Fantastic post Qiaochu, and let me strongly recommend Swerve’s point about four colors of pen.
I regularly carry black, blue, red, and green pens, and they make paper much more useful.
I use blue and black for ephemeral items, green for things that should merit reviewing, and red for urgency/emphasis.
Typically, I write to-do type items in blue and cross them out as they complete. I use black pen for “working memory” / “scratchpaper” type tasks… things that I typically won’t need to review later.
It’s then a matter of writing important stuff in green or red, or if I realize the importance of something later, circling or starring it in green or red. Red is “look at this now!!” whereas green means it’s possibly important for review later.
Reviewing paper and notebooks becomes simple — skim rapidly for green and red items. If I want greater context, I can study the blue and black notes around the green and red, but it’s not strictly necessary.
Highly recommended. I feel a little dumber when I don’t have a notebook and four colors of pens with me — I’ve been doing it for some years now and it makes a surprisingly big difference.
Fantastic post Qiaochu, and let me strongly recommend Swerve’s point about four colors of pen.
I regularly carry black, blue, red, and green pens, and they make paper much more useful.
I use blue and black for ephemeral items, green for things that should merit reviewing, and red for urgency/emphasis.
Typically, I write to-do type items in blue and cross them out as they complete. I use black pen for “working memory” / “scratchpaper” type tasks… things that I typically won’t need to review later.
It’s then a matter of writing important stuff in green or red, or if I realize the importance of something later, circling or starring it in green or red. Red is “look at this now!!” whereas green means it’s possibly important for review later.
Reviewing paper and notebooks becomes simple — skim rapidly for green and red items. If I want greater context, I can study the blue and black notes around the green and red, but it’s not strictly necessary.
Highly recommended. I feel a little dumber when I don’t have a notebook and four colors of pens with me — I’ve been doing it for some years now and it makes a surprisingly big difference.
Thanks for the reminder; I lost all my colored pens recently and it feels bad.