[AdmiralAsshat]

This article seems more about logging what you do, not about buying a physical notebook. The medium chosen is irrelevant without a system. I know plenty of people at work who keep all of their notes on random notebooks, but they're not at all organized. Some of them quite literally just turn to the first clean sheet of paper within the notebook to jot down notes about the program they're working on, the meeting they were just in, their grocery shopping list, etc. If I ask them about it an hour later they will spend a few minutes flipping through the notebook to find it, if they find it.

By contrast, I keep a daily log of everything I'm working on with a series of time-stamped Notepad files in a "Work Logs" folder on my work laptop. That's the system I developed after about two weeks working here, and four years later I can still open up stuff from 2011 if I need to. The fact that it's in plain text makes it easy to search through the directory as well for words or phrases.

I'm not saying my method is better than what the author has chosen, it works for me. It could easily be an Evernote notebook if I felt like it, provided that there was some organization method. That is its functional value. Everything else that the article seems to dwell on--tactile feedback, "mindfulness", the tangible growth of the journal as you fill out more pages--these all seem geared towards simply making you feel productive rather than actually be productive.

[zzalpha]

Well, there is one clear benefit to a notebook: studies indicate it results in better long-term retention in memory. For example:

http://pss.sagepub.com/content/early/2014/04/22/095679761452...

Now, personally, I actually use a mix. I'm in a managerial position, so my work tends to be divided between longer-term goals and interrupt-driven activities. For the former, I keep a list in Vim (https://github.com/aaronbieber/vim-quicktask).

For the latter, I write them down on physical paper.

I won't claim there's any merit to this system, it just happens to work for me.

Incidentally, I wouldn't dismiss things like "mindfulness" so easily. "Mindfulness" is more easily understood as concentrating and focusing on the task at hand, doing it with care and deliberation. There's something to be said for the slower, more methodical process of physical writing (and may be linked to those memory retention results I mentioned previously).

For example, it's one of the reasons I tend to do focused reading on paper, away from the computer. That is, if I'm reading a technical paper, analyzing a report, etc, even if I have a digital copy, I tend to print it out, leave my computer behind, and read it in a quiet place where I can be "mindful" of the process of reading without distraction.

[DvdMgr]

That's an interesting article.

The point you make about mindfulness is exactly what I wanted to express, just written in a much clearer way. Thanks for the comment!

[DvdMgr]

(I'm the author of the article)

This is the comment that most gets to the point. The blog post was about writing, not about giving Moleskine all of your money. The introductory and conclusive sections are independent of the tool one uses to keep records and logs, and those are the main points I wanted to get across. In hindsight, I have to admit the title I chose is misguiding.

The medium really should be one's own, very personal choice. In the article, I tried to justify my choice with the reasons that work _for me_. I've tried going digital many different times, but I like the directness of a notebook too much, and I tend to get distracted easily by flashy icons on the screen. A system is only as good as one's ability to use it.