Over the last week or so I started taking notes on paper. Why? I wanted to see if I was missing anything. Let me explain. For about two years now I’ve been taking notes almost exclusively on my Tablet PC. In fact, I haven’t purchased a single pad of paper since that first Tablet a couple years ago. (Although I admit it took awhile for me to get over using Post-It notes.)
So what did I learn? I miss my Tablet for notetaking. One funny thing I realized I was doing was jotting something down and then for a split second afterwards worrying if the paper saved it. I think this was a carryover from using Journal, where you have to manually save your work. I instinctively wanted to hit the save button on the paper. lol.
I also quickly realized how much I miss the scratch out gesture to erase something. And when I’d run out of room I wish I could have pushed down the ink to create more room–just like in Journal and OneNote. I also saw how addicted I had become to using different color pens and the highlighter while taking notes–since it’s so easy to do in a Tablet app.
These were the little things. What really got in my way was that I couldn’t capture screenshots into my notes. Oh, how I miss that. I’ve gotten very used to capturing windows, pasting them into a notetaking app and marking them up. On paper, I was resigned to sketching out screenshots or rewriting text that I wanted to copy into my notes.
On the plus side, paper is still very convenient in a couple of ways. There’s no boot up time. Paper is always on and ready to read or write on. In addition, I find it more productive–or is it just my perception that it is–to flip through actual pages to review my notes or get an overview of what I’d written. Of course, I only had a week of notes to scan through. Maybe after I’d created a stack of notes I’d think differently.
My experiment is almost up. I told myself I’d handwrite my notes on paper for two weeks to see what I could learn. Next up I should give Post-Its a second try. Oh, this could be dangerous.
As for flipping pages to review: I will sometimes set my Journal view to 35 percent, giving me a view of six pages at a time. Handy for quick overviews.
Are you using any common macros with paper? A Computer macro can be powerful.
I seem to never have a pen handy whenever I want to write something down. I tend to be more careful with the EMR pen. How about you?
Richard…great suggestion. A quick toggle between the two would be great. Maybe a custom gesture would work. Thanks for the tip.
Layne, I’ve only “lost” my Tablet pen a few times, only to find it later hidden in a bag or under something. But yeah, I’m more careful with the Tablet pen.