Notebook Strategies and Cyberpunk Philosophy
We live in an age where I can take a note on my iPhone and, in seconds, that note will appear on my Android tablet, my Linux laptop, my Windows server, my Windows laptop at work, and my Mac Mini. Not only can I capture a thought, I can replicate it many times over, providing a redundancy in both the back up and communication of my thought. Even if it’s just a simple note to myself, I’ll be able to pick up that note on any computer I own, or any place I can access the web.
More than that, I can easily share my thought with another. All I need to do is trigger the sharing feature within the note-taking app and suddenly my thought is also my friend’s thought. I use Evernote, but there are plenty of others which do the same exact thing with a very similar feature set.
I use Evernote for quite a lot. Hell, I write stories, blog posts, essays, and articles in Evernote because it’s a fairly secure place that, like I said before, works everywhere. I can sit in front of my Android tablet at Giant Coffee down the street in Downtown Phoenix, typing up a new blog post on the Bluetooth keyboard. I finish my coffee, leave, head for home, and then sit down at my computer and pick up exactly where I left off.
That’s power. That’s a lot of power over your ideas and your creativity.
Yet, sitting next to my keyboard right now are two things I don’t care to live without: A spiral notebook and pen. Yes, dead trees and ink.
So you might be thinking, “What the hell? All that useful tech and you’ve got a spiral notebook?” Yes, and it’s a fairly cheap one too. See what you want about the really nice Moleskine notebooks, I’ve found that the lines in my spiral notebook are just as straight, just as horizontal, and I can write on them just as well for about $15 less than a Moleskine. I’m looking for a place to take notes, not an “experience.”
But the question remains, why would someone who’s so digitally inclined use something so, well, antiquated as a spiral bound notebook? I’ve given that a lot of thought, because I don’t claim to fully understand myself or my proclivities and I think it boils down to a few key things that, at least in my opinion, my notebook has over a digital device.
- As much as I love Evernote, I have to launch it. No matter what machine or device I’m on, I have to invoke Evernote. My brain is such that I will have an idea that I really want to write down so I remember it, and in the space of time that Evernote takes to launch (one to two seconds) I can lose it. Yes, it can happen that fast. I’ll think “Hey that’s a good idea!” and if I don’t write it down immediately, it could go from good idea to “I wonder what we’re doing for dinner tonight?” My notebook is “always on.” It’s always there, it’s launched, and literally on my desktop at all times. It’s not an icon that launches my notebook, it is my notebook and it is ready to go now.
- The randomness pleases me. Evernote is very organized, which pleases my librarian and scientist brain. My notebook isn’t very organized, which is pleasing to my creative and artistic brain. Think of it like this, and perhaps you know someone very much like this. There’s a guy, and he’s an accountant. You go to his job and you’ll find everything in place. His books are right there, his desk arranged just so. Computers and calculators are ready, pens and pencils in drawers, small pad of paper ready for jotting down a quick phone number. Then he goes home. His home is nicely arranged as well. It’s been a long day, but he wants to work on that toybox for his niece. He’s a woodworker, not a pro, but he knows how to build some lovely things. So he heads out to his woodshop — and it’s an absolute mess. Stuff is everywhere. Tools laying all about, sawdust on the floor, wood stacked haphazardly on a workbench. Yet he’s able to pick up his project and seems to instinctively know where that chisel is, or where the hammer is. He barely looks away from his project to pick up another tool because, even though everything looks chaotic, it’s chaotic because he’s making something.
That’s when you suddenly realize, it looks chaotic to you because you don’t know how he works. The way I see Evernote is that it’s a very structured place to write, keep articles, and organize my thoughts so that I can act on them. I see my notebook like that guy’s woodshop. I know where stuff is and, even if I don’t, I can find it pretty easily. It looks chaotic to you because you don’t know how my notebook works. My notebook is where I can build things and Evernote is where I can put things into production. - Notes are not created equally. My Evernote tends to get the really important stuff. Things I want to read, things I need to act on, stuff I want to build, stuff I’m writing, and so on. My notebook tends to get everything. Important stuff will get transferred to Evernote so I can see it while I write or work, but for every note I add to Evernote, there are probably 20 more in my notebook that I’ll jot down, look at, do or disregard, and then move on. Looking at a page here I’ve got names of videos I want to check out, an architecture of a dropdown menu system on a site I’m working on, some planning notes for upcoming articles,a list of people who sent me email while I was on vacation, a blog post idea, the name of a singer I wanted to remember, and oh look, Daft Punk has a new song on Spotify.
That crap doesn’t need to go into Evernote. Once I’m done with the videos, the dropdown menu setup, organizing the articles, replying to the emails, writing the blog post, and checking out Yael Kraus (the singer I wanted to remember) on Spotify — I’ll move on. I don’t need a digital record of that stuff.
In the end, it comes down to what you need versus what you want. My notebook is full of wants, tonnes of them. I want to see that movie, I want to download that video, I want to remember that thing. My Evernote has that article I need to write, that website I need to check out because it’s related to my job, that article I need to read because I’m certain I can learn something.
The paper notebook may be antiquated, but then again, so are wheels and I don’t see us giving them up any time soon for the same reason I’m not giving up my spiral notebook — it’s just too damn useful.
