I’m a techie, but I’ve fallen for paper notes again

Usually I type my initial thoughts for these columns on a computer, but this week I wrote them in a paper notebook instead.

I’ve never been much of a paper person. Although I did carry around a reporter’s notebook for a newspaper job in the pre-iPhone era, I prefer to file my thoughts away in digital form, where they can be categorized, backed up online, and accessed from any device.

But after a recent office cleaning project yielded a stack of unused Field Notes notebooks—along with a couple of nice pens that I’d accumulated as gifts over the years—I’ve been inspired to give paper notes another try as a supplement to my digital note-taking.

This story first appeared in Advisorator, Jared’s weekly tech advice newsletter. Sign up for free to get more tips every Tuesday.

The case for paper notes

Already I can see why paper notes endure.

There’s the obvious stuff: Paper is cheap, you don’t have to keep it charged, and it never nags you for in-app purchases. At worst you just buy more of it.

There’s also the immediacy factor: You don’t have to think about which app to use or which folder to open. Should you decide to digitize a handwritten note—more on that shortly—you can still write first and categorize later.

Paper notes are more relaxing to work with as well. I started scribbling some things down while watching baseball on a recent evening, and it felt less stressful than having a glowing screen in my face and keyboard in my lap. The lack of immediate distractions within a few finger swipes is also helpful.

Perhaps best of all—at least for me—is that you can’t delete what you’ve written in ink. I’ve tried using an iPad with an Apple Pencil for handwritten notes and have reviewed a few digital writing tablets, and they always feel counterproductive to me. As an obsessive self-editor, I can’t resist the erase and undo tools that digital notepads provide. The only option with paper is to forge ahead.

None of this means that I’m ditching digital notes. I still stash quick bits of info in Google Keep when I’m out and about, and I make extensive use of Obsidian to plan my week, organize story ideas, and write my actual drafts. For interviews, I still rely on Notability, an iPad app that syncs handwritten notes and audio recordings together (though I’m also starting to weave in Apple’s Voice Notes app for automatic transcription).

But just as I’ve carved out distinct roles for each of those apps, I can foresee a place for paper as well. At the very least, it helped with putting this column together.

Digitizing handwritten notes

While I don’t intend to immediately digitize all my handwritten notes, I like the idea of scanning completed notebooks for archival purposes, and the apps that I’ve previously recommended for document scanning work just as well for handwritten pages:

• On iOS: Open the Files app, press the “…” button, and select “Scan Documents.”
• On Android: Open the Google Drive app, then press the Camera button.

Both apps will open a camera mode so you can point at your notes, and they’ll automatically scan and crop each page with no need to even hit the shutter button between scans. Once you get in a rhythm, you can turn an entire notebook into a PDF file in just a few minutes.

There are also a bunch of free ways to convert that handwriting into text:

• iOS and MacOS: Just select the text in your PDF file as if it were a printed document. Apple’s system will automatically detect and highlight the text, which you can then copy and paste elsewhere. (On a Mac, you can even hit Cmd+A to select the entire document.)
• Windows: If you’ve installed Microsoft PowerToys, press Win+Shift+T to select a section of your notes and copy the text to your clipboard. Alternatively, a free program called NAPS2 can make text selectable in PDF files.
• Any web browser: Open your PDF in Google Drive, then use the “Open with” drop-down menu at the top and select “Google Docs.” This will create a new document with all the handwriting converted to text.
• One more trick: Try uploading a PDF to Google’s NotebookLM AI tool to generate a summary, brainstorm further ideas, or—strangest of all—turn your notes into a podcast.

Unfortunately my handwriting tends to stump even the most sophisticated text recognition systems, but perhaps you’ll fare a bit better.

This story first appeared in Advisorator, Jared’s weekly tech advice newsletter. Sign up for free to get more tips every Tuesday.

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