I have written quite a few posts on note-taking over the last year or so. Physical paper, and especially blank pages, has also been a topic that has shown up with some frequency. Let’s explore these a bit more in this post.
The Blank Page
In A Blank Page, I delved into why sometimes a pen and paper is better for creativity than a computer screen. There are of course computer programs that try to mimic the “interface” of a pen and paper (notably OneNote and even Vim come to mind). However, these programs still live on the computer, and come with all the detriments of the attention-grabbing computers. A blank page is just better for many to start a creative work.
How does that relate to note taking? Notes are not really a “new, creative work”. Are they? That probably depends on the type of notes you are taking. Notes, when you get down to it, are reference materials. You pull them out when you need them, and put them away in a corner somewhere when you do not need them. Yet, we know that some notes are more helpful than others. The best notes are the ones that help in the creative process. This means they need a bit of creativity themselves.
The Note Lifecycle
I mentioned the “type” of notes, but that is really a misnomer. There are not different types of notes, but notes go through a kind of lifecycle. In this cycle they move through phases that can appear to be different types. Similar to how a caterpillar looks nothing like a butterfly, the first phase of notes may not look like a later phase. Notes are also never in a finished state. They can always be added to, updated, corrected, and removed.
A note may start out as a bullet point, or as a narrative that you’ve reformulated from some presentation or meeting. These are the initial, quick, rough drafts of a note. At some later point you need to go back through these notes and reprocess them. This can be as simple as underlining or highlighting. This can me more complex, such as reformulating the captured ideas onto notecards in the form of Smart Notes. Finally, you categorize and store the notes, perhaps in a notebook that you never open again, perhaps in a slipbox, perhaps in the waste-bin.
And then the lifecycle starts over again, when you have need to pull those notes back out. They rarely stay the same, if you’re serious about using them. You’ve learned new things, so new bits may be added to the notes. New connections may be discovered and made. Ideas that were taken down may no longer be relevant. So the process continues with new notes, new transcriptions, and new categories.
Compare With the Digital
Oddly enough, the medium that would lend itself well to this kind of constant change, does not seem to actually work well in this field. Notes in a digital form end up being more static, and therefore become stale and useless. Why is this? I believe there are three primary reasons for this catastrophe.
First, digital notes are more readily seen as documentation, rather than notes. Documentation is much less amenable to alteration than notes are. This shift occurs simply by how the notes are presented on a computer/tablet/phone. They are most likely created on some word processing derived software, so they have that kind of formal, polished, appearance.
Second, unless you are creating your notes in some kind of graph-database-backed application, your notes will lack the robust connections that can be made with paper notes. While the connections could perhaps be more useful in a digital form, with links and even excerpts readily available, you will always lack the ability to lay out your notes in exactly the right way. Paper notes can be spread out across the table, allowing you to access any at will, and discover new connections, new threads.
Finally, a digital medium really creates more friction when attempting to reprocess notes. You’ll always have to be switching back and forth between tabs, or scrolling all over the place. It really messes up the context you are developing, and kills creativity. With paper notes you can lay out your full sheet of quick meeting notes, your existing stack of relevant notecards, and your stack of new notecards you’re transcribing from the new meeting notes. Everything you need is easily visible, and you can effortlessly switch between creating connections to creating new notes to editing existing notes.
Try It
Still not convinced that paper is better? Try it out. In your next meeting take out the old pen and paper, and start writing things down. Take some time after the meeting and reflect on your notes. At least take out a highlighter or your pen again and mark up some important bits in the notes. Take some of your digital notes and write them on paper.
If it turns out it isn’t helpful for you, it is easy to get the paper notes back into a digital form. The cost is very low, but the potential gains are incredibly large.