The advantages of typed notes are clear for anyone to see. They’re easier to read than written scribble, are trivial to share, quick to produce, and can even be printed out if you really want a paper form for later.
But that doesn’t mean you should count out paper altogether. In fact, there are a few times where I nearly always use paper.
Interviewers Love Handwritten Notes
Imagine being on a video call with a potential new employee for your company. While you’re speaking, they do one of the following:
- Look away, move their arm to click around for a moment, and start clacking on their keyboard.
- Hold a conversation with you, looking down to periodically write the most important things in their notebook.
One of these looks better. Nobody knows what you’re doing on that second monitor, which could even be you asking an AI for help. But looking down to write intuitively makes the interviewer know you’re engaged.
When a Picture Really Is Worth a Thousand Words
I write daily and I can absolutely say that a picture is not worth a thousand words. At least not for me. But sometimes when you’re taking notes a quick doodle to the side to demonstrate a shape is so much better than having to describe that.
When I’m Dabbling with Conlanging
This one is super niche, but also a decidedly fun hobby. Conlanging is the creation of your own language, and us word and language nerds are into it. Well, at least some of us are.
While I don’t have a conlang, per se, I did create a phonetic syllabary of sorts for private notes to myself. Plopping a few characters onto a sticky note for later, knowing only I could read it has always been cool.
Paper gives you the ability to create tons of new symbols easily and allows you to depart from the typical alphabet of characters to make something truly unique.
Note also that many people employ notes for proper language learning, too, or any study for that matter as writing out words with a pencil may help you learn something. I don’t know if this works for me, per se, but it’s something to keep in mind as it may help you.
Creative Projects
Using paper notes, doodling in boring college classes, and later filling page after page with it was how the above hobby started for me. Organically. I didn’t know what conlanging was, but I was given the freedom of paper to get to something usable.
Paper allows for a lot more trial and error than you might think!
Despite how inviting a new Obsidian vault might seem in the moment, try planning on paper from the outset next time. At least for a draft or two. You might find the less rigid format useful in ways you never expected.