People are still amazed when I actually have paper on me to write down their number or a recommendation they give me. It seems to make my interest in them and their ideas more real. I can be in a hallway or at lunch and when I pull out my moleskine they are just a little stunned. “What was that site again?” as I’m actually writing it down. This seems to solidify it in the other persons view that I may actually follow up and not just promise to remember it.

Just want to drop a short line about this (and other) entries: please pretty please format them better!

Its not especially easy (nor interesting) to read a entry that is basically a huge chunk of text placed in a very small amount of paragraphs. Space the text more and make it easier to read and scan the text.

Merlin should know all about this when it comes to beeing efficent, its not often one really reads something - you mostly just scan thru it looking for something interesting.

In my workflow, Paper has a filter function: For someone with a lousy handwriting like me, jotting something down means extra effort. This usually has the effect of highlighting everything well-written, or at least I expect the things in my moleskine to be more important, if I can decipher them. I enjoy this ‘calligraphic’ approach to notetaking: It feels like painting; concentrating on the flow of ink and the nice shape of the letters seems to improve the quality of ideas somehow.

In my research journal (moleskine; the one that does not fit into my butt pocket), filtering and tagging is even more important than with digital files. I employ the “Bruce Chatwin method”: numbering all the pages first, later creating an “index” of valuable / interesting content at the end of the notebook.

The same method is a very useful strategy for reading books: After marking all of the passages I like or find interesting, I flip through the book again after I finished reading it, creating another personal “index” at the last page.

Markus

I use journals, and legal pads, and my favorite - large index cards - I found some that are 8X10 - and accumulate the stuff that seems to need to be accounted for. Paper has another awesomely over-looked feature: it creates clutter, and piles and never lies neatly, rather they spread over all surfaces like beer cans or clothes at a college mixer.

What about all the clutter? Parties are too fun to stop the partying, and after all, David Allen is a party animal. What about the clutter? That’s also an awesome part of paper. If you can’t stand a mess of paper, a pile of steaming unprocessed stuff, or the risk of failing a genuine commitment, then you have to clean the clutter. And what if you can’t keep up? Most of my clients can’t keep up, and most readers here are scanning the posts jonesing for new technics to keep up, and yet no one really does. The zero inbox is a fable after all, like the fox and the hen house. But if you can’t keep up, you need to let go, and that’s what makes GTD so important - it’s about letting go, it’s about what we aren’t doing. Of course, everyone naturally wants to use it as a more organized, superior way of hanging on to everything. That can be a problem.

Paper creates piles which can be problems which is really a way of getting around to solving the real problem.

I think that digital formats carry a sort of weight as being official in our minds. We want to have the end product and something definitive to save or archive into a logical and organized system.

Paper on the other hand, does not carry that weight. It’s not going to become a part of our organized collection of work. This is why we’re creatively and imaginatively free to doodle and push out our abstract thoughts onto paper.

If we can synthesize the “formal” process of using a digital format to do our work with the “informal” use of paper, we can actually omit the little things clouding our mind or pursue alternative ideas as we work without having to assess how it fits in to our digital life.

I love the idea of having a blank notepad next to my computer as I work. I can write down to do’s, keywords etc and feel no obligation to ever read what I write on the paper. The only time I reference it is when I remember that I wrote something useful on the paper.

Nothing beats paper for a good brainstorming session.

Nothing beats paper for jotting down thoughts on the go.

And nothing beats paper for overall ease of use.

Initially, that is.

The trick is in not ending up with a scattered assemblage of nonsensical crap — random, undated, and poorly written snippets of information that made perfect sense only at the time of creation.

I love paper, as long as it’s bound and I willfully restrict my access to it. One Moleskine and one legal pad can be in my world at a time. As soon as I start writing on stickies, business cards, receipts, and the like, I’m screwed.

Two things - one is that since I started doing the Julia Cameron “Morning Pages” exercise which is basically writing longhand into a notebook filling three pages first thing every morning my creativity and productivity have taken off. My writing is pretty lousy too but in fact I very very rarely read ANY of what I write in those notebooks. That’s not how it works. It’s the writing itself that does the job. The other is - I’m currently reading Being There by Andy Clark - where he sets out the concept of the extended mind. Basically what he says is that our minds don’t work just within the confines of our brains. Rather we use being in the physical world to extend our cognitive functions. A simple example he gives is doing a jigsaw where the physical manipulation of the pieces working in association with the pattern-recognition functions of the brain lets us complete the puzzle. I reckon paper does that for us too. I reckon that although lots of us can use the net and technology to extend the functions of our minds, paper really makes a more PHYSICAL demand on us and maybe it lets parts of our brains work that technology doesn’t do so readily. By the way, thanks for this post - it’s stimulating - and thanks for the Bruce Chatwin technique reminder Markus - I’ve never done that with my moleskines - but I will NOW!

I am a Writer and a Creative Director. I almost always start on paper. I created my own planner to accommodate my own needs.

I work almost exclusively online and my clients and coworkers are amazed when I pull out a piece of paper to take notes. I started out doing print projects and I still love all things tactile.

My desktop is covered with various sized and colored “stickies” that I review and discard every couple days.

And I too frequently use my “notebook” with its 8 1/2” x 11” yellow pad of tear out sheets. In the upper left corner I put the date, below that the category/project, below that I put page numbering, e.g., 1 of 2, etc. and then store them in folders.

However what I found is the best way to track my notes on a project or topic or each of my computers is a composition book. They are about 10” x 8” with a marbled black hard cover and have 80-100 college ruled pages with a left side margin where I put the date for each comment/note. I buy these in bulk and use one for each project, topic, or computer.

What is good about these is that every note you take is in one place and that everything is there, even the messy and comments you might think to discard if on a separate sticky or sheet of paper. I even use different pen colors for different type of notes (black = general, green = useful, red = critical or problems).

Since I seem to be on an aircraft several times a week, I’ve actually rediscovered my spiral notebook as a therapeutic way to continue my work-obsessed day. Brainstorming, the omni-present To-Do lists, and diagramming my next killer app all lend themselves well to paper - all of which has been stated in various ways above. The difference here is that I don’t have a choice. There’s a magical time between “The cabin door is now closed” and “You may now use personal electronic devices” where an avalanche of ideas flow to my brain and need capturing. Paper is the only thing currently sanctioned by the FAA. Works for me.

When I hear the word “Desktop” I immediately think of a picture of me and my girlfriend on vacation, our faces cluttered with a mess of icons: jpegs, folders, shortcuts, .docs, pdf’s, rtfs, etc. But when I read this piece, I happily looked down at my real desk…desktop…whatever…to see a little notepad, scribbled and scratched and loved. I enjoy the feel of a pen on paper.

My girlfriend hates my computer. If I tell her I’m going to “write” she smirks and says “No, you’re going to play on your computer.” And she’s write…right. Sorry. I can’t even send an email without a sideways glance from her. Yet, I could write for hours on paper and she wouldn’t think otherwise.

Ironically, the open page in my scribble pad is a list of applications for record before I install a new operating system on my computer. It’s my final backup I guess. Among the apps, TextEdit, Word, Pages, Mail and the trial version of TaskPaper. I should just use my pen.