I've used all the notebooks

https://tylercipriani.com/blog/2022/04/30/ive-used-all-the-notebooks/

by thcipriani • 4 years ago

395 301 4 years ago

tylercipriani.com

RheingoldRiver2• 4 years ago

Why a reverse grid instead of a normal grid?

ohyoutravel2• 4 years ago

Personally it’s easier on the eyes, like dark mode versus light mode on electronics.

amelius• 4 years ago

Whitelines, the company who owns the patent on it, formulates it as "Dark lines distract, Whitelines don't".

https://www.whitelinespaper.com/product/wirebound-notebooks-...

RheingoldRiver2• 4 years ago

Interesting, and that sort of jives with the reason I'm a bit put off by the idea - I think I'd find it too easy to ignore the lines because they're so much less visible than normal gridlines.

I'll keep this link though, and if I ever have a reason to use lined physical paper again I'll buy something from them and give it a try, because I am intrigued by the idea, maybe my impression is wrong.

tandav• 4 years ago

Moleskine is kinda missing :)

JasonFruit2• 4 years ago

Moleskine is expensive for what it is: high price, name with reputation, medium-quality paper and binding. If you're happy with the quality, you can get the same for less money by going with whatever store-brand equivalent you can find, in my opinion.

kergonath2• 4 years ago

Yeah I think that was sarcastic. Moleskine are well known for being quite expensive and not too nice to write on anyway.

tuatoru• 4 years ago

You must live in a notebook-rich environment.

Where I live, Moleskines are indeed ridiculously expensive, but every other available option has tissue-thin paper and heavy black lines which obscure whatever I'm writing/doodling.

Bar one: Whitelines, which have very light grey pages with white lines. But they're spiral wire bound, and I prefer saddle stiched.

All of the non-Moleskines have square corners which are a design antifeature.

mbreese2• 4 years ago

The biggest thing going for Moleskine (which is what I used when I kept paper notebooks) is availability and consistency. They are widely available and you always know what you’re going to get. It may not be the next, but was certainly more than adequate for my needs. And then I didn’t need to tryout half a dozen other options.

I’m now trying out the Remarkable tablet, which has a lot of the advantages of paper, but it’s not quite there yet. It has the paper feel for writing, and isn’t half bad when it comes to “ink quality”.

But where I think all electronic notebooks fail is data locality. Meaning, when I’m searching for a note, in a physical notebook, I know it’s roughly halfway in, on the left page, etc. As I thumb through the pages, I can tell where I am in time. That experience just isn’t quite there in the electronic versions yet.

sgillen• 4 years ago

Yea echoing the other commenter I was very disappointed when I picked up a moleskin and found it felt like lower quality than the cheaper non name brand I got on Amazon.

JasonFruit2• 4 years ago

I think it's possible to get so excited about the tool you're using that you forget its purpose. I have to watch that myself --- and I believe the writer here is teetering on that edge. I try to hold myself to a) having a separate notebook for each purpose for which I'm using one, b) having it marked appropriately for its use, and c) having it be handsome. (I fear I've displayed my failure to restrain myself.)

kergonath2• 4 years ago

having it be handsome

I like the utilitarian look of the classic Rhodia. And I love writing on them, of course.

I find nerding about with notebooks and fountain pens a nice change compared to work days, when I have to nerding about HPC and text editors.

franklampard• 4 years ago

This is cool but personally I have to use digital note keeping apps.

With years of exploring, I found VS Code to the best for me.

sp332• 4 years ago

Multiple text files in a single folder, or one big file? How do you search or link notes?

jl62• 4 years ago

Some years ago, I was on the margins of notebook enthusiasm, but never went all-in, because I quickly discovered that while I really enjoyed the physicality of notebooks, I came to dislike their pre-digital limitations. I still prefer the free-form capability to mix text and drawing and color and scribbles that pen or pencil on paper offers, but I then scan the finished pages into the computer.

As a result, my favorite notebook is now a pad of A4 paper with a good weight, ruled, and perforated so I can easily detach pages and feed them through the scanner.

Content warning for the following paragraph.

I then destroy the originals.

ohyoutravel2• 4 years ago

I switch between field notes for every day notetaking because they can fit in a pocket and are basically disposable but high quality and are allowed in areas where electronics cannot go, and my remarkable for places where electronics are allowed or for more long form that syncs to my computer / Obsidian.

twobitshifter2• 4 years ago

I have a similar digitization system, however in some cases typing is just easier.

For example when taking meeting notes that will become minutes, I’d much rather type. My notes from a meeting for distribution aren’t my own individual thoughts so this is primarily transcription. Writing is far too slow to keep up with discussion and it needs to be digitized or typed up later. There would be benefit to learning shorthand but I’d still have the digitization hurdle.

If it’s an online call another more modern option is recording the meeting and adding automatic transcription, but I haven’t seen this done often.

For scanning notes with the iPhone I saw a kickstarter for a notebook that is the same aspect ratio as the iPhone screen and has a black border. I thought about making my own throwaway version of this by just cutting down A4 paper and putting a couple paper clips through card stock.

nicbou3• 4 years ago

I switched to an iPad Mini with Notability. There are no downsides. I rarely leave the house without it these days.

devchix• 4 years ago

their pre-digital limitations

Exactly so. I love the idea of scribbling in a leather-bound gilt edge notebook, like a modern Thucydides. I can't find anything later without flipping through, and I hear people keep index in the notebook! Ain't nobody got time for that. I throw all my notes into a text file, check them into git and grep away! For impromptu notes I still use my National Brand Computational Notebook with grid ruled green sheets, roommy real estate, thick paper, page number, $12 each.

bluenose69• 4 years ago

I'm partial to Rhodia No 16 dotPad. It takes ink well, without much bleed through the page or spread across the page. For reference, I use a variety of inks and fountain pens, with Pelikan-4001 and Waterman-graduate-allure being my go-to combination.

I prefer the dots to either grids or lines, because they provide enough guidance without getting in the way.

The spiral binding is convenient, and the back cover is stiff enough to use on a lap.

The pages are not numbered, but I do that myself, with yyyy-mm-dd and a title at the top-right of any new set of notes, and circled numbers 1, 2, ..., on successive pages of that topic.

Not that anybody asked... what is it about note-taking that makes people yammer so?

stock_toaster• 4 years ago

Same here. After trying many types of notebooks and paper, I find the Rhodia dotpad paper to be very pleasant, and it works well with the other tools I like to write with:

* tactile turn pen (bullet slim w/Pilot G2 0.7mm refill)

* rotring 600 mechanical pencil 0.5mm

* staedtler pigment liner 0.4mm

buescher2• 4 years ago

I loved the Rhodia meeting books until I got one whose pages (they’re perforated) all fell out. The paper is nice otherwise and the format is great.

A blaze orange notebook - they are available from other brands too - is incidentally very easy to find and hard to leave behind.

snidane2• 4 years ago

Nitpick about date formats.

2013-02-27 is the current standard, but more so as a result of "this is how we've done things" and not "this is the best way to do it". The hyphens make the notation ambiguous with substraction, therefore in programming languages dates are quoted and represented as strings, which in turn get passed to a parsing function.

    - to_date('2022-03-27')
    - datetime.strptime("2022-03-27", "%Y-%m-%d")

The obvious alternative is to use an unambigous notation from the list such as dot notation. 2022.03.27 doesn't collide with floating point number notation, nor with ipv4 notation, nor any arithmetic operation and thus can be used to represent dates in programming languages directly - without quotation and without the need to stringly type them.

It's one of those many examples where "best practices" really only mean "current common practices".

OJFord2• 4 years ago

Dots don't allow it not being a full date though, e.g. the month 2022.04 is indistinguishable from the number two thousand and twenty-two point zero four.

Ambolia3• 4 years ago

When writing on paper I personally like something like "Saturday 30th of April 2022", or some abbreviation of it, in addition to global context it also adds some weekly context that can be nice when trying to remember when you did something.

And some seasonal context from the month, like 06 doesn't bring many associations to my head, June tells me it was probably hot, and the type of atmosphere and activities going on around at the time.

layer8• 4 years ago

The hyphens make the notation ambiguous with substraction

In Lisp they wouldn’t, and in statically typed languages it probably wouldn’t be a problem either, as the compiler would tell you that you can’t use a date as a number.

On the other hand, the need for date literals in program code is rare enough that it likely doesn’t warrant introducing a dedicated syntactic form.

kelseyfrog2• 4 years ago

This is why I notate using s-exprs.

buescher2• 4 years ago

I got in the habit years ago of writing dates “27 February 2013” - recommended by some guidelines for lab notebooks as the least ambiguous.

hammock• 4 years ago

Dd mm yy would make more sense to me on a physical notepad, since the more relevant info comes first, and you don't have to worry about sorting

OJFord2• 4 years ago

To me too, but I'll write yyyy mm dd if it stops Americans writing mm dd yy!

In fairness, they do say it in that order too, so on some level perhaps that really is 'the more relevant' (or natural) to them.

scbrg• 4 years ago

Not that it matters much, since few programming languages will have date and IPv4 literals, but the form you propose does collide with IPv4 notation.

IPv4 addresses in numbers-and-dots notation can contain one, two or three dots.

10.11.12 would mean Nov 12, year 10. Or the IPv4 address you'd perhaps be more tempted to write as 10.11.0.12.

Perhaps we can put the pile of poo emoji to good use?

gregmac• 4 years ago

2013-02-27 is the current standard, but more so as a result of "this is how we've done things" and not "this is the best way to do it".

That may be, but it's also codified as ISO 8601 [1], so that's a strong reason not to use a non-standardized format.

The hyphens make the notation ambiguous with substraction, therefore in programming languages dates are quoted and represented as strings

If you're hard-coding a date in code, you have other choices. You can use a UNIX timestamp (uint). You can create a Date object directly, eg:

    Date Created = new Date(2022, 04, 30);

I don't know of any languages where Date is a primitive type (are there any?) so having a literal notation - which I think is what you're advocating - doesn't really make sense: there has to be an allocation or conversion anyway. This is in contrast to actual primitive types like float, int, char, etc where most languages do have a literal way to express those in source.

If you're reading a date from user configuration, you need to parse at some point anyway. Otherwise, store dates as serialized date objects and in your database as date-type columns (or as UNIX timestamps, if date isn't an available type).

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISO_8601

snidane2• 4 years ago

kdb and similar systems have had it for years.

https://code.kx.com/q4m3/2_Basic_Data_Types_Atoms/#253-date-...

Float is an imprecise transformation from text to a binary fixed size representation. I don't see how floats would be considered a native type while datetime types not.

Having it non-native while the option exists seems to be like a voluntary torture. But it makes sense considering community bubbles surrounding programming languages and not bridging the gaps between them. What can be a 100 lines of Java can be expressed in 20 of Python can be expressed in 5 lines of a data language.

mikotodomo2• 4 years ago

The units get smaller from let to right, which is what you expect. The American system doing things like month/day/year is unintuitive and causes ambiguity, but if it was done in an intuitive way in the first place (day/month/year), there would be none.

twobitshifter2• 4 years ago

The American way is written how dates are spoken out loud in the states.

kcindric• 4 years ago

I really like using notebooks and writing my thoughts, helps with ADHD and with grounding when I'm in full panic mode. I feel I think more clearly and structured when my thinking is paired with writing.

I also _love_ good quality notebooks but I feel guilty when using them for everyday scribbles like meeting notes. It feels like sacrilege.

djbeadle• 4 years ago

I've had some luck by scribbling on the first page of every new notebook. Subconsciously it is now "ruined" and safe for every day use.

0xCAP• 4 years ago

Oh so im not the only one? Some I love so much Im still waiting on the right occasion to use.

kzrdude• 4 years ago

I use notebooks for thinking at work but I've noticed I'm only ever really making progress when talking to a colleague. Now that helps untangle thoughts and get from ideas into an actionable plan. Even the notebook doesn't really help me with that.

throwanem16• 4 years ago

Try thinking of the notebook as the other side of a conversation you have with yourself.

throwanem16• 4 years ago

I dedicate the very last page of all my work notebooks - Mnemosyne N195As, so very nice indeed - entirely to doodles and scribbles, both because with fountain pens sometimes you need a sheet like that, and because sometimes a person needs a sheet like that.

enriquto3• 4 years ago

Why only a single page? Every other page in my notebooks is dedicated to doodling and cool smeared fountain pein inkdrops!

throwanem16• 4 years ago

Your meeting notes don't have to be scribbles. Learn to take quick and accurate notes while listening and talking, and they become an enormously valuable reference.

I'm not being purely metaphorical in this use of "valuable", either. Last year this skill made me about twenty-four thousand dollars.

triyambakam7• 4 years ago

Last year this skill made me about twenty-four thousand dollars.

Could you please elaborate?

carterschonwald• 4 years ago

Yup lectchurm (I can’t spell it ever ) is my personal favorite too. Numbered pages and dot grid for the win!

jseliger• 4 years ago

So have I, and I like this one: https://jakeseliger.com/2013/01/05/product-review-rhodia-web..., although portability is a key concern. Field Notes are also good, albeit less durable.

yeetsfromhellL22• 4 years ago

The author misses Rite in the Rain, which makes my favorite notebooks, they're printed with heavy, acid-free, waterproof paper. Pairs great with a Fisher pen cartridge (waterproof, pressurized ink made for writing in almost any condition).

As for dating, I like to do something a little different; it's still ISO8601 but with a slight twist. Each page top has the date in basic form (eg, 20220430) and each note on that page has a timestamp to describe that note and a title for the first line (eg: "T1234 Groceries"), followed by the note body below, a little like a git commit message. This allows me to link between notes by enclosing the date and time stamp in pointy brackets. To save some ink when linking, I use the date at the top of the page for context. If my page top is dated 20220430, and I want to link to a note from the 23rd at T0631, I write it like <23T0631>. Since the year and month are the same as the context I'm in, I don't bother writing those. I don't use page numbers at all.

Some other notebook habits I have: I like to use the first page for my contact info if anyone finds my notebook (and maybe offer a reward). The next page is for goals I'd like to work toward during the anticipated lifespan of that book. I also like to create a weekly index. When I've filled the notebook, I create an index of index pages on the very last page. If I wait to index the entire thing when the book is filled, I usually don't. Also, I use the last few pages to create monthly calendars. I fill in dates on them with letters (A, B, C...) for an event, which I reference on the back side of the page, either with a short description or a link to the timestamp I wrote down event information on. Finally, after filling a book, I write the range of timestamps that book covers in the spine so I can quickly find notes in the future.

psnehanshu2• 4 years ago

You are way too disciplined, which I can never be. More power to you.

yeetsfromhellL22• 4 years ago

If you just do the date at each page header and timestamp each note to enable linking, your notes will get much easier to deal with. I actually started doing this because I'm fairly undisciplined and generally pretty disorganized.

neilv2• 4 years ago

I also like Rite In The Rain notebooks with Fisher Space Pens.

My only complaint about RITR is that the feel of the paper seems a bit odd.

Ambolia3• 4 years ago

Two small tips that got my GTD system going on paper:

- Don't worry too much about having a perfect written system, I always was worrying too much about having the perfect system and this meant that I ended up not writing anything down because I hadn't found the perfect place to put it. Don't be afraid of re-writing things, think of re-writing as re-thinking, rather than as having made a mistake that you are correcting. Your system is an organism that evolves with as you keep thinking through the things.

- Nested lists are a nightmare to look at, and add too much context that you don't want. Nested lists are ok for project planning, brainstorming, and thinking. But keep nested lists away from any page that you want to look at often. Better to have 10 separated pages with 10 lists than 1 page with 10 sub-sections. In general try to keep the system as dumbed down as possible, because the point of having a written system is that you can look at it when you don't feel like thinking and the system provides very basic steps for your head to do (like pick one thing to do from here, or remind me of all the people I am waiting for to come back to me with answers, ...)

triyambakam7• 4 years ago

Thank you for sharing that. I've been testing paper systems with inspiration from GTD for the past few months. I agree that it was much easier when I let go of fearing rewriting. But so far I do find it difficult to not feel overwhelmed with the great number of pages that I've accumulated and often duplicating certain topics when I forgot I already had a page for something. I also wish for better indexing habits to find what I'm looking for. I've contemplated setting a limit on the number pages I accumulate and then when reached entering them into a persistent digital storage (markdown files synced across devices) and then starting over again on paper.

Overall I keep wishing for the notebook to fix my productivity problems and I'm slowly admitting that it is actually something in my internal orientation that needs to shift.

Ambolia3• 4 years ago

What type of information do you find yourself losing track of? The GTD sections shouldn't be that big even when tracking a huge amount of projects, like if you had for example 100 projects and 100 next actions that you are actively working on. Each of those shouldn't take much space, maybe 1-2 lines on a notebook for each one project and each task, clear outcomes for projects, and a simple actions for next actions, about 20 pages overall? And that's for a huge amount of projects, I've never gotten anywhere near that in active projects, maybe 50-80 projects at times. Those 2 categories, plus a calendar, and a "waiting for" list, are the sections you may be looking at often on your day to day work when following GTD.

Everything else about your "active" projects goes a bit out of scope of what is defined by GTD and should go to "project reference material", like project planning, TODO lists, project structure, notes from meetings, sketches, ... those are kept in a much messier form by me, but I feel like as long as the big picture and hard commitments are clear on the GTD part, it's ok if sometimes I have to "dive down" into a specific project mess to clarify some things. It's just not ok if those 2 are mixed and make looking at your day-to-day GTD sections a nightmare.

I keep my paper GTD system on an A5 ring binder, something like a Filofax but a cheaper brand, with 1 plastic divider for each 4 (projects, next actions, waiting for, someday/maybe) of the 5 GTD hard-categories [1], with each section having about 1-5 pages. The calendar goes to Google Calendar just because it's convenient how it auto-adds meeting invitations.

For project reference material I keep an alphabetic index [2] on the same A5 binder for small projects, some dedicated folders or notebooks if the projects are huge, or a directory with files if the projects have some digital material, images, or links, that can't be easily tracked on paper. Those will look very different for each different project so don't really have much of a "system" for it, aside from keeping the hard-landscape tracked on GTD.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Getting_Things_Done#/media/Fil...

[2] https://appelboom.com/filofax-refill-personal-cream-alphabet...

psnehanshu2• 4 years ago

I rarely take notes, be it on paper or on computer. It's just not my thing.

GavinAnderegg• 4 years ago

OP mentions the Baron Fig Confidant II. I personally prefer the Baron Fig Vanguard Softcover Notebook: https://www.baronfig.com/accessories/vanguard-softcover-note...

It has a sewn binding, lies flat more easily than the larger Confidant II, and is more "disposable" (which the OP mentions being a good thing, though I keep all my notebooks for later reference). It also comes in a variety of sizes, though the "Flagship" size is my go-to. I love the feeling of finishing a notebook, and ones with fewer pages help me get there often. I also find the soft-cover notebooks a bit easier to store than the hardcover ones.

Arainach2• 4 years ago

It would be cool to see the author's notes on why they chose their ratings. Their expectations roughly align with some of mine but I don't know if their reasoning is the same. For instance, I love writing on the Rhodia spiral-bound book but the pages tear out way too easily so I've stopped buying them for that reason. I also settled on Lechtturm.

hatware• 4 years ago

I haven't used all the notebooks, but I am a terrible notetaker. My issue is that too much in my life is digital, so adding physical notebooks is avoided at all costs. The only time I really used them was during job interviews (both as an interviewer and interviewee).

For me, an iPad/Apple Pencil was the solution to writing more regularly. I wonder if OP has tried the digital route?

eternityforest• 4 years ago

I pretty much abhor adding any extra analog artifacts to my life, and especially irreplaceable ones.

All my notes are in Obsidian at the moment, and I sometimes go weeks or months without writing anything on paper. I pretty much only use it for things like greeting cards, or for roleplaying games since electronics totally break immersion in a fantasy setting.

xbryanx• 4 years ago

So pleased to see the Leuchtturm 1917 dotted grid at the top of this list. It's been my go-to notebook for the last few years. It comes with some nice stickers for labeling so that you can find past notebooks on the shelf. Lots of colors are easily available on Amazon.

I wrap my latest notebook in a Coal Creek leather cover to look all fancy (and hold my phone and pen). https://www.coalcreekleather.com/collections/a5

soylentgraham• 4 years ago

Same! Im about to finish a very packed notebook of 6 years of stuff, I love the dots, and will be grabbing an identical one next

allenu• 4 years ago

The Leuchtturm is my go-to as well for the last few years. I’m also glad they are very easy to source.

I like to have mine around for jotting ideas down and drawing diagrams. I don’t have a system or anything. I think I used to be far more prescriptive about what I put in it but now it’s just a playground for my ideas and that suits me really. I carry around everywhere so it’s ready to be used.

bloopernova• 4 years ago

A4 hardback Leuchtturm square dotted notebook is the best I've ever used. A real joy!

phil21• 4 years ago

I enjoy taking notes. A colleague sent me this link, so I'll post here to amuse him.

My favorite notebook is the National Brand "Engineering and Science Notebook" - which has become my go-to. [0]

I like to diagram, so having the reverse page be graph paper makes it easier for me. I also prefer spiral bound since they tend to hold up better in travel, but that's purely subjective.

[0] https://www.amazon.com/dp/B001E69X52

soapdog• 4 years ago

If any one here would like to see yet another notebook, I recommend checking out Traveller's Company Notebooks. I wrote a bit about them in:

https://andregarzia.com/2022/01/got-a-passportsize-traveller...

commondream• 4 years ago

Author didn’t mention Midori notebooks, and they’re by far my favorite. The paper is nice to write on, and the blank covers give space for documenting what it’s for. Pairs great with my favorite pen, my Ohto Horizon.

powersurge360• 4 years ago

I am _shocked_ that Midori isn’t more represented in these comments. The lay-flat binding is amazing, the grid is pretty cool, and the indication at the top for the grids is great. Plus the price is about right compared to other premium notebooks.

You miss out on pockets and multiple bookmarks but you can pair it with a Kokuyo systemic notebook cover to cover all the bases.

mas-ev2• 4 years ago

The author seems like an actual novice on the topic of taking notes. There's a whole world and culture around bullet journal strategies.

Their list seems like all the notebooks they found when searching "notebook" on amazon lol.

responding to your comment specifically because Midori is the best :)

schroeding• 4 years ago

Ohto Horizon

Yeah, a great pen, sadly AFAIK out-of-production - and the successor (GS01) doesn't have the side release button, which was really nice to fidget with :(

click clack

bornabox5• 4 years ago

Agreed. Midori paper is shockingly good. And it works so well with fountain pens. Definitely recommended.

nunodonato• 4 years ago

I was hoping to read some comments about digital note-taking devices like the Remarkable or the SuperNote. I've been considering jumping ship to one of those just to save the trees :) SuperNote seems really cool in all the ways it allows you to write and organize your notes.

benjiweber• 4 years ago

I used these Leuchtturm1917 A5, dot-grid with fountain pens for years. Still love paper and pen, but have switched almost completely to the Remarkable2 for well over a year now. It's close enough that the infinite-capacity notebook and syncing to cloud are worth the slightly worse than paper experience.

baisq• 4 years ago

And what pens do you use? Because that's just as important ;)

jonsen• 4 years ago

https://www.jetpens.com/blog/The-Best-Pens-for-Note-Taking/p...

ces_• 4 years ago

As an avid note taker, also in ISO8601 format, "Badly Made Books" make some of the best notebooks I've ever used.

As a bonus, their collections of notebooks range from 75-99% recycled.

https://www.badlymadebooks.com/

jbjbjbjb• 4 years ago

I just buy store brand or brands aimed at students. I obsess over a lot of things but I don’t get expensive notebooks. I’m just not paying silly money for a block of paper to write throwaway notes.

smarx0072• 4 years ago

Maybe "throwaway notes" is the part that makes a difference. After I finish a notebook, I usually sit down and fill out the table of contents for which I normally allocate 2 or 4 pages at the beginning, because I will refer to those notes in the future.

BeetleB2• 4 years ago

Most student targeted books don't handle fountain pen ink well. Occasionally I find a cheap notebook that does, but normally you have to pay $7+.

enriquto3• 4 years ago

Rhodia and Clairefontaine are cheap (the notebooks with simple covers) and they are the best for fountain pen writing without feathering. Only surpassed by expensive japanese paper.

stagger87• 4 years ago

Top flight grid lined composition notebook for 99 cents on back to school sale. Done.

hzhou3212• 4 years ago

"They aren’t a record of my thinking process. They are my thinking process."

This exactly! I think with pen and notebook. I also think without pen and notebook, such as during my driving and running. Without notebooks, I often find myself think in circles and having hard time to recall what I just realized a short moment ago. With pen and notebook, it is more relaxed. Often I don't revisit my notebooks. So the notebooks are mainly serving as a thinking aids than to serve as a database. Replacing them with digital sounds nice, but in reality it is just a distraction. Having the record to go back to is a short term benefit; the few pages of notes that I do end up revisit often quickly become part of paper or presentations, or tweets and moments, or more often, prototype code. I have accumulated a drawer of used notebooks. They only have sentimental values. And they have more sentimental values in paper forms than in digital forms.

PS: my current favorite notebook is this one https://www.amazon.com/Universal-Sugarcane-Notebook-College-... A hard cover and thick ring has become a necessity for me.

weaksauce• 4 years ago

The notes i took in college were almost never looked at again after I took them... they were more of a method to retain the information. I also found that the classes where I was using a laptop to take notes were the ones that I retained the least from. the notes are the process.

rowanajmarshall• 4 years ago

Exactly.

If anything, computer notes distracted me from the lecture. But writing out summaries from slides after the lecture was invaluable, even if I never looked at those summaries again.

throwaway815232• 4 years ago

One of my professors said his retention method when he was a student was to take light, quick notes during lectures, but then at home the same night, write out their contents in complete sentences in a separate notebook. It sounded like a good system for someone (not me) who is organized enough to keep up with it.

I looked at the OP article and it seems too fetishistic for my tastes. What happened to ordinary yellow legal pads, or spiral bound school notebooks? For daily casual jottings, I used to use paperbound pocket notebooks, but they kept falling apart with use. Now I just carry a folded up piece of 8.5"x11" printer paper and transcribe any content needing preservation to a computer when I get around to it. The rest is ephemeral and I can throw away the paper when it gets full. Lately I read on Stephen Wolfram's blog that he does the same thing I do. I don't know if that's a good sign or a bad one.

rchaud4• 4 years ago

The way I was taught in college was to:

a) take lecture notes in class

b) as soon as possible after the class, refine those lecture notes by combining it with references from the textbook and other readings or handouts.

c) visit your instructor during office hours to clear up things you weren't able to during (b)

Unfortunately the advice didn't come with any time management tips so I was almost never able to follow it. The worst of it was revisiting my unrefined notes 3-4 days after I took them. They often seemed to read like gibberish, especially if I had not been studying the reading material in the meantime.

matwood• 4 years ago

In college my process was take written notes in class, then studying consisted of transferring those notes to my computer by typing them in/expanding where needed. Never looked at them after that.

turtleyacht• 4 years ago

I used Moleskine for several years. Each last a year apiece. Now the Miquelrius softbound: similar size, but 300 sheets for 600 pages.

Entries are numbered sequentially. Some are a single sentence, others are a code snippet; still others a paragraph.

"Log pages" go between chunks of consecutive pages. After getting full, these are taped at the edge with shipping tape, to flip to them more easily. The log page gets its own number and a luxurious two pages.

As entries are added, I flip back to the nearest log page and add <number> plus a single title sentence.

I rarely title entries themselves.

As pages start to separate from the binding, duct tape keeps them stuck to the cover.

There's so many pages; you can try all kinds of customization. I've been trying to combine Zettelkasten with GTD, but just going crazy with "how to start" versus "just do the thing."

Sharpies bleed through. Pages are graph style as blue squares, but I'm used to it.

My fidget tool is flipping through with my thumb--but only the older pages. Keep the new pages pristine, because skin oil will mess with the ink!

I aim to use a wax sheet, like what stickers use, on the proceeding page where my hand would rest, to mitigate the issue.

In all, I've reached the limit of notebooks, and from here it's automating awk or something, and really making a computer archive of this stuff.

I always promise myself to keep a good index, but I never go back to the notes. Maybe occasional entries, which will be rewritten into a new notebook--but I'm glad to have written something for my future, sentimental self.

A slip box is still possible--but instead of references to other works, they are your longer-form notes in the notebook. Then it's third-order storage, in a sense. A compromise to needing more space than an index card, but the desire for discoverable brevity.

triyambakam7• 4 years ago

Thanks for sharing! I was hoping to find in this thread the system other people use in their notebooks.

However I don't understand, can you explain what the log page does?

barrenko• 4 years ago

Yup. In the context of thinking as a sort of "digestion" - I can think only when writing or walking / running. I can hardly do any thinking just thinking.

kovek• 4 years ago

I wish there was a way to always produce a notebook, without the hassle of getting it out of the backpack without having to carry it (uses 1 out of 2 hands). Same for the pen. I think finding a surface can also be difficult. Anyone has ideas?

smarx0072• 4 years ago

I would go for one of the top-wirebound Europa notebooks [1] They fit in a palm or place nicely on a lap. Any pen with a retraction mechanism should work fine, I prefer Uniball Power Tank.

[1] https://www.cultpens.com/c/q/brands/clairefontaine/europa-by...

jack_pp• 4 years ago

Samsung Note?

mateo1• 4 years ago

I used to keep a couple pages of paper in my wallet and a small pen. It wasn't that much of a hassle, but modern responsive smartphones made this obsolete. At home I generally prefer taking notes on paper.

egypturnash6• 4 years ago

Perhaps you are ready for "the Hipster PDA": a small stack of 3x5 notecards, kept together with a binder clip. Fits in your pocket along with a pen.

If you want to be a bit more upscale you can get pocket-sized notebooks with a loop to hold a small pen.

site-packages12• 4 years ago

Field Notes[1] notebook with something like a pilot slim pen[2] has been perfect for every day carrying in my shirt pocket or back pocket and is producible at a moment's notice.

[1] https://fieldnotesbrand.com/products/original-kraft [2] https://www.jetpens.com/Pilot-FriXion-Ball-Slim-Gel-Pen-0.38...

bitexploder• 4 years ago

I have been really into iPad pro and Concepts. It is really cool to think, journal, note take, whiteboard, design mechanical things, design software etc. all in one functional easy to use piece of software. Used to be really into notebooks but I just can'.

Gigachad2• 4 years ago

I have the ipad pro for art but I haven't really felt I would enjoy it for notes. I feel there is just this mental stress about battery powered devices where you want to turn them off every second you aren't using them. While a notebook can just sit on your desk open all day.

lvl1023• 4 years ago

I am surprised no mention of the gold standard: Tomoe River 52gsm. I’ve tried nearly everything in the market during the pandemic and they are simply the best particularly for fountain pens.

smitty1110• 4 years ago

Too bad it's OOP now. I'll miss it when my stock is gone.

bornabox5• 4 years ago

The original one yes (TR7), but a different company (Sansez) has started producing it (informally called TRS). First tests look surprisingly good, so there's hoping...

electricair• 4 years ago

The author could create a digital notebook system using any of his notebooks with Paper Website[1]

[1] https://paperwebsite.com

maleldil4• 4 years ago

I've used paper notebooks in the past (also for thinking), but I struggled with finding my notes again. With a digital system (even just plaintext files), you can use search or grep or something, and find all relevant notes that contain your query.

I used a few paper notebooks to write down my thoughts during my Master's, and it was always difficult to find where I wrote about a particular experiment, paper, or anything that wasn't write-only. I would figure out when I wrote about that and go through the dates, but it's nowhere as convenient as grepping by an author name. This made me switch to digital notes (in Obsidian) for my current job.

How do you deal with this? I'd love to get back to paper notes again.

CPLX• 4 years ago

There’s a different experience of writing longhand that yields to a certain kind of brainstorming that I like quite a bit.

I ended up buying a Remarkable 2 which is an e-paper writing tablet. Sort of an expensive impulse purchase, bought off an Instagram ad of all things. I love it and carry it with me all the time.

The software is fine, not great but it works. The writing experience is excellent though, it’s as close to the UX of actually writing in a notebook as I can imagine and I definitely am happy with the purchase.

thamer2• 4 years ago

A few people have said they use a Remarkable 2 tablet in this thread. I had seen it mentioned multiple times on HN and ended up getting one a few weeks ago, and I absolutely love it. The writing experience is great, especially for technical sketches which is the main type of writing I do with it. I wish it did a bit more like automatically OCR documents with indexing, but what it ships with is already more than I expected.

I'd definitely recommend it.

chrisweekly6• 4 years ago

I still use my bullet journal (moleskine paper + graphgear pencil), and also use Obsidian (switched from Roam abt a year ago), and have a reMarkable 2 eink tablet -- which I _might_ try using as a digital replacement for the bullet journal. I'm sometimes bothered by the inefficiency / partial redundancy in my system's current iteration... OTOH the resiliency is great.

My flavor of bullet journal makes it reasonably easy to find stuff thanks to numbered pages, a structure that includes dedicated pages separate from daily notes, and a comprehensive index.

throwanem16• 4 years ago

a reMarkable 2 eink tablet -- which I _might_ try using as a digital replacement for the bullet journal

Be aware that the software on those is so limited as to make indexing of any kind entirely impossible.

hzhou3212• 4 years ago

Only use one notebook at a time. Always write down a date first, on every page if your notes spans to another page. Write down your notes sequentially. Had a diagram in the middle of the page? Continue notes at next page unless you are annotating the diagram. It's much easier to find things when there is a single media in linear form. Having mixed notes is fine. Having a linear order is more important. I would write down my shopping list if I am think of that in the middle of figuring out an algorithm, draw a box around my shopping list, and continue with my algorithm notes.

throwanem16• 4 years ago

Also, number all the pages except the last two, which don't need numbers because they're where you will keep an index by topic.

Even across multiple volumes, that index will serve the same purpose for your notes as it does for a database, this after all being whence RDBMS designers borrowed the term: an index allows you to perform lookups in sublinear time.

lancesells• 4 years ago

I make an index of my notes at the back of the notebook but then do it again digitally. That way I have digital search for physical items. If my notes were purely text I could probably scan but I prefer navigating a physical book than a PDF or folder of files.

FastMonkey• 4 years ago

I've gone back and forth a bit between electronic and paper notes. For me, electronic just can't beat the physical location of paper. I know where in space a particular note is so it's easier for me to hone in on it. I sketch and do a lot of math and there's just no friction less way to do that in an app. I think I tend to remember concepts graphically too, so searching with text doesn't feel as natural.

Of all the note taking apps I've used though, obsidian is easily the best. The graph they have for connecting notes together is just great. And, I like that their storage system is just plain text files, so long after obsidian is gone, I'll still be able to look at them if I need to.

Macha• 4 years ago

Personally I'm dyspraxic. This makes the actual physical act of writing more difficult than for most, especially if the content needs to be legible when I no longer remember it. And if I am taking care to write legibly, they're too slow for whatever I'm taking notes on.

This means for me, physical notes are not the solution they clearly are for many others. I've made peace with that, though for many years my "folder of markdown" did leave me with a feeling of not doing it right when so many people raved about how physical notes improved their experience. I always found the practical difficulties outweighed the benefit of the forced mode switch for me. I guess my point is to not stress about it - while paper notes are the right tool for many people, the right tool for you might be digital notes.

(I've also settled on obsidian these days, and the growth of obsidian and notion is also kind of vindicating for my folder of markdown approach when others were using Evernote/onenote)

VMtest• 4 years ago

So I have a habit of noting down HN links, in digital form of course, here are some you might find interesting

1. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30395238 | My Notebook System (ratfactor.com)

2. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30344237 | Notes apps are where ideas go to die, and that’s good (reproof.app)

- https://github.com/laurent22/joplin/

- https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30345959 | the process of physically writing the notes, internalizing the information, and building new connections in your head is quite important

3. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30303211 | Analog: A simple productivity system (ugmonk.com)

- https://ugmonk.com/blogs/journal/analog-the-simplest-product...

throwanem16• 4 years ago

And he's yet to try a Mnemosyne, which is nice, because it means he's got something pleasant to look forward to.

My header format for work notebooks is an ISO8601 date followed by title and then, when applicable, start and end times - these come last, rather than adjacent to the date, because that way it's easier to leave space for the end time if it's uncertain up front. When the header line is complete, I highlight it with a 6mm Pilot Parallel filled with liquid ink extracted by needle from yellow Sharpie Accent highlighters - that nib size spans the full space between lines in a Mnemosyne N195, and using it in a Parallel rather than the original felt tip also keeps it from smearing the Iroshizuku Murasaki-shikibu or Juro-jin with which I ink my Decimo.

I was surprised to see no mention of indexing in the original article. In work notebooks I do this religiously, because while hand-writing does help consolidate memory, an index of notes makes them a much more durable reference tool and makes memory consolidation much less of an issue in the first place.

In my personal diary, I only head entries by date and time, and don't bother highlighting. I don't always know up front what those will be about, so a title doesn't fit, although I suppose I could perhaps usefully backfill one on a finished entry - I haven't reconsidered my diary scheme since shortly after I started the first volume in 2018, so perhaps now's the time. (That said, I'm somewhat put off by the level of effort involved in indexing four-plus years' worth of diary, even if it is also a marvelous opportunity for a reread.)

At work and at home, writing makes a wonderful tool for thought. It's much easier to wrestle with a large and thorny idea when I don't have to keep the whole thing in my head all at once.

lvl1023• 4 years ago

This is my second option after Tomoe and it’s actually quite affordable.

throwanem16• 4 years ago

I never was a fan of how long it takes ink to dry on Tomoe. Too, for work I require a spiral binding since it lays flat for reference and folds under itself for a small footprint, and as far as I know there is no spiral notebook made with Tomoe River paper. (Or if there is, no one seemed to import it last I checked, at least.)

nice_byte• 4 years ago

i've been using traveler's notebook for the past 2-3 years. i like the fact that it's refillable, and you can even have multiple separate notebooks for different things within the same binding.

prepend2• 4 years ago

I used to like the hardcover grid reporter moleskine and used it for a long time because it fit in my front pocket and took the least space on a table next to my laptop. But moleskine changed paper and got thinner and the reporter grid got harder and harder to find.

I like leuchtterm’s dot but wish they had grid and reporter style so they would flip up. I almost liked the rhodia as the paper was nicer but it wouldn’t open and stay flat so you had to hold it open while writing.

kmstout• 4 years ago

As a lefty, I find that the reporter's notebooks are ideal for carrying out in the world. The binding stays out of my way, and every pair of facing pages forms a long column that works nicely for notes, snippets of code, and shopping lists.

prepend2• 4 years ago

I’m a righty and like it for the same reasons. The spine seems to last better this way too.

vhodges• 4 years ago

I've used both Leuchtturm1917 a5 (dotted) and Maruman Mnemosyne N104 Special Memo Notebook - B5 dotted.

I like the maruman for the spiral binding (flat, less footprint when folded over) and I find the paper on the Maruman to have less bleed through but I wish it came with more pages. I also like the slightly bigger pages the b5 gives me over the a5. I still like my Leuchturm too but don't use it as much lately.

me_me_mu_mu• 4 years ago

I’ve got maybe 15-20 moleskine notebooks laying around. I love taking notes and I use a simple cross classic ball pen.

lunchladydoris• 4 years ago

If you want to extend your journey into stationery, I highly recommend the Erasable podcast [0]. It reignited my love for wood pencils.

Stationery is such a fun and relatively inexpensive rabbit hole to fall into (as long as you steer clear of the bonkers fountain pens).

[0] https://www.erasable.us/

podoco• 4 years ago

my issues with notebooks is the bleed-through. i like thick dark pens but they always bleed-through if you dont get a super heavy weight paper, and those are a lot more expensive. whats the solution, just not write on the backside of the paper?

lvl1023• 4 years ago

There are certain papers with little to no bleed through. This is the best resource. Rabbit hole warning.

https://mountainofink.com/blog?category=Paper%20Review

karaterobot• 4 years ago

I remember buying my first Moleskine notebook in college. It was my first exposure to "fashionable office supplies", a foreign concept to me growing up. It was a super nice object. In fact it was so nice, I didn't want to use it to just take notes in class, because what a waste. I also didn't want to use it to just scribble personal notes and todo lists in, because what a waste. In the end, I never wrote anything in that notebook at all: what a waste.

Now I tend to view fashionable office supplies as productivity fetish items. It's easy to geek out on that stuff, but does a better notebook make me more productive? Seems to make me less productive, if history is an indicator.

Yeah, I will occasionally find myself reading reviews of immaculately designed mechanical pencils, or minutely engineered Japanese scissors. But I try not to lose sight of the advantages cheap, lousy stuff has too: disposable, easy to replace, low barrier to use. These qualities are also valuable.

adamm255• 4 years ago

I still have my first college Moleskine which also was something way “too good” to waste so has about 20 pages used, the rest are blank!

I now use free vendor notebooks from events and random pens. And a £2 flip notebook for daily to-dos.

sanderjd3• 4 years ago

I think the biggest advantage to buying my own stuff is standardization. Nothing drives me crazier than a bunch of schwag notebooks of different shapes and sizes all jumbled in a drawer.

sph• 4 years ago

I have bought a nice leather bound notebook, the one you sit down with a cup of coffee to write something important. I never use it.

I instead just got myself a cheap detective-style notepad I can keep in my pocket to write down all the crap the comes to mind, everywhere I am, even while standing up. That's exactly what I need.

dijit• 4 years ago

The trick is to buy a nice leather sleeve for a standard size of notebook, then buy cheaper inserts.

You might find that you enjoy the quality of paper of other notebooks, but it gets you over that "this notebook is too nice for my random thought"-block.

maskerade• 4 years ago

Hahaha, it's good to read this and see its not just me. I also have an unused Moleskine notebook and numerous other 'Nice' looking notebooks that I never write in as I feel it would just be a waste.

I just go for a cheap and cheerful one that I am happy to write any old nonsense in

egypturnash6• 4 years ago

It really varies with the person. Personally I like using nice notebooks with ornate covers based on old books, with metallic ink accents. Like this: https://www.paperblanks.com/en/product/journals/viola/pb8116...

It makes me feel like a freakin' wizard to pull them out and write in them. It's great. Bonus wizard points for using a nice fountain pen.

goldenkey• 4 years ago

Same feeling here. I have a collection of Lord of The Rings limited edition Moleskin notebooks [1] and they make me feel like I'm writing into some compendium of time.

I find it to be worth it, considering that even premium office supplies aren't that expensive compared to other life expenses.

[1] https://amzn.to/3F1qdaG

narayanbs2• 4 years ago

So basically, the feeling the tool gives you becomes more important than the task they are intended to perform.

LanternLight83• 4 years ago

I showed your link to my partner, who reccomended some of the inventory of Peter Pauper Press: https://www.peterpauper.com/product_info.php?products_id=704...

narag• 4 years ago

Personally I like using nice notebooks with ornate covers based on old books, with metallic ink accents.

You must be young. If I used something like that at work, the young yahoos would laugh me out of the building.

sedawk3• 4 years ago

I have been a sucker for nice mechanical pencils for well over 2 decades and gone through tons of books or just bunch of papers stapled together, nothing fancy. Been meaning to get into fountain pens, any good recommendations please?

rzzzt• 4 years ago

There is a webcomic that mirrors your experience: https://poorlydrawnlines.com/comic/nice-notebook/

jl62• 4 years ago

And the general trope: https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/TooAwesomeToUse

lwkl• 4 years ago

Moleskin Notebooks are overpriced trash. The paper is way too thin and most pens I use bleed through.

thomas• 4 years ago

Yes, but if you use the right pen it helps a lot! Good reference: https://unsharpen.com/what-are-the-best-pens-for-moleskine-n...

arthurcolle• 4 years ago

I use moleskine notebooks all the time, stop fixating on price and just use them when you feel inspired. I used to be like the other dude in the thread who says they never want to write in them but just do it lol. $20 is $20

I prefer the larger sized, thinner pages books for this reason, I can care less and still take loads of notes

unethical_ban• 4 years ago

Once you get over the "don't use them" part, they're exquisite to use. Pens, I tend to agree that I like being cheap on them so I can lose them and replace easily. Notebooks, I don't lose because the value is the data.

iveqy• 4 years ago

I used to never find my pencil and continue to have to go and fetch a new one at the office. Then I bought a 200 usd Lamy 2000 and now I always have a good pen at hands.

I used to have a pile of coffee mugs piling up at my desk at work. Then I bought an expensive designer coffee mug and only used that one, suddenly my work area is clean.

It's about knowing how you can trick yourself to without any effort increasing your well being. I've flaws, sometimes I can buy then away by tricking myself.

cstoner• 4 years ago

Now I tend to view fashionable office supplies as productivity fetish items. It's easy to geek out on that stuff, but does a better notebook make me more productive? Seems to make me less productive, if history is an indicator.

I agree with you 95%. This comment is really just wanting to explain that 5%.

I have found that a little extra money goes a long way, and that a lot of money doesn't ever go far enough.

My bullet journal "daily caries" are:

* Apica CD 5mm grid notebook - $14.00 (one per year)

* Pilot Metropolitan fountain pen - $17.00 (one time purchase)

* Disposable black refills for the fountain pen - $5.00 per 20 (maybe twice a year)

In the realm of fancy pens/notebooks these are pretty cheap, but I really enjoy them. I feel like they are at a very nice sweet spot where they're cheap enough that I could lose them, but not "too good to use".

Maybe I'm lying to myself, but I feel like I journal more often because of how much I like them. It's just nice to use nice things.

mcphage2• 4 years ago

In the end, I never wrote anything in that notebook at all: what a waste.

Years ago I took some bookbinding workshops. The guy running the program ended up making tons of books for the lessons which he ended up giving away. One of the thing he did was to scribble on the first page so it wasn’t pristine, so that the recipients wouldn’t want to use it for being “too nice”.

sedawk3• 4 years ago

Book-binding... I have been wanting to do this so I could bind my own books, mostly for fun and "wow" factor, if nothing else. But it either got pushed out due to something (seemingly) more important/immediate or I didn't go that extra mile! Watched several videos on the inter-tubes, but nothing clicked... Didn't ever explore the option of bookbinding-workshop!! Care to share some details about this workshop (location, what to look for, pitfalls, etc.)!!

narayanbs2• 4 years ago

Agree with you one hundred percent. I was more concerned about the way i use the fashionable office supplies than what my intention in buying them was in the first place.

mjrbrennan• 4 years ago

Same, I write fiction and years ago when I was starting out I bought the fancy Moleskine and Field Notes notebooks, among others. Those have never had more than a few pages filled in. I have however filled 11-12 A4 notebooks of various lengths with longhand writing that cost ~$2-5 each. Same with pens, I never want to use fancy pens or notebooks, a 5 pack of basic pens do the job just fine (though I do now have a favorite, UB-120 uni-ball micro rollerball pens).

It's fun to read about this fancy and nicely designed stuff as you say, but the less fussiness around writing for me, the better.

2b3a51• 4 years ago

Cheap and disposable: short hand pads from a high street chain of cheap stationery shops in the UK (The Works). One pound for 150 leaves with top spiral. Pages stuck up on wall for todos &c, discarded when complete. Also a ream of A4 photocopying paper which I use on a clipboard for diagrams sketches and mind maps and drafts.

More permanent: generic A5 sketchbooks from artist materials shops. Typically 80 leaves of 100g/m^2 off white plain paper and board covers with sewn signature bindings. Around a fiver each.

Recently discovered somewhere in the middle: Muji 'Pocketnote' A5 plain notebooks with paper covers and a lot of leaves (over 100). Flexible, thin shiny pages (no good for sharpies/gel/ink) but cheapish around three pounds and a nice feel.

None of these are so expensive to become precious.

kamaal• 4 years ago

I once bought a Moleskine notebook, it was so precious i never used it. I then gave it to my niece, she didn't use it either, last time I heard she gave to somebody else too.

Long story short you buy these things as jewellery and not as tools.

Plain old notebook available in any nearby store works for me. And yeah any pen works too.

notjustanymike• 4 years ago

This implies you think none of your ideas are worth $20.

Semiapies• 4 years ago

Eh, depends on the product. Moleskin Cahier journals are truly pedestrian-looking things, but they have decent, unlined paper and a good size and shape for quick, project-specific notes on your desk. And they handle wear better than small, cheap notebooks. (Aside from those hard-covered composition books, which is something I've tried in the past. And those have spine/glue problems.)

While the Field Notes limited editions are blatantly collectibles, most are similar enough to the standard items to just use. Get one of the fancy leather covers if you worry about damaging them, then stick it in your pocket when you need to take a note. (Given most are the same price as their standard notebooks, it's really more of a fun little decoration for the everyday tool.)

And a Fisher AG7 is just handy to clip to the notebook in your pocket, so you always have a normal-feeling ballpoint pen that will always work. It's the only pen I've managed to hold onto long enough to get refills.

exolymph• 4 years ago

I solve this problem by simply actually using my nice supplies. Nothing more satisfying than a full notebook!

99_00• 4 years ago

but does a better notebook make me more productive? Seems to make me less productive, if history is an indicator.

The choice of notebook impacts your productivity. As you yourself admit.

The notebook that works best for someone depends on the person. Your reaction to Moleskine notebooks is particular to you.

"Better" is what is better for the individual.

diiaann2• 4 years ago

I love the Leuchtturm but I find that I too like something more disposable. My preference now is the Kokuyo Dot Grid which you can get in a spiral bound or loose pages.

See: https://stationerymanor.com/collections/kokuyo/products/koku...

sswezey• 4 years ago

I use the dotted lines for grad school, and they are the best of both worlds: https://stationerymanor.com/collections/kokuyo/products/koku...

diiaann2• 4 years ago

Also good! I'm a designer that doodles so I prefer no rules.

beebmam• 4 years ago

I used to use a notebook exactly like this, but then I became fully remote. Now I use org-mode for everything in the exact same way, except now it's structured and navigable and searchable!

ShroudedNight3• 4 years ago

I have a similar relationship with notes - the act itself being the greater part of value. And I, too, have found myself becoming more of a paper snob over time.

The most satisfying notebooks I've found from a paper quality to value perspective are these 'age-bag' notebooks from Clairefontaine (90gsm A5 graph): https://wonderpens.ca/collections/paper/products/center-clai...

The ones I drool over though are the 'bonus' notebooks from The Folio Society: https://mirabiledictudotorg1.files.wordpress.com/2015/03/img...

derevaunseraun2• 4 years ago

Why exactly would someone spend $10-20 on a notebook with fewer pages than the $3 one you can buy at the department store? Like you're just paying over 3x the cost for something that's essentially a commodity

It just sounds like people putting special branding on commodities and writing up shitty blog posts as some cool trick to make quick $$$

But hey, maybe I'm a buzzkill spoiling all the fun the shills are having

ShroudedNight3• 4 years ago

The ones I can buy at the department store have lousy paper that will bleed through multiple signatures if I were to write in it with my fountain pens. They will also cost me significantly more than $3.

egypturnash6• 4 years ago

Better paper that bleeds less and is less likely to get ripped through by a sharp mechanical pencil. Better binding - spiral notebooks are super cheap but if they live in your bag a while the spiral starts getting crushed and tries grabbing ahold of anything else in your bag, or the books next to it when it's filled and on the shelf. Hardbound books can make it a little easier to write in them sometimes.

Also having a really pretty notebook that looks cool can be a small source of pleasure. I like to use ones with covers styled after elaborately-bound old books, I feel like a wizard taking notes in their grimoire every time I take them out, and that's worth something IMHO.

Surely there is something in your life where you don't buy the cheapest, shittiest version of it possible, but spring for the nice version instead. Why do you make this choice? Probably some combination of the pricier one working better, being more durable, looking cooler, and acting as a status symbol.

Gigachad2• 4 years ago

Hacker news users enjoy spending 5x more for products and finding a way to feel superior over normal people for it.

site-packages12• 4 years ago

There are lots of reasons to use heavier, higher quality, acid-free paper inside one's notebooks. The regular notebooks work ok, better notebooks are objectively better in many practical metrics as well as impractical metrics.

derevaunseraun2• 4 years ago

Username checks out

almog• 4 years ago

At least for myself, using some of the fancier 80/90 gsm sheets in that list (Clairfontaine for one) only makes sense if I'll be taking my notes with a fountain pen (which can be a lot of fun!), but with rollerball/ballpoint I'd get the same experience from the cheaper Rhodia options, that would probably be just fine at preventing bleedthrough (some of the fancier papers can be really good at preventing feathering in just how well they render present some inks).

lqr• 4 years ago

I take notes on the lowest-tier Strathmore 9x12" spiral-bound sketchbooks. I strongly prefer totally blank paper for math and diagrams. The paper is plenty high-quality, you can tear out pages without ruining the appearance, and they are cheap.

However, I don't view those notes as a permanent record. Anything really important gets transcribed to LaTeX (math) or text files (TO-DOs, etc.)

The transcribing takes extra effort. I'm not sure it's worth it, but it's a good opportunity to distill things to their essence and double-check logic. My future self doesn't need to wade through as many dead ends when looking back later.

pacaro• 4 years ago

I buy Canson sketchbooks[1] and use them for everything, although mostly drawing/sketching. I can blow through them pretty quickly but buying them in 6-packs isn't bad

The 5.5×8.5 format is portable enough, each notebook is 100 pages, the paper isn't too lightweight, and they're serrated so tearing out a page neatly is possible

[1] https://smile.amazon.com/dp/B00H3T4NOU/

jerlam2• 4 years ago

I prefer disc-bound notebooks like Staples Arc, Levenger Circa, or Rollabind:

https://www.levenger.com/CIRCA-326/ABOUT-CIRCA-1233.aspx

Arc is cheap and available in person at Staples.

It combines the versatility of using your own paper, like a three-hole-bunch binder, but with the reliability and compactness of a wirebound notebook. Choose whatever paper you like, print out your desired grid system, reorder pages, add tabs, etc. and still have the same notebook.

When you need to archive pages, you can remove them from the notebook and throw them in a scanner.

I'd say the initial cost of the notebook and punch is steep, but not if you're comparing to $20 hardbound notebooks like Tomoe River or Moleskine.

depingus• 4 years ago

I just checked Staples website. The cheapest Arc refill is $7.50 for 50 pages of notebook paper. That seems expensive to me.

jerlam2• 4 years ago

I don't recommend buying their refills. The benefit of the system is to buy your own paper stock and print out your preferred line/grid system, and punch it yourself.

triyambakam7• 4 years ago

Wow, I had never heard of discbinding. That's so interesting! How do the pages actually stay in? The Levenger product video confuses me.

akavel• 4 years ago

The pages need to be "punched" to make holes of a specific shape:

https://old.reddit.com/r/fountainpens/comments/bccgt0/discbo...

Apparently, paper has enough "structural stiffness" or whatever (don't know the detailed physics), that it won't pull "away" or "up" from the discs by itself. Forcing a page out can be done for sure, so you need to be aware of this and put the paper in/out of the discs with a special kind of gesture/movement, that bends the paper instead of tearing it. Still, both the static forces and each in/out gesture do put a bit of stress on the paper, so you tend to prefer a slightly thicker kind of paper for this than in typical notebooks. Common xero/printer paper with 80g/m2 is decent enough for me, although if really needed, thinner paper can also work, but it will be much more flimsy and prone to falling out. Still, if some of your pages get tired around the holes, you can do an "emergency repair" by taping them over with e.g. washi tape, and re-punching the holes. I found the repair procedure imperfect for a number of reasons (esp. that I can't seem able to keep the page from warping when I apply the tape), but still better than letting the pages fall out, so I only use it as a last resort.

What I found even more interesting, is that the technology was invented quite long ago - I think I read that it happened even before the 2nd World War, though the earliest concrete date I can find now is "before 1948" (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disc-binding and https://atoma.be/en/the-atoma-quality/). IIUC it's patented by the company founded by the original creators, https://atoma.be. But apparently it's been since licensed (?) to some other companies, and/or the patent has expired. Notably and fortunately, most of the current producers stay compatible with the original system (the general dimensions, positions, and distances of the holes are the same), so you can exchange the punches, discs, pages, and other accessories. That said, as shown in the link above, there are slight variations in the shape, which results in more/less friction when turning the pages depending on the exact shape of the hole in the page vs. the exact shape of the disc's cross-section. Also, weirdly to me, each of the subsequent companies tries to sound like they're the one and only creators/"innovators" of this technology, while (usually) following the

Anyway, there's some more info you can gather from teh Internets and youtube, and there's some small community on reddit: https://old.reddit.com/r/Discbound/

RugnirViking• 4 years ago

I wonder whether tapping out Morse code would show even greater memory than writing with a pen? Presumably there's nothing specific about the act of writing itself, rather the slowness of it means you have to summarize more rather than record what's being said, and summarizing requires greater understanding

kabdib• 4 years ago

A cow-orker of mine was maintaining several sizes of notebooks. "I use small notebooks for small ideas," he said, "This medium notebook [holding up a 8x11" sketch pad] for medium-size ideas. At home I have a notebook as big as a coffee table -- it's still unused because I haven't had an idea that big yet."

[Lechtturm dot-grid notebooks are fantastic]

3232• 4 years ago

I remember when I accidentally stumbled upon a $100 A5 notebook, in a regular department store, but located in a finance hub. It had no obvious feature to justify the price, no leather, no gold leaf or anything weird. Just a good quality notebook.

It was quite a visceral shock to realize that obviously some people do buy them. Again, it was a regular upmarket shop, not some sort of billionaires exclusive hangout.

ShroudedNight3• 4 years ago

This was in currency more-or-less equivalent to the US Dollar? Was it made of vellum!? Even as a paper snob, $100 for a notebook elicits a visceral reaction.

3232• 4 years ago

Yes, $100 USD equivalent. Looking at google images, no, it was definitely not vellum, just good quality paper. I remember feeling a bit ashamed because I was touching such expensive paper with my greasy hands :)

I'm sure the location of the shop mattered a bit, everything there was on the expensive side of things, somewhat like in airport shops.

fma• 4 years ago

If you go to the Dollar Tree - they have tiny composition notebooks that fit well in your back pocket. A pack for $1 - or I guess, $1.25 now that they raised the prices. I carry a pen that fits on my keychain. If I'm out and about I can jot something down. If I use my phone to take notes, they never get looked at. The act of taking it out of my pocket reminds me if I wrote something that I need to follow up when I'm home.

At home/office I have rocket book. I don't use the app, though. Throughout the workday I jot down notes. At the end of the day/week I will consolidate anything important to the front of the notebook and erase the pages.

I have an ipad, but taking notes with the pen just doesn't feel right for whatever reason. I've yet to find a solution I like for longer term notes (i.e. when reading a book).

javert• 4 years ago

I'd be interested to hear people's thoughts on the Zettlekasten system from people who have actually used it.

for_i_in_range4• 4 years ago

The analog Zettelkasten is where it's at imo. Digital Zettelkasten misses the magic of the system. Luhmann was productive because his Zettelkasten was Analog, Numeric-alpha addressed, Tree structure, Index. (Antinet Zettelkasten)

Here's a channel that shows how to create an analog Zettelkasten system: https://youtu.be/YfMNwusO6fk

dwg• 4 years ago

Passport memo from MUJI will be a great value for some. Modeled after passport: small, compact, durable cover. 24 pages of great quality blank, graph, or dot grid paper. Price is about $1 in Japan.

https://www.muji.com/jp/ja/store/cmdty/detail/4550182110340

Also available on Amazon (at a bit of a premium):

https://www.amazon.com/MUJI-Passport-Notebook-24Sheets-Green... ($10 but appears to include 3 notebooks so about $3.33 per notebook)

nicbou3• 4 years ago

I used them as travel notebooks and they're indeed great.

james-bcn• 4 years ago

You can order them directly from Muji. I used to buy 20 at a time. They are great to keep in a pocket for notes when you are out and about.

kyleShropshire2• 4 years ago

I use pocket notebooks that I carry around in my back pocket at work every day. Ended up having to design my own so they could last 6-12 months without falling apart.

jan_Inkepa• 4 years ago

Design your own? Interesting! What do you mean? what did you change about them?

kyleShropshire2• 4 years ago

Yeah, I drew up the different sections that I wanted and had them printed like normal paperback books. I made them fit into a back jean pocket, added calenders for project tracking, and a table of contents to fill out for reference.

jvandonsel• 4 years ago

I feel a need to share my notebook fetish too. Dingbats A5. https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01MRDVVLZ

rectang• 4 years ago

One day in my teens, it suddenly occurred to me that I preferred notebooks with no lines. Somehow I liked imposing my own form in the page. Sideways, slanted, crammed, big, small… whatever struck me in the moment.

You’d think that lines would cost extra but I had to pay more for a notebook without them. ;)

hahajk• 4 years ago

sort of like how smartphones without cameras cost more than smartphones with cameras.

arendtio• 4 years ago

On the one hand, I don't like notebooks, because they make it hard to reorganize notes and I prefer electronic notes, because they take less space. However, I use notebooks when I have to think and they help me concentrate. So while I prefer to organize things electronically, I feel that the thinking process actually works better for me, with pen and paper in front of me.

Usually, I make some notes while thinking things through and return to the PC to implement them afterward (Code as well as PowerPoint).

So I can't emphasize this enough:

They aren’t a record of my thinking process. They are my thinking process.

rchaud4• 4 years ago

The point of paper notes is not to use them as a sole source of truth. If you're jotting something down, it's probably an outline or some sort of shorthand that needs to be cleaned up.

Paper notes are most effective if you go through them 1x a week and upload the important parts to a digital store. This process helps clarify my thinking as I get to reflect on my recent thoughts and prioritize the most important ones.

humblepie• 4 years ago

I had this reorganizing problem too, but still wanted to write on a notebook. I finally discovered Kokuyo campus smart binder. It's an A5 or B5 sized loose leaf binder that has these small plasic rings and can hold about 30 pages. Reorganizing is simply opening the binder and rearranging the pages and that worked really well for me.

triyambakam7• 4 years ago

I do the same for the same reason and have the same Kokuyo binder! Though recently transitioned to just an American size (?) loose leaf with binder paper for cost an ease of procuring paper, as well as that I find the Kokuyo cumbersome to put in and take out paper with so many holes.

raegis• 4 years ago

I have this too and really loved it. But now I just use the cheapest B5 notebooks I can find, for the refill paper was somewhat expensive. For organization, I use the postit-like flags to label pages, and sometimes I'll write a table of contents on the front cover when the notebook is full.

fumeux_fume• 4 years ago

The man's used 9 notebooks.

quirino• 4 years ago

Haven't seen anyone talk about the notebook the author is working on, with UUIDs and QR Codes. Never really thought about adding something like that to a notebook, will definitely try to come up with a nice system myself.

onderweg• 4 years ago

Indeed. I really wonder how the author plans to use UUIds and QR codes.

_HMCB_• 4 years ago

Best notebook I’ve used. Nothing comes close. The paper: muah!

https://www.jetpens.com/Maruman-Mnemosyne-N196A-Special-Memo...

And for a small jotpad:

https://www.jetpens.com/Maruman-M.Memo-Mini-Notepad-A7-6-mm-...

jgalentine007• 4 years ago

There are some really affordable Maruman spiral notebooks that I like to use, much better than any office depot stuff, and more practical than Rhodia and other fancy brands. https://www.jetpens.com/Maruman-Spiral-Note-Basic-Notebooks/...

rchaud4• 4 years ago

The article doesn't mention Moleskine once, yet it seems several comments are about that brand. What's going on there?

Notebooks should be about utility first. I have a Staples brand of 3.5 x 5.5" notepads that come in 3-packs. They are almost exactly passport-sized in terms of height, width and thickness, so they fit perfectly in a pocket, to the point where it's almost invisible. Once I'm done with them, I can store them in an index card box.

THAT for me has been the key to taking paper notes consistently. Create a situation where the friction to start writing on a pad in my pocket is lower than pulling out your phone and getting distracted by a lock screen notification before you can even open the notepad app.

wccrawford• 4 years ago

Moleskine was the "in" thing for a while. It's practically impossible to talk about notebooks without someone remembering one fondly.

objektif• 4 years ago

What pen do you use?

rchaud4• 4 years ago

Just regular pens, I think they're ball point.

blackoil• 4 years ago

Think of them like mechanical keyboard with beautifully engraved keycaps. Will they make you better programmer, probably not. Are they minimal requirement, definitely not. Will people appreciate it and enjoy using it, yes for some. Will people find them wasteful, yes for some.

"Beauty, Art, Aesthetics, Appeal, Pleasing, Sexy" serve purpose which are beyond utilitarian but human.

If lot of people are praising something, probably because they liked it and wanted to share about it. If you can afford it, you can choose to give it a try and make an opinion and decision for yourself.

chevill2• 4 years ago

The article doesn't mention Moleskine once, yet it seems several comments are about that brand. What's going on there?

The reason the comments mention Moleskine is that its the first "fancy" brand of paper that the majority of people have heard of. Its also actually quite terrible in terms of quality to the point of being almost unusable with fountain pens and also with a lot of standard pens you might find in an office supply section of a department store.

thinkingemote• 4 years ago

the quality used to be good, but then company got bought and quality failed.

fritztastic2• 4 years ago

I personally prefer to take notes digitally, which allows me to search through and organize better.

However, when it comes to learning a language or writing fiction, I really find physically writing on paper much better, especially for retaining new vocabulary in memory and mastering a new alphabet.

There is something to be said about the feel of paper, too. If I only have a little notepad in my pocket it helps but if I want to keep something, like a journal, it is nice to search and find the paper that is suitable to the task, which works well with certain inks/pens. Never ocurred to me to keep a log of which notebooks I've used, that's a nice way to compare the experience of different types of binding/papers.

fritztastic2• 4 years ago

I should add, there are ways to digitize written notes. I personally don't do this, but I know of projects like Paper Website. Just something to keep in mind.

curious_cat_163• 4 years ago

I really like the composition notebooks. The cover and binding tends to be decent enough to last got some time.

They are easy on the pocket.

They indeed _are_ big enablers of my thinking process.

for_i_in_range4• 4 years ago

Great read. The benefits of writing by hand are significant. Personally I find notebooks limiting. They result in knowledge silos. I've been teaching the analog Zettelkasten method for a while now. The Zettelkasten system, imo, has been miscommunicated due to the digital knockoffs (of linking notes). For anyone interested, here's how to create an interconnected knowledge system out of notecards: https://youtu.be/YfMNwusO6fk

The benefits of this method over notebooks/commonplace books centers in infinite internal branch and evolution of ideas.

vidyesh2• 4 years ago

Thank you for sharing this. I have been fascinated by the idea of Zettelkasten for quite some time and read a lot of blogs, but I am yet to find a resource which explains it well how to organize/store/categories the notes well. The core concept of how to take notes with a that system is well documented but organizing them is not really well discussed anywhere. Hope the video you shared answers that well.

I currently in the battle of using OneNote and a notebook because of that. I often want to quickly just note things down as writing really helps me with retention but I find it really difficult to find it when I need it so I end up transferring important notes every few weeks in my OneNote notebooks with the system based on Zettelkasten.

The digital solution oblivion notes looks interesting but I feel currently OneNote provides the same freedom to organize in any chaotic method you want.

for_i_in_range4• 4 years ago

Let me know if that video helps. There are other videos in the channel as well. However the one I linked is a good starting point.

bmitc• 4 years ago

I swear by Muji notebooks and pens. Seriously high quality paper and smooth writing pens with lots of colors and very reasonable prices.

bornabox5• 4 years ago

Right? Some Muji notebooks punch way above their price-class.

mas-ev2• 4 years ago

Midori MD Notebooks are the best notebooks. The paper is amazing. Highly recommend for anyone that enjoys notebooks.

cercatrova• 4 years ago

I don't see Jupyter notebooks here, so have they really used all the notebooks?

PopAlongKid• 4 years ago

I wrote down stuff a while ago that was important to me personally on a Stuart Hall co. inc. "dri-point MEMO BOOK NO. 480 OPEN END 30 SHEETS 4 IN. x 6 IN."

Still accessible to this day, and only cost $0.29 at Walgreens.

dredmorbius• 4 years ago

"Markings by C.R. Gibson" (https://markings.com) were quite good, when I could find them.

I share the assessment that Moleskine paper bleeds through far too readily.

amznbyebyebye• 4 years ago

I get paid a fair amount to basically write memos. My cycle is basically- put phone away, write some thoughts in a notebook, type them into word doc, rinse and repeat until memo is done.

The notebook helps because there aren’t 1,000 tabs / apps open. The phone is down so no social media bs. So this is really just a focusing exercise. And of course there is something pleasurable in touching the right pen to paper and feeling the pen move along the paper.

technological• 4 years ago

Does anyone who used or using Apple Pencil and ipad comment on their experience compared to notebook and how do you preserve content ?

imrehg• 4 years ago

It's good to see Leuchtturm1917 on the top of that list, it's been my go-to notebook/diary for a while now (picking different colours for each year), and it works excellently.

And yeah, take notes early, take notes often! Even if I have the feeling there should be more digital (single source of truth management of knowledge and action items), that just doesn't seem to stick too much. So keep taking paper notes. Company provided/branded notebooks can be pretty good too, separated from the personal ones, which feels healthier.

nickt• 4 years ago

The Oxford International Activebook [1] is a nice notebook.

- Spiral Bound - A5+ - Polypropylene cover - Lovely paper

While not available on Amazon.com, they are available at Amazon.co.uk and can be shipped to the US. [2]

[1] https://www.my-oxford.com/int-en/oxford-international/oxford... [2] - https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B000KJM824/ref=ppx_yo_dt...

account-52• 4 years ago

I dont care what anyone says A5 Pukka Pad ring bound squared paper [0] is the single best notebook ever made, and is cheaper than these posh notepads.

[0] https://pukkastationery.com/pukka-pads-a5-metallic-jotta-squ...

stonecharioteer• 4 years ago

I'm not on a VPN, why does this say I'm not allowed to view this page?

account-52• 4 years ago

No idea. This is the Amazon link: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Pukka-Pad-Jotta-Squared-Notebook/dp...

Though it's more expensive.

mackrevinack• 4 years ago

yea i prefer squared over lines, but rhodia's dot patterns give you the best of both and it's a bit more subtle as well

https://rhodiapads.com/images/dot_pad_detail.jpg

iamacyborg2• 4 years ago

I think, fundamentally, I just don’t like the notebook format which is why Rhodia pads are my go to.

I find notebooks to be too scattered when I try flip through them after the fact. Half a page of something here, another half page three pages after, it’s not conducive to actually rereading notes. With the pad I can at least pull the pages out and then sort them in some sort of order before filing away.

gubikmic• 4 years ago

The Leuchtturm one is totally overrated, very thin paper. Try Clairefontaine. They don't market as well but the paper is much nicer.

Arainach2• 4 years ago

There's "not marketing as well" and "not even trying to sell their product". Clairefontaine is the latter. Their website is an utter mess. I attempted to find A5 notebooks and even when filtering to the theoretical dimensions (148x210) most of the results are A4.

iancmceachern• 4 years ago

I have one of the scientific notebook companies print custom notebooks with blank pages, black hard covers, and imprinted with my name and a serial number. They end up being $10-15 per notebook.

https://snco.com/

powersnail• 4 years ago

I like those MD Blank notebooks A5 size. No fancy outfit, or modern features, just a white, rectangular block of high quality paper. When I finish with one, I put it in the book shelf and the look is pretty clean.

I'm not really picky about notebooks, though. The only notebooks that I couldn't use is the really tiny pocket notes. They look neat in theory, but it's very difficult to write anything substantial in them. B6 is the smallest size I can practically use.

nicbou3• 4 years ago

My favourite notebook is now an iPad Mini. Notability is simply amazing for writing and rewriting notes with colours, marginalia and diagrams. Procreate is great for art too.

It doesn't quite match the feeling of flipping through a timeline, but it does yield beautiful, useful notes that are easier to amend. With unlimited paper, there's no pressure to conserve paper or only write nice things down.

I appreciate layers, different templates, multiple pens, unlimited undos, infinite scroll and automatic backups. As a leftie, I like not spreading fresh ink on the page.

Decabytes• 4 years ago

I used to create custom notebooks with paper in my preferred tone and weight that I cut down to size for drawing. I bound them together with a plastic comb binding machine and used left over cardboard from Amazon packages as covers.

Now I just make them for note taking and writing. They are by no means as nice as moleskins and co, but I enjoy Making them.

a012• 4 years ago

I tried coptic binding many years ago, it's easy enough to follow and I only need to find the paper which I like.

sentrysapper• 4 years ago

I’ve been playing with the idea of making my own notebook. With a UUID for every notebook, page numbers, and a QR code that will let me jump from the page to some digital system.

This sounds a lot like Rocketbook. https://getrocketbook.com/

alasdair_• 4 years ago

I have pretty bad adhd and one thing that helps enormously when working is just writing everything that i am doing down, in a linear fashion, with a few special markings for todo items and important notes and headings for specific meetings.

As I write code, I’ll clearly write down the next step I am trying to make work e.g. “Call the graphql endpoint and get the id of the employee” and then if any blockers come up, I add those as bullet points below the mini task. This helps me regularly remember what I am supposed to be doing each time I get distracted.

The end result of this is that I write around eight letter-sized pages per day. This kind of sucks with ballpoint pens as you need to use a lot of force to write with those. I switched to a fountain pen that fits my large hands and now mostly write in something akin to cursive (this is why cursive is a thing - it only makes sense when using a fountain pen).

Fountain pens with good ink really need high quality paper designed for them or they smear and bleed through.

MetroWind• 4 years ago

Apparently they have not used Day Craft, which IMO is the best.

I've used all the notebooks

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