Using Paper for Everyday Tasks
I keep thinking I’ll like paper, but I just don’t. A few years ago I started keeping a daily journal: not so much a diary with <i>today I feel…</i> but a record like <i>changed the van’s oil. Drove the kid to camp. Called Mom.</i>. [0]<p>I was using Drafts on my iPhone as a kind of bullet journal, with an action group I wrote. [1] After a year of this, articles like this one convinced me to switch to a paper journal and to get a nice fountain pen. [2] I&#x27;ve done this for about a year and a half now, and when I fill up this current notebook next month, that&#x27;s it. I&#x27;m going back to digital.<p>Turns out, pen and paper is vastly inferior to digital in every way <i>I</i> care about. Other people love it and that&#x27;s awesome, but I can&#x27;t escape the fact that I hate handwriting stuff, and I often cut my thoughts short so I can quit scribbling. Worse, the analog notes aren&#x27;t actionable. My Drafts workflow turns my day&#x27;s worth of bullet-style entries into a set of digital diary entries, new calendar events, and tasks in my task manager. I&#x27;m already carrying my iPhone with me everywhere [3], so I don&#x27;t have to remember to drag something else along. If I&#x27;m jogging and think of something, I can say &quot;hey Siri, remind me to...&quot; and it makes a note for me without me having to pause and jot it down. Paper seems nice for impromptu drawings, but since keeping a paper journal, I&#x27;ve literally never drawn something in it.<p><i>For me, for my workflow</i>, digital is vastly superior. Paper has its strengths, but none of them apply to how I want to use it. I mention all this for the benefit of other people reading this article and feeling vaguely guilty for not toting a paper notebook with them all the time. I think the important part is the note taking itself, not the medium they&#x27;re recorded with.<p>[0] As an aside, this is enough for me to remember that day when I look back at it later. It’d be useless for anyone else reading it, but I write for me, not for a hypothetical person who gives a care about what I was doing in 2021.<p>[1] It got kinda popular: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;actions.getdrafts.com&#x2F;g&#x2F;1Sd" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;actions.getdrafts.com&#x2F;g&#x2F;1Sd</a><p>[2] Rhodia Webnotebook A5. Lamy Safari, Noodler’s Baystate Blue ink.<p>[3] None of this applies while on camping trips. I take a paper notebook with me to write stuff down because I don&#x27;t have to charge it.