A while ago I wrote about how I combine digital notes together with the BulletJournal method. What I didn’t write about the quality of the callback and how processing the notes changes from digital vs analog.

I went on a long journey to figure out both. For years, I switched back and forth between the two and here is what I found stood out.

What is actually the difference

Visibility and linear progression. Even though, in Obsidian, I use the daily notes plugin, the PARA method, and a very simplistic folder structure when it comes to tracking tasks for projects, I would still not be able to, as easily, go through notes from a previous day, as I do with my notebook.

Why is that?

For a typical day if I used Obsidian, I started with creating a daily log. Once the log was there, I would proceed with opening the previous day and see what remained unfinished and port over those tasks into the current day’s note.

Then, I would either: Follow back-links from entries that I did that pointed back to the previous day, OR, I would scroll through a table view that I made with bases / dataview of notes that I touched today-1 days ago.

This worked semi-well. On the phone. Why on the phone? Because, as I said in my previous post, it’s a morning ritual. I would sit at the table, drink my coffee, and scroll through my phone and click/swipe on things. Occasionally, I’d be distracted by an idea and look it up on my phone immediately, instead of focusing. That’s my flow immediately broken.

I could have done this on the computer, but I didn’t want to sit down at the screen in the morning and completely disassociate from my wife, having breakfast together. Bad. So the phone it is, because I’m still there, and would be asking something, or looking at a personal item that we still have to do like, shop clothes for my daughter, etc.

Eventually though, I noticed that sure, I would scroll through the table to see what notes I touched, but I wouldn’t actually open them. I wouldn’t read them. I wouldn’t understand what changed. I wouldn’t even read the previous day’s note fully, just maybe the tasks.

One of the main benefits of taking notes isn’t just finding them if you need them later on. It’s when you read them back! If you just write something down to get it out of your head, that’s fine too. But, reading them back is what makes them really work for their money, I found.

Even journal entries. Usually, I would just write and forget to get it out of my system and used to rarely read them back because I would cringe at my “old” self on what I wrote. But the last years, I found that reading back my entries, is in-fact, therapeutic.

And reading back my notes everyday from the previous day helped me figure out things I didn’t figure out on the day I took the notes!

And here is the real difference. Taking my notebook into my hand and flipping through the pages is a thousand times more satisfying than literally doomscrolling through my notes on my phone the day before and clicking here and there to figure out what notes I took in various places.

In my notebook, I would go to the new page, write up the date, and then just flip backwards and read my entries. I’ll talk about collections in a second.

This works very well for me. It’s like reading a book. It’s solid, in my hand. I would have small drawings all over the page. Tiny pictograms the occasional diagram about stuff I thought off, and tiny quips or remarks as the day goes by. Why? Because it’s at my desk in my face unlike any digital tool would be even if it’s unlocked next to on an ipad or something (that would drain battery because the screen never locks so I don’t forget about it).

Meaning. I would just use the notebook more often. If I used Obsidian more often, what I found was that it was just more mechanical notes. Nothing funny or interesting. It was just a verbatim regurgitation of all my thoughts in a stream (since I can type quickly there was no summary or thought behind the words). It was an endless stream of text much like an LLM would do and it was just way too much to read back all the time.

So, you might ask, don’t do that, just think before you type. Yes, that also worked for a while. I would go back, revise, edit or do small sentences only. They still ended up being very dry. No small quips, no lines, no hand-drawn emojis… It missed a certain je ne sais quoi. A personal touch, if you will. What it did give me, and this one is obvious, and is why I still use digital notes for project issues and traveling etc, is, of course, search. And I will never dispute that. Being able to search your notes will always be super useful.

And you could say that I could digitize my handwritten notes, take pictures, rewrite them, etc. I. Will. Never. Do. That. I’m too lazy for going through my notes and try to take pictures or OCR my handwriting. No way. It’s simply too much effort.

Thus, when I do have notes that I know I will have to look up later, or it’s some kind of technical knowledge I know I would like to retain and be able to look up again much, much later, I will put it into Obsidian, either with a specific tag or into a specific folder.

I’m not going to talk about BuJo and its usefulness here, and handwriting vs digital cognitive load and distraction free process, etc.

I’m only going to say that using a notebook is a.) cheaper, b.) faster, c.) better, d.) harder, e.) stronger.

How to use actually use Collections in BuJo

Now, let’s get to collections. Collections in BuJo are really simple. You have an idea, a project, a list or some other thing that couples related ideas, you flip to an empty page and use that page to keep track of those things that belong together.

Then, you record the page number in your Index. Why? To locate it later. How the collection works is that, you are supposed to record tasks and ideas there that belong together on the same page. What you aren’t supposed to be is recording tasks as they come in, in those collections.

You are still supposed to use the daily log for that. And what else is, that you record a task on the collection and then copy that into the daily log! Long story short, you don’t normally duplicate tasks. The collection serves as an abstract. For example, let’s take a project you are working on. You have an issue that you need to finish. You would record the issue, and thoughts about the issue, in your project collection page, but a specific task for that issue, you would put it into your daily log once you consulted your collection page in the morning. For example:

  • I have to review Bob’s Pull Request for the collection fix. #34|Collection Fix. (after the task I like to link to the page number of the collection and then the relevant heading, or note or context after the |)

This is specific and can be done in a day. While the "Collection Fix" note in the Project Collection contains a lot more relevant information to that specific fix requiring maybe more things to fix than just that single PR from Bob.

In the morning, when I sit down, and go through my previous day and prepare the current day, how do I know where I wrote down something, in which collection or at what location? First, it is kind of obvious. I remember it. Writing something down by hand sticks better. I remember opening my collection and writing down some words. Second, if I’m really in a hurry, or quickly edit something, like, added a TV show I watched, updated some article I read, or updated some project information, I either quickly scribble a note about it in my daily log, or, much simpler, I draw a tiny scribble. All my collections, have some kind of associated with very tiny, quick symbols attached to them. These are easy and quick to draw. If I really want to mention a collection somewhere, I usually use these icons as reference.

And thus, when going through my routine in the morning, I will quickly also scan through my collections in the index, and see if I added something. Even if I didn’t mention a collection, I still find myself just thumbing through them because I find it satisfying! It’s nice to look at. It’s a chilling activity. It. Is. Fun. So I do it more often.

Obsidian is not fun (and no amount of play with themes will make it fun. Thrust me, I tried. I see y’all creating 3D graphics and graphs and an entire movie library. 👀). It’s necessary.

What digital notes actually bought me

Like I said above, search. Search, tagging, grouping with folders. Adding information, that I would like to recall, like reservation numbers, photos, remarks, PDFs, everything that makes sense in a digital world. For that it’s priceless. Links, related issue details, conversations, meeting notes, the occasional Excalidraw canvas. These all go into my vault with the relevant information attached as to why that piece of writing exists.

I will also add anything that I want to search for later. Snippets of code, wisdom about something I discovered, blog ideas sometimes will also go in there, and the occasionally verbatim copied blog content for future references.

What indexes in BuJo actually bought me

The Index in BuJo is powerful. It’s underrated in its simplicity. I use it to track tags too! Just write #go 1, 4, 26, 76 and DONE. You have tags. It’s stupid easy. I use it for small notes. Something like, Idea about a new story 31. Or even more abstract Pages with cute things on it: .... Pages with graphs.

And so on and so forth. There is so much more you can explore with indexes that I think people just don’t realize. Because more often than not, what I find on forums are people complaining that the index is not helpful enough. Well, it’s just a notebook. You can make it be more. Add any relevant information. Add any groups. Add any detail that makes it more useful to you! Add images, drawings, tabs, icons, stickers, notes, COLORS! Red numbers mean angry notes, green numbers means task notes. Go nuts with it!

Focusing

Lastly, I will say this. Ever since I begun taking notes by hand for meetings that I have, makes me 20% pay more attention instead of verbatim jotting down meeting minutes. This might be obvious and for obvious reasons, since, it has been researched and proven so many times now that taking notes by hand makes you listen more. But I really had to just add this here again because, well, it’s just true.

Conclusion

Of course, use whatever works for your set up, I just wanted to share my findings and insight so that you may compare… notes. I found that over 20 years, simply writing something down by hand feels better and makes me focus more.

Thanks for reading, Gergely.