[roryirvine]

Searching through a physical notebook does take a few moments, but the upside is all of that context you get to drink in during the search.

I typically get through a couple of B5 pages a day, so homing in on the thing I want to look at is a matter of opening the notebook to roughly the right fortnight and then flicking through up to a dozen pages in either direction. A tenth of a second per page is enough to scan for major events - what projects was I working on at the time? Were there any major interruptions to my flow, or changes in direction?

And then, once I've found the right day, seeing the detail of everything I was doing at the time triggers a flood of memories - I remember all of the conversations, decisions, problems, and ideas that were current at the time of the entry in question.

I've tried a number of digital notetaking systems, but none has been able to give me so much context so quickly as a paper notebook.