I prefer to takes notes on paper. All the time. Paper is immediate and always on. “But it is not digital!” they say. Doesn’t matter. I don’t use it like persistent memory—“disk”—but more like a RAM expansion for my brain. I have so bad—albeit fast—handwriting that I need to process it quickly anyway. And my process calls for that: I convert the notes into actionable and tangible outcomes quickly—and these are usually digital:
follow-up messages to other people
calendar invites
updates to documents/wiki pages
todo-list entries/tickets
Anki cards
The latter is my way of ensuring long-term retention of new, relevant, or interesting concepts. I do not use Anki for memorizing facts but reminding me of concepts/habits/practices.
When you’re reading nonfiction, do you have any systematic approach to choosing what to take notes on and what kinds of notes to write? Or is it mostly intuitive and ad hoc?
I also have paper and pen with me all the time. A lot of people are trying to convince me to go digital—including my son—but I have yet to be convinced that there is a way to improve my workflow. Which is this:
take notes and sketches making use of however much paper is available and being creative in size, positioning and alignment of text. Quickly.
Clearly this doesn’t digitize well. It will be ugly, hard to read and lack all the context that you have in your mind at that time. After all it is adding to your memory not replacing it.
So the obvious and necessary next step is to convert these notes into actually useful longer-term representations like diagrams, summaries, tasks in a task tracker, calendar entries,...
OneNote is also good at this. though not as good as I need (e.g. I would want recognizing shapes).
But my point is different: Digitizing quick notes leads to a very different workflow. It creates incentives to create notes of permanent type (“disk”). Creating these takes more effort and reduces your RAM instead of expanding it so to speak.
I’m wondering if there could be a visual equivalent of the memory palace technique for note taking?
I think that would be worth exploring and might also explain why notes work for some people and not for others.
I do not have a strong visual imagination but I am very good with concepts and abstract relationships. I often connect topics on paper, place text close to other, or use lines and circles to group things.
I prefer to takes notes on paper. All the time. Paper is immediate and always on. “But it is not digital!” they say. Doesn’t matter. I don’t use it like persistent memory—“disk”—but more like a RAM expansion for my brain. I have so bad—albeit fast—handwriting that I need to process it quickly anyway. And my process calls for that: I convert the notes into actionable and tangible outcomes quickly—and these are usually digital:
follow-up messages to other people
calendar invites
updates to documents/wiki pages
todo-list entries/tickets
Anki cards
The latter is my way of ensuring long-term retention of new, relevant, or interesting concepts. I do not use Anki for memorizing facts but reminding me of concepts/habits/practices.
When you’re reading nonfiction, do you have any systematic approach to choosing what to take notes on and what kinds of notes to write? Or is it mostly intuitive and ad hoc?
I try to avoid reading non-fiction that doesn’t change or has the potential to change my behavior.
I wrote a related comment in Paper Trauma:
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/GpDjJFeCQCLjpt68b/paper-trauma?commentId=CDCDmAtyhMJNNgqg2#CDCDmAtyhMJNNgqg2
-
OneNote is also good at this. though not as good as I need (e.g. I would want recognizing shapes).
But my point is different: Digitizing quick notes leads to a very different workflow. It creates incentives to create notes of permanent type (“disk”). Creating these takes more effort and reduces your RAM instead of expanding it so to speak.
-
I think that would be worth exploring and might also explain why notes work for some people and not for others.
I do not have a strong visual imagination but I am very good with concepts and abstract relationships. I often connect topics on paper, place text close to other, or use lines and circles to group things.