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I have kept lab notebooks for decades now, some thoughts; Writing them, on paper, has been very helpful. The act of writing, the pace of it, the composition of

I have kept lab notebooks for decades now, some thoughts; Writing them, on paper, has been very helpful. The act of writing, the pace of it, the composition of what I'm going to write, combine to help make the information more durable in my head some how. I've got a ReMarkable 2 notebook which gives me infinite pages which is kind of neat, but I still like paper notebooks. They have saved me a couple of times and made me more productive. Since I often have a number of projects in parallel so that I can pick up one when the current one hits a stall (like waiting for parts, or needing different equipment), and when I come back to a project I've organized my notebook so that I can re-create my mental map from where I left off. And in one instance it torpedoed a vendor who tried to patent an idea that we had reached out to them for help in developing.

gumby 5y ago
I finally made the leap and switched to an iPad+pencil2. I’ve tried Writing in it is not as automatic as my prior tool (cheap notebook and fountain pen, or whatever pen is available). Also portrait/landscape doesn’t really work. But over time I got used to the experience and this part is adequate. There’s a property of physical book where you can flip back to some point in the past. I find this doesn’t work as well with ring bound books anyway. It doesn’t have the whole “sign the page” property but I haven’t been subject to that in years so not a problem for me. But it has several benefits: 1. It automatically converts and indexes my handwriting so I can search (!) for a note or mentions of a thing. 2. I can carry all my notes and they are with me all the time. I can even look at them on my Mac though they aren’t “live”. 3. I can connect to zoom a second time from the iPad and share a picture, or draw something in my notebook that everyone can see, and then it’s saved. It was worth the switch. I considered a ReMarkable and a Samsung tablet but am glad I sprang for the iPad. I have tried the others (friends have them) but this seems the best for me. Note: don’t use the iPad for much else. Sometimes I read rss in bed before sleeping if the iPad is in the bedroom for some reason.
- _alex_ 5y ago
  Im thinking about making the same switch. What app are you using on the ipad that makes your notes searchable?
  - gumby 5y ago
    Ordinary apple notes.
- ChuckMcM 5y ago
  I've done this as well. Because I was trying to get to that point ever since I got my first iPad I've got a number of different applications for "taking notes". The notepad integration with the pencil however is top notch. I had one that integrated with Evernote and came with a stylus (before the Apple pen existed) and it worked well too, but Evernote lost their way. For me, the ReMarkable2 is actually a bit better for this, only because the drawing is more seamless and the battery life means I can take it camping without worrying about charging it every day. In my paper notebook I use 'manual' doubly linked lists to connect places where I leave and return to a project/note. So when I start a new thing, it goes in the front contents with its starting page. When I come back to it, I write at the end of where I left of "to page->xx" and on the page where I've started up again I write "from page->yy". So that at any time I can find a project in the contents, go to the start, and then walk through all of the pages that have some thoughts or information about that project quickly. The other thing that paper notebooks do well but electronic ones do not yet is flags. I have 'post-it' 5 color flags usually glued/taped to the inside cover of the notebook. So I can add flags to pages with specific things like 'green flag' means business idea, 'yellow flag' means waiting on something before I can continue, 'red flag' means this has an action item I need to do/finish to make progress, and typically 'blue' flags are used to indicate the first 'unused' page in the notebook so I can easily open to it. The 'Makers Notesbooks' from Make Inc have a ribbon page marker that works for this as well.
- FranksTV 5y ago
  My favorite part is being able to doodle and erase it over and over. Any time I take paper notes, the margins are filled with doodles. But on the iPad I can doodle and just erase and no one is any wider!

gumby 5y ago

I finally made the leap and switched to an iPad+pencil2. I’ve tried Writing in it is not as automatic as my prior tool (cheap notebook and fountain pen, or whatever pen is available). Also portrait/landscape doesn’t really work. But over time I got used to the experience and this part is adequate. There’s a property of physical book where you can flip back to some point in the past. I find this doesn’t work as well with ring bound books anyway. It doesn’t have the whole “sign the page” property but I haven’t been subject to that in years so not a problem for me. But it has several benefits: 1. It automatically converts and indexes my handwriting so I can search (!) for a note or mentions of a thing. 2. I can carry all my notes and they are with me all the time. I can even look at them on my Mac though they aren’t “live”. 3. I can connect to zoom a second time from the iPad and share a picture, or draw something in my notebook that everyone can see, and then it’s saved. It was worth the switch. I considered a ReMarkable and a Samsung tablet but am glad I sprang for the iPad. I have tried the others (friends have them) but this seems the best for me. Note: don’t use the iPad for much else. Sometimes I read rss in bed before sleeping if the iPad is in the bedroom for some reason.

_alex_ 5y ago
Im thinking about making the same switch. What app are you using on the ipad that makes your notes searchable?
- gumby 5y ago
  Ordinary apple notes.
ChuckMcM 5y ago
I've done this as well. Because I was trying to get to that point ever since I got my first iPad I've got a number of different applications for "taking notes". The notepad integration with the pencil however is top notch. I had one that integrated with Evernote and came with a stylus (before the Apple pen existed) and it worked well too, but Evernote lost their way. For me, the ReMarkable2 is actually a bit better for this, only because the drawing is more seamless and the battery life means I can take it camping without worrying about charging it every day. In my paper notebook I use 'manual' doubly linked lists to connect places where I leave and return to a project/note. So when I start a new thing, it goes in the front contents with its starting page. When I come back to it, I write at the end of where I left of "to page->xx" and on the page where I've started up again I write "from page->yy". So that at any time I can find a project in the contents, go to the start, and then walk through all of the pages that have some thoughts or information about that project quickly. The other thing that paper notebooks do well but electronic ones do not yet is flags. I have 'post-it' 5 color flags usually glued/taped to the inside cover of the notebook. So I can add flags to pages with specific things like 'green flag' means business idea, 'yellow flag' means waiting on something before I can continue, 'red flag' means this has an action item I need to do/finish to make progress, and typically 'blue' flags are used to indicate the first 'unused' page in the notebook so I can easily open to it. The 'Makers Notesbooks' from Make Inc have a ribbon page marker that works for this as well.
FranksTV 5y ago
My favorite part is being able to doodle and erase it over and over. Any time I take paper notes, the margins are filled with doodles. But on the iPad I can doodle and just erase and no one is any wider!