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I did sort of the opposite. Used to do all typed, now I do both. I make a distinction between notes, which are ephemeral and for memory and quick reminders, and documentation, which is for long term reference. Notes are on paper, documentation is on my computer. I find it's actually a really helpful distinction to make at time of recording.


Same. For years I did everything digitally. I didn't do anything handwritten. The only exception was to put my handwritten signature on some document. That's the only handwritten thing I did for literal years, if not a decade.

What made me change my mind was (1) noticing that my digital notes were usually buried under several layers of backups of tarballs of backups of tarballs of backups so it was getting inconvenient because I have multiple devices and don't want to set up sync for reasons.

And then (2) there was this notebook from fscking high school that has somehow survived everything I've been through up until now, mocking me with all its perfectly preserved information that has lived more than my oldest device. Not useful information, mind you. But just the fact that it's still there, conveniently at hand, accessible in less time than it would take me to search my unorganized mess of backups.

Something clicked in me around last year, and realized that I could use notebooks for small things that I might want to reference in the future. Like some useful commands, ideas for things to improve, and small things like that.

So now I treat notes on my phone and computer as ephemeral, even if they might still exist in a nested backup somewhere.

Haven't regretted it so far.

Yes, I could improve how I organize my backups, but I won't. For reasons that I'm fully aware don't make sense to others. It basically boils down to (1) it's a back up, touch it as little as possible; and (2) whenever I change devices (e.g. because hardware upgrades), I usually want to start afresh because I no longer like the old way I organized things, while I also don't want to bring my old notes and re-organize them in the new way I like now.

But only loose-leaf notebooks work for me. I can't use more "permanent" notebooks because I still want to be able to move stuff around somewhat.




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