Pen and Paper: As Effective As Ever

A friend of mine saw a part of my desk peppered with post-its and chuckled: ‘Why does a software developer, who is constantly surrounded by different devices, still uses pen and paper to write down his ideas?’ — she said. Writing thoughts and ideas down on paper is an old habit of mine, and I actually tried to move away from it to go completely digital at one point. However, after going without it for several months, I returned to my pen-and-paper approach. Here is why:

Distraction-free

Whenever a random thought/idea pops into my head, I want to simply note it down and quickly go back to what I was doing without losing any concentration. With devices that feels nearly impossible, as there is too much that can grab your attention even if you try to limit it to the minimum.

For example, this is how my lock screen looks most of the time — to limit the distractions, I’ve disabled pretty much all notifications on my phone:

Nonetheless, even on this seemingly empty screen my brain always picks up on two things: current time and battery life.

“Am I on time for today’s schedule? Do I have enough time to do this/that? Do I have enough battery to last until I can charge my phone again? Would 42% be enough for me to listen have a 30-minute Skype call while also using Google Maps?”. Involuntarily, these questions start running through my mind and inevitably end up distracting me, even if for a minute. Furthermore, when I open the ‘Notes’ app, I cannot help but glance at my latest notes, which again hijacks my brain activity.

In contrast, a post-it or a piece of paper is a blank, open canvas that does not cause me any distractions and allows me to simply transfer thoughts from my brain onto paper and resume my ongoing activity.

Limitless format

A blank piece of paper is the ultimate real life app for expressing your ideas — it supports text, drawings, schemes, mind-maps — anything that you’d need. A digital device simply does not have the same convenience yet.

Built-in revision step

Of course, paper notes are not the long-term storage for my ideas — eventually everything that I consider worthy ends up in one of my tools (personal boards / mind maps / lists / etc) somewhere in the cloud. I try to maintain a good level of organisation in my tools, and having to transfer my handwritten notes to one of those tools forces me to re-evaluate the idea again. Is it really a good idea? Does it make sense? Is it feasible? Do I really see myself doing it? This facilitates the first revision of the thought, refining it from its original raw state.

Paper notes eventually end up in the recycle bin, but before they do they help:

• capture an idea without getting distracted from what I am doing;
• evaluate if the idea is worthwhile one more time;
• keep my main working area/tools well-organised.

These reasons were enough for me not to go completely digital in my note-making, but of course it may not be the case for everybody. Two of my most skeptical friends have agreed to try out the pen-and-paper approach for one month. The only rule is that whenever they have an urge to note something down on one of their devices, they use a piece of paper or a post-it instead.

I will share their developments and experience in one of the later articles!