Over at The Art Of Not Asking Why, JTR has a couple of posts that explore his struggle with deciding between digital and analog note taking. None of you will be surprised where I come down on the issue—I’m all in on living a digital life and eschew using pen and paper as much as I can—but it’s informative to read about JTR’s thought process about how he decides which method to use.
To be honest, I don’t understand his ambivalence about the matter. He lays out the case for both and shows that, except for a vague feeling of attraction to writing with pen and paper, the digital method is more efficient and satisfying. The digital product is so much more useful and flexible that it seems there should be no question as to which to use.
One thing he says that really resonated with me is that if he writes a lot with a pen, his hand cramps. That definitely happens to me too. Related to that is speed.
When I was still young and was hunt and pecking on an actual typewriter, an adult told me that it was really hard to type faster than you can write by hand. That seems laughable to me now. I can type much faster than I can write. A lot of that is probably because my handwriting is so bad that I print everything but it’s still a fact.
I, too, like the idea of sitting down with a beautiful paper journal and good pen but the results aren’t that useful. I can’t back them up. I can’t carry them on my iPhone. I can’t easily link them to and from other notes.
I write virtually everything in Org mode. The main exception is the memo book that resides on my iPhone and I simply import those notes directly into an Org mode table so that they, too, end up living in Org. All of this is automatically backed up, searchable, portable to my iPhone, and easy to link to.
If you really need the feel of pen on paper, take up calligraphy. It will satisfy your need for handwriting without sacrificing the usefulness of your notes.