When I was in the Navy I carried a little memoranda pad in my left breast pocket. I’d take notes each day, at the beginning of each new day, I’d carry any necessary information from the previous day to the next page and then fold the previous page along the diagonal, alternating the folds right and left each day.

The effects of pulling out a notepad and jotting notes are markedly different than pulling out a phone or tablet- especially in a conversation or meeting. IME a phone signals disengagement, while a notepad signals the opposite. When I pulled out my pad, I could see body language and word choices change almost immediately. If it was a positive or neutral conversation, people tended to show appreciation for my interest in what was being said. If it was a negative interaction, people started to be much more careful about what they were saying.

Now I carry an attaché case and use larger, more professional looking, notebooks. Even in the age of Zoom, I angle my camera to ensure it’s obvious I’m taking notes. Sure, it’s an extra step to digitize the important stuff, but I think it’s worth it.

> The effects of pulling out a notepad and jotting notes are markedly different than pulling out a phone or tablet- especially in a conversation or meeting. IME a phone signals disengagement

This! It matters even if you are paying attention; in this day and age pulling a phone strongly signals disengagement. Even if you're actually the most attentive note taker, the rest of the attendees don't know this... and once one person signals disinterest, many will follow. It's like you're "giving them permission" to stop paying attention.

I've noticed that early on; 15 years ago, I was keeping notes on a "feature phone with sliding keyboard". I was pulled by my manager for being disrespectful after the meeting; I showed him the notes and demonstrated that I was by far the most attention / had the best retention / was most involved in the meeting, but still... the message was - it looks unprofessional, stop it.

Thing is:

* My handwriting sucks (I literally can't read my own; I'm 42yo - don't tell me to practice / it'll improve, just don't be that arrogant ignoramus ;).

* I'll never be organized on paper. Ever. My circles are potatoes, my lines are squiggles, and everything is all over the place and disheartening to read (I love whiteboards but it's a whole other thing, somehow)

* I love love love my typed notes. I can type fast and asynchronously while I listen and look at the speaker. I can search them, retain them, review them, summarize them.

But I'm aware that I'll always look disengaged on my laptop compared to somebody with their notebook :-/

I've noticed that as well -- no matter how engaged someone is, if there is a screen that they can see but others can't then it is an information imbalance that is disruptive to the normal flow of conversation. It's like hearing half a phone conversation -- your brain works overtime trying to reconstruct the part it can't see. And it makes some sense; when I am talking to a person and they keep glancing at their laptop, phone, or watch it's exceedingly off-putting and they seem disengaged even in cases when other evidence indicates they are paying attention.

I've similarly noticed that interacting with someone wearing a bluetooth headset or smart glasses is off-putting no matter how much they indicate they are paying attention and not watching or listening to something I can't see.

Like you, I prefer to type my notes. I've found that angling the screen down so that I can't see it either and then maintaining normal eye contact with everyone makes the problem mostly go away. Possibly because I'm not constantly breaking eye contact to furtively glance at a glowing screen that they can't see. Or possibly because I wasn't paying as much attention as I felt like I was -- there is some research that indicates that people who can see a screen or TV while they are accomplishing a task often significantly underestimate how much time they spent looking at it and how much it negatively impacted their task performance.

Agreed; that one thing, has actually been made easier with Covid-induced remote work at my project. On Zoom, people don't know I'm typing furiously - I'm a touch typer and can do reasonable amount of formatting/bullet lists without looking down, so I can look at and engage with and react to person maintaining eye contact while my fingers do their own thing :).

I haven't had a chance to use the remarkable 2 in an in-person meeting (covid) but with the stylus/pen and its shape, it's really obvious that it's not a consumption device. If it's flat on the conference room table, everyone in the room with decent eyesight will identify it as a monochromatic screen for note taking (as long as the pen is in the picture). Depending on camera angle, it's also obvious in video chats and easy to screen share using their app. Other thoughts:

* Remarkable's handwriting recognition is some of the best I've seen (but that's a low bar). Works well even on doctor chicken scratch but it's tied to their cloud stuff. The calligraphy pen setting helps with the aesthetics of bad hand writing

* This is why the remarkable has been a game changer for me. The pen selection tool allows me to draw an arbitrary shape and selects all strokes that fall within it. I can then drag or copy/cut/paste the selection, which I use all the time to rearrange my diagrams and copy/paste bits that I draw with a straightedge as a template. The big missing pieces are shape drawing tools and an infinite canvas so you can infinite scroll to the sides to keep drawing but with pinch to zoom, I usually just zoom way into a page when I open a notebook i know is going to be huge. Even zoomed out the resolution on the display makes it really readable (I can barely identify individual "pixels" with a 10x loupe)

* If the process of hand drawing/writing/annotating doesn't appeal to you or help with retention, the remarkable 2 is a really expensive ebook reader... with ssh.

I enjoyed this review of Onyx Note Air by a grad student:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ELXnytHZY2c

It seems Note Air has potential but is not priced well. You might think reMarkable 2 is also expensive, but with Note Air you have to buy additional stylus too. The video above shows how Note Air works with reMarkable 2 Marker and Staedtler stylus.

I personally think if latency and price would get solved, Note Air has much more potential than rM2. I couldn't believe they actually put a lot of thought into designing the software that run Note Air, but the guy in the video explains things in detail.

If all you want is an ereader with ssh, a Kobo with Koreader will do that for you. They just run Linux, so it's quite a fun device for hacking around in.

Plus Koreader itself is in Lua and is relatively easy to make changes to.

>My handwriting sucks (I literally can't read my own; I'm 42yo - don't tell me to practice / it'll improve, just don't be that arrogant ignoramus ;).

I am close to 40, 2 - 3 years ago, I re-practiced handwriting with my daughter who wanted to learn (out of school) writing. To my surprise, my handwriting did improve and I was actually surprised by the result (cursive, I am French), hers was miles ahead of mine but really I was damn surprised by how effective it was.

I used to have teachers that refused to correct my copies because of my handwriting, so it's never too late.

Having been at university in France, I know what it means to be judge by handwriting and style rather than content. Ironically, a few points off here and there for handwriting can actually be the cutting line in some cases for admissions in the future. Thy destiny is lying in thy hands.

Similar experience going to a French school for the equivalent of 10th grade, after attending US schools until then. My first math test grade was very low, mostly because I didn't write things in the correct colors. That was quite a shock.

That's so funny- that makes me think: 2007 (or so) a manager asked me not to use a Windows Pen Tablet in a meeting because it wasn't respectful.

2011 Every senior manager brings an iPad to meetings and seem to get distracted.

2015 (Tech co) Everybody brings an MacBook Air or a MacBook pro to every meeting

2018 (Entertainment Co) Any electronic device is considered disrespectful in a meeting, especially phones.

and this is why I love remote work in a tight team. Cameras are really only on for standups / outside of team meetings / coffee breaks. Instead we do whatever we think is appropriate during meetings.

I normally make notes on paper and use the computer to fact check myself and the conversation (where it matters). It makes everything waay faster.

By a certain definition we are cyborgs with augmented reality when working remotely in a way we can't be in-person. It's as though everyone has a HUD with as many monitors as they wish on which they can pull up any program while facing the rest of the team and looking them in the eye (camera) when necessary.

You missed 2014 - Business Partners bring in their BlackBerry Passports :->

still using mine.

I think there is a spectrum.

  |Disengaged <----------------> Engaged|
  |Phone          Laptop       Pen/Paper|

So even though your phone had a keyboard, it still looked like you were texting instead of paying attention. A small laptop would have probably had a better reception. But I agree, nothing beats taking notes on paper as far as giving the impression of being engaged and attentive.

To add to that, with a laptop (tactile keyboard), it's also easier to type notes while maintaining eye contact. That goes a long way to show respect and look engaged.

On a side-note, I do this on video calls too, keeping the window near where the camera is located so that there is still eye contact.

I wonder if something like old school Graffiti (from Palm OS) would work for you.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graffiti_(Palm_OS)

I did use Palm devices extensively, and found Graffiti shockingly intuitive - it took me no time at all to be fully fluent in it. All the way up to Palm Treo, I loved them and couldn't figure out why people went Gaga over iPhone when it came out - I felt that I mostly had that same thing for years already (I recognize there are important differences in retrospective, not the least that iPhone was fashionable and cool to use;)

I would definitely work better with Graffiti-style input rather than full writing recognition; but:

a) I am a dorky minority - pretty much always a negative focus group for these things :P

b) even for me it's not ideal and modern lightweight laptops are a better solution -- I type at speed of speech these days; I don't think I could ever write / squiggle that fast.

Does anything modern support this? Does the remarkable? Because this would be killer for me. I have terrible hand writing and being able to type without hauling out a keyboard would be great for notes.

There is an Android keyboard called Graffiti Pro that does exactly that.

I don't think there is anything equivalent on the Remarkable, I think the idea is handwriting then if you need you can OCR it.

I’ve found the disorganization of writing is actually a benefit. I have a remarkable and I put almost everything in a single organizational notebook. There’s no pressure to do things right, no fretting about space or making clean shapes, just thought dumps and open notes.. which I condense down later on a computer if I ever decide I actually want to “go forward” with an idea. Works for me given I feel a friction with long term cleanly organized notes that sometimes inhibits the process altogether.

Could tap strap[^1] be a viable solution to this? It does have some learning curve but I didn't found it too bad (was able to memorize all alphabets in a weekend). Though being as fast and accurate as keyboard will take some time and effort. With 10mins per day, after 15 days I'm at 28WPM with 98.5% accuracy (they have a training app)

[^1] - https://www.tapwithus.com/

I’m a poor typist, for some reason I can touch type with my left hand, but I have a tendency to “hunt & peck” with my right hand. This is probably because I have to use a lot of GUI-intensive, mouse-based design software for work (constantly taking my right hand off the keyboard).

After reading your comment, I decided what the heck and my TapStrap2 arrived Thursday. I know I should just take those 15 minutes a day and improve my typing skills, but where’s the fun in that?

In any case, I’ve got the alphabet memorized, and now (at the end of Sunday) I can consistently get 18 WPM. For extra challenge, I decided to learn on my non-dominant (left) hand. I’m pretty impressed with how quickly basic proficiency can be achieved. I haven’t explored the mousing features, or macros, but I can definitely see myself using this in meetings in the future— if for no other reason than some sweet show-off value.

This looks really cool! Do they allow customizing gestures / "key bindings"? (Some of them don't look too comfortable and give me RSI just from looking at them.)

I also wish they allowed using two of these things at the same time (on both hands) so that one could type on a "virtual" QWERTY keyboard instead of having to resort to weird multi-finger gestures.

Have you tried typing the notes while keeping direct eye contact with the person speaking?

You can even half-close the lid to make it completely obvious the only thing you could be doing is typing notes.

The notes might come out a bit messy, but you can clean them up later.

My handwriting sucks too, and much of it is nearly illegible, but I find that I have much better retention if I keep written notes rather than typing.

Even if some of my notes are difficult (or even impossible) to read, it's still sufficient to help remember what I felt so notable that I wrote it down.

I realize that everyone's not the same, but studies have shown that writing leads to better conceptual recall (but typing tends to record more information)

My wife's version of a shopping list is a bunch of lines of "running writing Ws". The typed approximation being

Wwwwwwwww

Wwwwwwwww

...etc

At the shops, I have no idea but she knows what she wrote.

I’m familiar with that language.

I think it’s intentional.

We’re being tested somehow...

(I particularly like, when I’m sent to the store, reading “Wwwwwwwww” followed by a legible “etc.”)

ProTip: always bring home some flowers; it seems to distract them.

It'd be interesting to try hooking up some basic storage to a keyboard and just touch type without having a screen handy

And make sure the keyboard is a chording one, so you don't have to look while touch-typing, and you get: https://www.friedmanarchives.com/dataegg/

Similar device: https://www.stavros.io/posts/keyyyyyyyys/

That is cool; it was discussed on HN, submitted by the creator: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26790486

I think that is like wearable computing input devices such as the Twiddler keyboard: https://duckduckgo.com/?t=ffab&q=twiddler2&iax=images&ia=ima... and the DataEgg was intended to hold notes inside it and be a standalone device.

Related, the classic MicroWriter AgendA which was a PDA with chording and normal keyboards from the 80s: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:MicroWriter,_AgendA,_and_...

I think it should be possible to build that pattern into a multitouch web page on a tablet and take chording notes on a flat screen.

There is one device that allows you to take digital notes and appear to be paying attention.

How do you feel about learning stenography?

The pen and paper kind of steno or the digital kind? What device is this?

AFAIK digital steno depends on steno keyboards (which are very cool), and I haven't seen any portable device with one. I would love to have a laptop with an ortholinear n-key rollover keyboard (it's easy to adapt an ortholinear keyboard to steno mode and switch between modes).

Also I have not seen any software supporting analog steno, but that would be awesome.

Sorry I was talking about digital. I didn't even know about the pen and paper kind.

There are portable devices https://github.com/openstenoproject/plover/wiki/Supported-Ha...

Good insight. I find that when I say "oh that's cool, let me write that down" as I pull out my phone, it results in similarly-positive reactions.

If you want something slightly more techy; the ONLY app that I absolutely cannot live without is Blitzmail on Android (I believe there's an Apple equivalent?)

It's simply an an ultra-simplified one destination email client.

One button on your homescreen opens up a little text input window. Hit send, and it emails yourself. That's it, and it has been absolutely life changing, I've retained so much and simplified so many things. Ideas, scheduling, notes, etc.

I use Telegram to take notes on my phone. You can "message yourself", they changed it to "saved messages" but it's essentially just you chatting with yourself. Each message is a note, beginning with "Topic :", e.g. "Game design :".

Then about once a month I copy paste the whole chat into a text file on my workstation PC, date and archive it, and clear the chat. Telegram includes the exact time and date of each message in the paste, and my consistent "tagging" of the notes with the topic means that I can programmatically parse the text files later to organize them, maybe on my website.

After years of note-taking in various forms, I find that I rarely actually need to peruse my notes archive. It's the act of taking notes itself which helps with retention of ideas.

What is your workflow to process all the emails to yourself?

Event scheduling I do in "remind calendar" for Linux with a little notify-send.

Most everything else in my life organization-wise, I use http://zim-wiki.org for. I just go through them and file them in ideas or todos.

I try to avoid using my phone as much as possible. The rule of thumb there is -- if it's not a real human communicating to me directly/individually or as part of a small group, I should try to just use the computer or not use it at all.

This got some discussion as the "Hipster PDA" some years back (originally 2004 from Merlin Mann), along with some low-cost options to simplify managing it - multicolor cards, bullet journal rules, cutting out card-sized pieces of plastic from a cheap folder to make a "cover" and of course various sizes of binder clips.

I found a medium to large binder clip to work better than hole punching and a ring - you can't just open it up and use it while standing, but it holds together better and easier to add/remove cards.

A big advantage of this over journals (Moleskine, Field Notes, etc) is that there's no mental block of "I don't want to write something stupid or trivial in my journal/notebook."

Not to make it personal but: Do you do this? How do you find it? It's a simple and alluring solution plus I've been looking at the remarkable2, but this answer sounds like doing the dishes. I like a empty kitchen sink, but I honestly pay someone to come in twice week to have that, because the low-rent solution of just doing the dishes is beyond me. I'm never going to sit down and review the cards, and then the benefits of going digital. Globally instantly accessible by others, indexed, impossible to lose, etc.

Off and on. Started on it again just yesterday, hence my comment.

>I'm never going to sit down and review the cards

Well, don't sit down then. Standing up flip through the cards you filled during the day and toss them into garbage, unless one is really important. You're strictly better off than writing down nothing at all during the day, which is the default state for most people.

But what kind of things to you write?

I do this. Todo items that pop into my head, little notes about ongoing projects. Things I want to remember or process but aren't an immediate task.

Later in the day when I pull them out, many do get trashed. Lots of Todo items never make it to my digital Todo list because my brain processed them mostly in the background during the day. I find the physical nature of the cards means I can't avoid that processing step. The times I revert back to digital first, my notes end up everywhere (I input them in the fastest way, rather than finding the right place) and immediately begin rotting because now I have remember and force myself to condense and organize rather than it occurring naturally.

I do something like this, though generally just in the situations where I don't have my notebook.

For me, it's a bit more adhoc than the suggested above. Recent uses: jotting down measurements of some furniture; writing for somebody the name of a book I was recommending them; shopping and todo lists; doodles and sketches. notes tend to be odd phrases from conversations. The reviewing is minimal -- under 10% of what I write needs preserving, the cards mostly get a quick glance and then go straight into the recycling.

I use the same index cards when I'm writing something, for paragraphs or ideas which I can visually arrange on a table.

I've been doing this in some form for a couple of years, but just as a low-key background thing. For me it's just the minimal viable equipment for being able to write things.

I could use my phone for almost all of this, but index cards are a lower risk of distraction.

Shameless plug, but if you like note-taking on index cards but are still looking for a slightly more digital solution to the problem, we've[1] built an online note-taking platform that is based around digital markdown note-cards, which is a bit different from most other digital solutions which are usually document or bullet-list based. I realize that many on HN want to "own" their data a little more than you typically expect of a cloud-platform, but you owning your notes is very important to us which is why we've spelled it out in our T&Cs[2] and why we have a publicly-accessible API[3] for maximum flexibility.

[1] https://supernotes.app

[2] https://supernotes.app/terms/

[3] https://api.supernotes.app/docs/swagger

Wonderful! I even like Basecamp inspired design.

And then I get to referral scheme :). Eww.

But everything else is pretty solid, I will give it a try, love the idea so far.

There should be card size rugged reMarkable mini to put in pocket and take notes anywhere.

Exactly what I do. Even made a simple 3x5 holder that is two pieces of leather riveted on one short edge. If needed, I pick up colored 3x5s to color code. For example, yellow = my Home Depot shopping list, or measurements notes.