Comment by 🗡️ The_Jackal
Re: "How do you compare journaling by hand to digital note…"
@stack I've heard handwriting notes down can help you remember things better, but I write ridiculously slow. I've recently taken to typing my notes down on my phone and then copying them to my notebook later.
Feb 12 · 3 months ago
19 Later Comments ↓
maybe because I'm older, but handwriting has a better connection to the self. it slows you down to be more thoughtful and think and write in full coherent thoughts. contrast this with disjointed and/or short form thoughts usually found online.
Handwriting is almost certainly better if you can make a habit out of it, but I'm too obsessive over irrelevant details like organization. I also think there is something to be said for a published log in that you're writing into the world rather than purely privately. Likewise, I think there's something to be said for writing a log on Gemini, where there's little chance of it ever becoming popular. The middle way of it appeals to me.
❤️ smps [OP/mod] · Feb 12 at 19:37:
Maybe the key is right there; a daily habit of slowing down and trule honesty without public performance and acceptance seeking, and while doing it you actually create something concrete, a book that can be touched and smelled.
I have come up with a simple structure, or headlines for the daily entries that I fill every evening. Intention and Todoo that I fill the evening before, Tadaa, The Self with plusses and minuses based on intentions filled, On my mind with free form paragraph or too, Three names, which beautiful names of God reflected today, Note on how I reacted to the world (basically categorised by elements), and finally Ate, what did I consume bodily and mentally.
❤️ fairlygood · Feb 12 at 21:21:
I’ve been hand writing my journals for nearly 20 years now. I occasionally try an app, but I value the time away from my phone and it feels like I am ‘creating’ something. For the last four or five years I’ve written on a Remarkable tablet and found that a good balance between digital and analogue.
👻 darkghost · Feb 12 at 21:40:
I can still recall handwritten notes rote that I took 25 years ago without looking at them. There is something to handwriting.
because it's so f-ing slow!
I have both a stack of Moleskine notepads and a big phat LogSeq vault. There's a lot of duplication. It's beautiful this way. I'm not pursuing any goal, like "pipe all my Zettelkasten into a dozen books that write themselves", nor do I want to leave any sort of legacy or whatevs. It is primarily a tool to memorize something in the moment, so the side-effect of me remembering things because I typed them and I wrote them and I told them to seven friends is the ultimate goal, whereas the notes are only a way to achieve this goal
I mainly only use my many notebooks and small notebooks for different things. And Sometimes my iPad notes for art/comic ideas
There was a fantastic, in my humble opinion, app called GridDiary, which then was rebranded as GridDiary Classic and later taken down from the iTunes App Store (I think), and the new GridDiary 2 or whatevs is a subscription-based replica by the same author, and I really wasn't in a mood to subscribe to yet another thing, so here I am with LogSeq and Obsidian and a bunch of org and md files, loving it
👻 darkghost · Feb 13 at 00:40:
Oh my, you don't need a subscription for a diary, in my opinion. Old pen and paper won't charge you a subscription. Basic text editors do the job just dandy and came with your device.
@fairlygoodthanks Are you enjoying the Remarkable? I’ve a colleague who is an advocate, but every time I’ve considered it, I’ve thought that it can’t beat real paper + a scanner to import the pages into Joplin (handwriting OCR is currently a gap).
heh, i remember how awazed was i that i was able to use a text editor on my computer with 32kb of ram.
it was possibe to restructure the text, edit without having to rewrite everytting from scratch or without using that white paint over the text.
later on a pentium 1 i was doing video editing and it was like text editing. you could change everything, nothing was written in stone.
i could compare it to linear, non computer video editing, i suffered with it enough.
so i used computer text/video editors and it was a miracle.
i also like to type fast. i can't write by hand as fast. and my handwriting becomes more unreadable more i increase the speed.
then i can't grep in what i wrote.
i also can't create beautiful, accurate texts i can when typesetting. or i can't change a font. i can't have a reflowable text. i can't have italics etc.
i use analog cameras though. i like the aesthetics. but i scan my photos. even those i managed to print in analog way.
🗡️ The_Jackal [Weapons dealer, possibly mutant killer] · Feb 14 at 01:05:
@norayr I've mostly been using my type it down and then copy it into my notebook method for my math notes so it might make me remember it more, as well as the fact that I take so long to get something written.
I find the forced slowdown is beneficial to my mind. methodical, patient thoughts
👻 darkghost · Feb 14 at 10:17:
My mind palace looks like one of those hoarders shows. Slowing down is essential.
🪐 terra-zz0 · Feb 15 at 11:21:
Digital notes are easily forgettable. I used to make a lot of them in Obsidian and now I do in Logseq but do I remember if I created a specific note? Not really.
When I was still a student I used to re-write my notes by hand before exams to learn and... it actually worked.
If you want to remember what you write - it's better to do some handwriting, IMO.
Wow, that is a lot of agreement
❤️ fairlygood · Feb 16 at 20:20:
@lab6 I really like mine. Very hackable devices and there is a good community of people making them more useful.
Original Post
How do you compare journaling by hand to digital note taking - I have been journaling now for about a month by hand, with a fountain pen on a paper journal, every evening and find it a treasure. I used to write notes about my thoughts and ideas, tasks and such on Notion and later on Joplin. I find paper journaling superior to these. For my needs atleast. My goal was to find a better structure for self-reflection and my religious practice of Tasawwuf. To make it more embadded in my routine as...