| Two years ago I moved back to paper for my productivity and notetaking after about 7 years going fully digital. There are a lot of advantages for me. Some of those may apply to others: - Tactile feeling and aesthetics. My writing is not very beautiful, but a stack of papers filled with my notes and diagrams is very inspiring. - Paper is an offline, distraction-free medium. I think better with paper. Maybe it is a cultural habit. - Paper won't disappear one day due to bad battery, untested OS update, malware, EOL for cloud service etc. Losing a couple of sheets of paper is easier than electronic device. But when speaking about losing a bulk of notes, it is much easier to lose it electronically than physically. - Paper is forgiving. I can draw quick-and-dirty diagram in a minute and move on. It is hard to draw quick-and-dirty diagram on a computer. I will spend at least a couple of minutes deciding which app will be more convenient to draw this diagram, about ten minutes fighting an app, and up to an hour fighting my perfectionism, placing all shapes in proper places in grid. - A sheet of paper is bounded, which helps with internal distractions. If I need to make a TODO list, I will take a smaller sheet, and fit all important things there. - When you have large desk, you can spread a lot of paper sheets on it and see it all at the same time. Rearrange it, put it in stacks by some criterion, and so on. And neither scrolling nor list of thumbnails work as good as flipping through a paper book. Disadvantages are: - Lack of search function. I didn't try Apple Notes document scanning recently, maybe some kind of handwriting recognition is there and it will be enough to just take photos of all my notes. - Portability: I need a desk with enough free space for both laptop and papers (so, mostly in terms of depth - probably a problem for open space offices). I have some hopes for Apple Vision Pro (maybe in V2 or V3). I think it has a potential to bring some of these advantages to digital world :) |