I’m one page away from filling up my first little field notes notebook. I wrote about a month ago about my attempt at using field notes as an supplementary note taking method. I’ve talked since then in a video about how this has become a little bit of an obsession and how it has kind of changed the way I do things.

Lists⌗

The first thing that has changed is that I’ve moved a lot of my “to do” list items out of my digital task manager and into my notebook. The repetitive stuff that I do every day ends up in the digital world, but anything that is more unique or even a little more important, ends up on a list in the field notes. I love the physical nature of actually crossing something off the list. I’ve always liked clicking the button in Todoist or TickTick, but doing it with my favorite pen is so much better.

When I first started this, I will admit that I felt like I got more done. Now that it’s settled in a little, I still find days where I’m not doing all that’s on my list. My innate laziness can’t be held back, not even with a nice little notebook. But I still do find that I enjoy the physical nature of these lists way more than their digital counterparts.

Notes⌗

Actual notes are complex for me, and my new field notes notebooks have complicated the situation even more. Now there are three places I can take a note: my phone, my field notes, or on my computer (now using Emacs for everything instead of Obsidian). This seems like it makes things harder, but it has worked out exceptionally well. When I’m away from my computer, I use my phone (which is attached to my main PC and home lab via Syncthing), but if I’m at my computer, I’m almost always going to write it down in the little notebook instead. If I find that I need to add permanence to the note, I’ll transfer it to my notes directory on my PC, but that hardly ever happens.

I really like this way of doing things. I do not know if it is sustainable. It’s only been a month, but so far, I’ve found that jotting things down in the notebook keeps me a bit more attached to my notes than when they’re in the digital world. I see them more often and interact with older notes much more often than I do when they’re stored in a digital directory on my computer. This makes me remember things better, and that was kind of the point of this entire exercise.

Better Handwriting⌗

I’ve talked before about how bad my handwriting is. One of my conclusions in that piece was that because of technology, I had fallen out of the practice of actually writing. My penmanship has never been great, but it has gotten way worse of the years. Now that I’m actually writing more, my handwriting has gotten better. I was going to type “a lot better”, but that wouldn’t have been honest. It is better. I still have to make sure I write each letter deliberately, or I get messy fast, but it is readable, which is an improvement.

I’ve also found myself more comfortable holding a pen now than I was before. It used to hurt quite a bit, but now I’ve built up some resistance to the discomfort, and it no longer hurts.

I Love Field Notes⌗

As I get ready to go into my second little notebook, I have some plans. I love these things, and I feel like they have a lot of potential for organizing my life better and tracking things too. So, I’m going to do a two page spread each week with a habit tracker and a goals section. I started that a bit with this notebook, but I’ll do it better with the next one. I hope that this will help me keep track of the way things are going a little better. I’ve tried digital habit trackers before, but they don’t really do me any good because they’re too easy to ignore or cheat with. I think writing this down will make it a more deliberate thing in my head, and hopefully that will help.

I will probably buy some more of these notebooks long before I actually need to. I’m going to go with off brand this time to save a little money, but I really like this size notebook a lot, it has made my life better.