š² When computers are less efficient than analog methods
Reflections on bullet journal spreads that seem silly at first glance
Every now and then, someone asks me about analog notetaking methods.
Luhmann-style slip boxes (āzettelkastenā is the jargony German term) are popular for high-level academic work; I learned a variation using index cards in grade school, and then promptly never bothered to use it. For almost every formal paper I ever in college, Iāve never needed anything more than excel or a couple of open tabs in a browser, split-screened with a word processor of my choice.
Adding more complexity to that would have been counterproductive, and using paper notes would have been a silly waste of time.
But most of us arenāt doing academic work ā and sometimes, analog methods are super useful!
Meeting notes, for example, are something Iāve almost always done on paper, even when in a virtual meeting. Computers are distracting, and the reality is that if youāre doing stuff on a device, it looks like youāre not paying attention. Taking notes on paper with a real-life physical pen has different vibes. If youāre in a meeting ā or an in-person class ā and writing stuff on paper, nobody thinks youāre zoned out focused on something else, even if youāre doodling or drafting the next chapter of a great American novel.
Just as a culture thing, plenty of jobs that ban phones are fine with you scribbling notes on a piece of receipt paperā¦
(yes of course I wrote fiction during downtime at my college retail job!)
Anyway.
Analog notetaking is useful for reasons other than appearances. Sometimes itās just less annoying, less likely to lead you to get sidetracked by a bunch of notifications, and crucially for me personally ā sometimes it lets you model useful skills for children.
I still donāt really like index card style slipboxes, and Iāve gotten away from bullet journals, but I want to take a moment and discuss them anyway because Iām grateful to Ryder Carroll and the movement for helping me along the path to developing my own system.
Ryder Carroll is in some ways a patron saint of āstop optimizing and just writeā ā the most important takeaway for me was to stop getting anxious about having a journal per project and just fill up the pages and then organize them later, as needed. Iāve filled many notebooks with writing at this point, and though Iāve strayed from the precise mechanics of Ryderās bullet point system, the core idea of visually differentiating between todos, ideas, things Iāve moved to other lists, and priorities has been really useful for me. So when people ask about taking notes on paper, I usually point them to Bullet Journals.
But itās easy to dismiss Bullet Journals as pretty nonsense
In its most basic form, a bullet journal is the analog equivalent of an outliner like Logseq, with icons filling the role of tags. Unfortunately, in the years since Iāve started doing bullet journals, the internet has been inundated with search engine optimized articles with beautiful guides to bullet journaling that are, in essence, art journals. Instagram rewards beauty more so than ruthless efficiency, so it can be hard to get a sense of what sample spreads are useful vs. those that are mostly performative or, at least, more about relaxation and decoration than being productive.
Itās easy to get the sense that what happened in the early days is people shared basic bullet journals on Instagram, it took off, and the art journalers stole it. But I think thereās more to it than that. Most people who write articles on the internet as a side hustle are white middle-class stay-at-home moms. So lots of people who use Ryderās systems are probably middle managers taking notes to help them management projects, but the people who take the time to write about it and try to game the Instagram algorithm for dollars areā¦ not really spending their time that way. The rise of Substack has been a sort of interesting exception, because thereās been a growing push for engineers and founders to have a personal brand for networking purposes. But even so, a lot of productivity influencers mostly use productive systems to create productivity content. Hard to blame them when those are the pieces that get traction ā and I donāt even mean this in a cynical way. āGet tractionā is just another way of saying āresonate with people and actually help them,ā after all.
Practical Applications and Efficiency Hacks
The thing is, though, there are pretty good reasons that bullet journals have moved away from being all about rapid logging, collections, good indexes, and hand-written time-based logsā¦ just like there are good reasons that I eventually rejected daily notes in favor of themed logs.
Trackers are common spreads you might see on instagram, or google images, if you prefer to avoid the toxic femininity of that corner of social media. Think artsy mood tracking, with daily color codes ā which can seem silly if youāre a well-adjusted senior engineer trying to figure out the best way to keep track of what you accomplished in a given week. Itās handy if you have depression and anxiety, though, and are trying to figure out patternsā¦ and want to model coloring at the breakfast table instead of using your phone. Same thing with sleep trackers, and eating logs.
So many people have smartwatches and accompanying apps ā myself included. Mine is handy for keeping track of how many steps I walked in a day and correlating that to how much hip and lower abdominal pain I experience in the evening, which is good to report to my physical therapist.
If you donāt want to spend the money for an expensive smartwatch and donāt need things like the heart monitor the way I do, though, using a paper log can be a lot less hassle than trying to find an app that doesnāt glitch.
Iāll confess that I donāt much see the point in logging the weather in a world in which I have access to the internet, but if youāre trying to track whether you have something like seasonal affect disorder, that seems logical to me. If just color pretty clouds and doodle? That can also be sensible and practical! Iāve heard that some ADHD people like to draw in the margins so they don't zone out in meetings. Back when I was teaching, I used to I doodle in meetings all the time so I didnāt start losing my temper at what a poorly implemented waste of time some of the things I had to listen to were. Doodling in a meeting makes you look busy if it's an in-person meeting. Ranting in texts your phone makes you look like an jerk, and so does playing Candy Crush. But writing down rants and coloring is still socially acceptable.
Fine, one might say. What about people who are still using analog budgeting methods, like in the Stone Age? One neednāt use fancy budgeting software hooked up to your bank account, but surely pretty paper spreads for business income are just an egregiously bad idea? Frivolous nonsense?
I dunno, man, I got away with using a single text file to manage my budget for a long time, and so do lots of others. A paper version isnāt that different, and excel is really annoying! My tax preparer can barely figure out how to use my pivot tables, and Iām not even asking her to do anything but read the table.
Your average momfluencer sharing pretty bullet journal spreads probably saves all of her receipts, and then sits down and periodically tallies it all up to make sure things arenāt getting out of hand. I imagine she does it on paper instead of the computer because maybe she gets too distracted by social media on the computer, or the kids make it hard to focus in excel but will color quietly if mommy is coloring too.
Analog methods are great for āfocus modeā
The problem with software is that you have to learn how to use the software, and canāt just get distracted by anything else on your computer. Not getting distracted by other things on your computer and choosing to do things on paper is a time-honored technique. Neil Gaiman writes his entire first draft on paper specifically so that he doesn't get bogged down in software giving him all the powerful tools that make him fiddle instead of write. Distraction-free apps and hardware like the Remarkable and Daylight Computer are fancy ways to try to solve this problem, but as much as I enjoy reading on my Boox, I am not going to claim it is a frustration-free experience. When I pick up a paper book and a pen, I donāt get the advantages of search, seamless integration with text to speech, or voice to text notesā¦ but I also donāt ever need to turn it off and back on again to see if a glitch will magically resolve itself the way the parking break monitor in my car does.
I put real effort, once upon a time, into developing a cleaning schedule. Paid for fancy software, gave learning reverse polish notation a solid go, the whole nine. The idea is that the cleaning schedule helps you clean your house on a schedule over time; it's theoretically supposed to last multiple years, front-loading some of the effort of figuring out when to do things, so you're overall more efficient.
My personal hack was just to get my husband to pay for house cleaners for anniversaries, instead of taking me out to dinner or buying me jewelry. It was not significantly more expensive than the task management app subscription, even before you consider the value of my time.
For the rest of the cleaning that needs to happen?
Thereās always the Konik Method for maintaining sane task lists... despite having a full-time job, two kids underfoot, and a history of severe depression ;)
Further Reading
This 2023 article about how computers reduce efficiency recently hit the front page of Hacker News and prompted me to finish this article. Itās mostly talking about technical things like CAD software and manufacturing robots, but the claim is basically āI suspect banning computers in R&D facilities excepting where absolutely necessary would pay dividendsā and itās definitely an interesting thought experiment!
Most of my college papers were organized with bubble diagrams on a scrap paper like used envelopes ... Book notes are on post-its in books which I read into a text doc which eventually may make it into obsidian, although I have been really tempted to try a paper zettelkasten ... And my journals are still fountain pen on paper (dot grid...) and include a daily bullet to-do list ...
The thing about analog notes, and Lord knows I've tried them many different times, is that you have to train yourself and how to take them, literally what to write down. I've sat through lectures while taking notes, and then gone back a couple days later, and been completely unable to recall exactly what I was trying to highlight with my scribbles.
The only thing worse is keeping a notepad by your bedside, waking up in the middle of the night and writing down your genius idea, and then upon awakening stare at the result and think, WTF is that supposed to mean?