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After watching this video, I was intrigued, but then I started thinking more about this. Now, in fairness, before I continue, I don't really have a social media problem because I'm not really ON social media. YouTube is now the last vestige of popular social media I'm on. And in terms of my phone, I don't even use the YouTube app or any third-party front end for it even. Further, I use Sanctuary as a place to record thoughts publicly that I feel are something I'd want to return to later for whatever reason.
So, anyway, the guy in the video is right. A simple $1 notebook can help people disconnect, to focus much better and live in the moment, to have something physical in their hands, and finally, they can tear out sheets of paper from it if you need to give someone some information really quickly. But that's where the pros end and the cons begin. And boy oh boy, there are some cons. For starters, archiving.
You have four choices here, and none of them are good at all. One, you can write in the notebook until it's used up, and then transfer everything you want to a computer for storage. This requires you to type out every single page you want to save once you're done with a notebook. A rather annoying and time consuming task. Two, each night, you can sit down and record whatever you wrote in the notebook for that day, or at least, whatever you want to save. The third option is to not type anything into a computer and to just leave it in the notebook. But then that begs the question of sorting and storing. Do you HAVE the storage for all of those notebooks? Even if you did, are you gonna have the patience to sort everything by date neatly? And with that, we come to the fourth option. Using a scanner and OCR to quickly digitize the pages. Well, this is a great idea... IF the OCR is actually gonna work and be able to read your chicken scratch, which, let's be honest here, it probably won't. Still, the OCR method is probably the best of the bunch if you can write neatly.
The second major con is local security. Sure, in the famous words of Valentine, "Nobody can hack into this shit." Well, yeah. Remotely, they can't. But they can definitely take the notebook somehow and read it. Yeah, can't exactly put a password on a paper notebook. You CAN use a code of your invention, but it needs to be a code you need to completely memorize and it needs to be something you can easily read back later. The easier it is to read, the easier it will probably be for someone to figure out. It's just a mess really.
The third major con is not being able to quickly search your notebooks for an idea without digitizing them. There's no 'grep' for paper notebooks. And finally, the fourth thing is that past a certain point, without digitizing the notebooks, there is no way to make even a single backup without going through each and every one of them. In the end, you might as well just record your thoughts digitally. There's many ways to do it too. You don't need to use a smartphone. The right e-reader for example may do very well in this regard.
So, anyway, the guy in the video is right. A simple $1 notebook can help people disconnect, to focus much better and live in the moment, to have something physical in their hands, and finally, they can tear out sheets of paper from it if you need to give someone some information really quickly. But that's where the pros end and the cons begin. And boy oh boy, there are some cons. For starters, archiving.
You have four choices here, and none of them are good at all. One, you can write in the notebook until it's used up, and then transfer everything you want to a computer for storage. This requires you to type out every single page you want to save once you're done with a notebook. A rather annoying and time consuming task. Two, each night, you can sit down and record whatever you wrote in the notebook for that day, or at least, whatever you want to save. The third option is to not type anything into a computer and to just leave it in the notebook. But then that begs the question of sorting and storing. Do you HAVE the storage for all of those notebooks? Even if you did, are you gonna have the patience to sort everything by date neatly? And with that, we come to the fourth option. Using a scanner and OCR to quickly digitize the pages. Well, this is a great idea... IF the OCR is actually gonna work and be able to read your chicken scratch, which, let's be honest here, it probably won't. Still, the OCR method is probably the best of the bunch if you can write neatly.
The second major con is local security. Sure, in the famous words of Valentine, "Nobody can hack into this shit." Well, yeah. Remotely, they can't. But they can definitely take the notebook somehow and read it. Yeah, can't exactly put a password on a paper notebook. You CAN use a code of your invention, but it needs to be a code you need to completely memorize and it needs to be something you can easily read back later. The easier it is to read, the easier it will probably be for someone to figure out. It's just a mess really.
The third major con is not being able to quickly search your notebooks for an idea without digitizing them. There's no 'grep' for paper notebooks. And finally, the fourth thing is that past a certain point, without digitizing the notebooks, there is no way to make even a single backup without going through each and every one of them. In the end, you might as well just record your thoughts digitally. There's many ways to do it too. You don't need to use a smartphone. The right e-reader for example may do very well in this regard.