103: Systems & Challenges

@MacSparky you mentioned you tried Apple Notes as a temporary alternative to your pen and paper and ditched it pretty quickly in favour of Good Notes. You’re also a big fan of Drafts so I’m wondering if the Scribble Feature in iOS 14 will work at all in Drafts and if the experience would be good. Obviously sketches and drawings wouldn’t work but I’m wondering if it’s a viable option at all. Can’t test for myself unfortunately because I’m stuck on iOS 13 by corporate profile.

From Greg on Twitter:

Very impressed with scribble on iPad so far. https://twitter.com/agiletortoise/status/1275563480318386177/video/1

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Ooohhh this is going to be very interesting to play with!!! I could be tempted to purge my iPad of all work profiles since we’re all WFH and install the first public beta!

I’m digging The Olympians! Thanks, Mike.

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Great podcast!
I’ve been playing with the Zettelkasten concept recently, after reading “how to take smart notes”.
It’s a wonderful topic and I enjoyed Mike’s approach to it.

I recently read “Taking Smart Notes with DEVONthink” from Kourosh Dini.
Devonthink is a great app and Dini has some really nice tips and tricks to apply Zettelkasten to it.
If you have any chance, please call Dini for a talk and go deep in this topic. It would be really nice for us listeners!

This was a v nice episode and I appreciated that both of you were willing to share that nobody has all the answers on productivity (not even you guys!) As a big user of Day One myself, I’m in the process of revisiting old (>7 yrs) entries & trying to get a better sense of organization as well as purpose. I was surprised to hear that @mikeschmitz has benched his use of Day One & switched to a more analog solution. Although I don’t think I’ll be doing anything that drastic just yet - it has given me some pause. Also, good luck on the sabbatical @MacSparky!

I’m still a subscriber, but have to admit that analog journaling (David’s challenge for me) has been really enjoyable so far.

Writing on paper is a valid option as long as you don’t intend to reference and search voluminous notes on a regular basis.

I write on paper, but mainly because I find the deliberateness and slowness sparks ideas I don’t get when typing. Is it a different type of focus? I don’t know. Ongoing small studies suggest sequential finger movement may activate different parts of the brain involved in processing and remembering info… but it’s preliminary.

Still, I have my favorite fountain and gel pens.

I don’t journal on paper because I want to search what I’ve written. Ultimately I find good reasons to write by hand but productivity is not a valid one for me.

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I found a way that, for me, is the best of both worlds. When I want to journal, I write longhand in Nebo, then export the text to Day One.

I’ll have to play with Scribble in the iPadOS 14 beta to see if it works well with Day One…

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I don’t have an iPad at present, but I’m looking forward to playing with the Scribble enhancements of the OS. Still, I didn’t find that writing with the Gen.1 Pencil was a good replacement for a nice fountain pen with a nib that had a little flex in it.

Aside from that there is a distinct, if ultimately irrelevant, pleasure in using an ink that lays down differently based on humidity and nib and dries a slightly different color based on paper and ink age.

There are nibs that write as smooth as butter on glass, and ones that fall into indefinite levels of frictional toothiness (and thus greater control), in part adjustable by the paper used.

None of that is really replicable by a tablet, except perhaps in some unconvincing ersatz imitation. Are there conveniences inherent in writing on a tablet? Absolutely. Could I learn to write with a Pencil and get the same spark of creativity as with paper? Not to the same extent, I think.

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