Reasons for a Pocket Notebook
Time to go for a stroll and scribble down notes, ideas, and musings
Hello there,
I am loving summer bike rides, dips in cold water where I can find it, fresh watermelon (with feta!), and juicy red tomatoes. Hope the season is treating you well too!
This week I’m writing about the value of a pocket notebook and an effort to convince myself to find the time to maintain the practice.
This month I climbed Mt. Stuart with my buddy Andrew which involved moving for 20+ hours straight. Happy to report my body can do hard things! (It just takes a while to recover.)
7 Reasons to Use a Pocket Notebook
Not only do I love putting fun stickers on the cover of my small 3.5” x 5.5” notebooks, but I also get a kick out of reviewing their contents every Sunday.
Last week I wrote about slow entrepreneurship, and I want to expand on one habit I’ve cultivated over the past few years while collecting ideas from books, articles, and podcasts.
Writing stuff down by hand is grossly inefficient and that’s one of the best parts. Let’s get into it.
1. Handwritten words include more embodied energy
“When you create anything, the spirit you create it with, the energy, the excitement, is translated into the product itself.” — Robert Greene
I find this even more applicable when writing by hand. The fast scribble signals an intensity.
It’s also a reason I try to make my to-do lists with a pen - they feel more enthusiastic and motivating!
2. Taking notes by hand leads to a better conceptual understanding
And there’s research to back this up! Students who took notes exclusively on laptops performed worse on concept questions than students who wrote notes by hand.
3. Writing by hand slows you down
Unless you have some elaborate shorthand writing technique, using a writing utensil just takes longer. The medium itself forces you to process the information.
You might underline key words, draw arrows, or doodle a smiley face next to something fun.
4. When you can’t copy / paste, you’re forced to pick the highlights
Our human hardwiring defaults to additive solutions.
The best example I’ve heard is adding traffic signs. After introducing a big sign calling out, “X fatalities have occurred at this intersection,” they saw an increase in accidents. Oops.
Practice subtracting!
5. We shouldn’t outsource the mucking around
You might have an idea in your head and then you try to capture it and it comes out another thing entirely.
“It’s in the mess that we find our best.” — Jay Acunzo
6. Top creative people all use paper, for writing or sketching, and particularly editing.
Adam Moss talks about this in his book, The Work of Art, featuring 43 of the world’s most accomplished artists.
Moss breaks down the process that led to great art, and describes how most artists use paper for their editing process.
7. The blank pages demand to be filled
And if you don’t have ideas, go find something to read / watch / listen to for inspiration!
A friend once told me creativity is like breathing.
When you make stuff, you're exhaling.
But you can't exhale forever. Eventually you have to breathe in.
Or you'll be dead.
This is why I try to read a lot of books.
— The Oatmeal, Creativity is like breathing
[BONUS] The best memory book is from carbon copies of letters!
In a wonderful New Yorker piece, the author talks about his method of carbon copying his handwritten letters over many years. What an an amazing way to collect your own history!
“My memory works pretty well, but writing things down has made it work better, and many of my favorite moments from the past forty years exist only because I kept a record.” (How to Live Forever)
Worthy & Remarkable
The Mosgone Plant-Powered Trap gets rid of mosquitos and raised $44k on Kickstarter so far (launched by my friend Kyle)
The TRMNL is a Wall-mountable e-Ink display for your favorite app and data ($156k on kickstarter!)
Pretty great soundtrack for this young kid climbing a hard route in Index Washington with very marginal (meaning terrifying) protection
You’ve never seen a camp chair like this - pretty fun build up and reveal for a new carbon fiber chair design (but pretty absurd that they want to charge $300?!)
One Thing from Me
I sorted through my top notes from the past nine months and then attempted to make a best-of list. It’s still a work-in-progress, but here are my favorite quotes:
Five Quotes on Slowing Down and Prioritizing
“What matters in life in not what happens to you, but what you remember and how you remember it.” — Gabriez Garcia Marquez
“The journey has to become the destination because there is no true destination. There is no endpoint. There is no goal. All rivers run to the sea and yet the sea is not full.” — Paul Assaiante
“People think happiness comes from not having problems. Happiness comes from solving problems.” — Mark Manson
“A tree that grows quickly rots quickly and therefore never has a chance to grow old.” (aka “haste makes waste”) — Peter Wohlleben
“Boredom is the hatched bird of imagination.” — Walter Benjamin
Watermelonly,
Jono
PS - What might we find on Mars?!
