solving, and brainstorming tool. Digital tools simply don’t compare in my eye. There is an inherent freedom of immediate expression and a special mental retention value that comes with pen on paper that I have tried and failed to sufficiently replicate on a computer despite attempts of great effort. I’d definitely prefer if I could instantly backup and organize and search and sync without a scan+tag process, but it’s all inferior to me. The most capable people I work with also have a shockingly common tendency (>65%) to share this preference, too. I envy the others’ ability to work purely digitally, but do notice how they spend substantially more time and effort in “administrative overhead” with their digital knowledgebases in comparison to my analog squishy world, to just end up producing similar overall output.
Not really, a lot of people work outdoors in some way. It’s not as unusual as you think, you are just in your own bubble lol
You just prefer it, a notebook won’t survive a 50ft fall into water, an iPad with an OtterBox might, even if it didn’t my notes will, I just grab another iPad.
No, you’re just wrong. A notebook does fine in the rain and water, there are specially designed notebooks for this.
He’s not wrong though you just disagree.
He is wrong bc he’s saying a tablet would survive the elements better
I promise you I’ve used both, pretty sure I had to write in pencil for mine and I’m sure you can argue the minutia back and forth all day, however objectively, the iPad is a more versatile writing tool than a notebook.
I have a colleague that insists on using pen and paper. He has draws and draws full of random scraps of paper which apparently have important things on them.
He’s even gone out and got expensive paper which is apparently made from stones? and is there for waterproof, It does appear to be waterproof but I’m not convinced it’s made out of stone. He has a phone and a Laptop, and an iPad Pro with a stylus, and he refuses to use any of them.
You don’t really seem to like him very much haha
Yeah because he can never find anything. He knows he wrote it down, but he doesn’t know where it is or what it said, and because it’s not on a computer you can’t just search for it. He’s a pain.
Even if he just scanned in the results of his spider scroll at least we’d have something. Although it still wouldn’t be searchable because it would just be a picture but I bet OCR could probably do something about that.
You can totally be disorganized on a computer too. My paper notes are organized in a binder by context.
Idk sounds like the guy just has untreated ADHD or something. Life’s too short to be mad at someone for being kinda bad at their job. You’re all just workers together.
He can be as disorganized as he wants up until it makes my life more difficult. Then I’ll be mad at him.
Don’t gatekeeper being mad at annoying people.
Do you mean drawers?
I’m not taking notes on any of the idiot conversations I get roped into every day
If you are- have fun, enjoy your pen and paper
Different lines of work. I have to remember a lot of things people tell me 🤷🏻