Habit is the main journaling challenge, a fact barely touched in the article. There are two habits that need developing simultaneously: taking notes and reviewing notes. It’s true that simply writing something down leads to better recall, but that’s not what the article is about. The article is about creativity.

To make something based on your past observations you have to review and synthesize. That skill is much different than taking notes to remember stuff.

I agree with the author that there is nothing better than pen and paper. But There are scenarios where all I have is my phone and I still want to take notes. This leads to another can of worms: how to organize all the notes you generate on a daily basis.

I built a general purpose note-taking tool [0] to help me develop the habit of taking and reviewing notes. It has also become my repository of snippets of information generated from my phone.

I use the snippets I create to inform writing I do elsewhere: documents, outlines, letters, etc.

[0]. https://www.tatatap.com