When I first started digitizing my paper notes, I was on the fence choosing between Roam and Notion. It felt like a paralyzing choice; if I made the wrong move now, I experienced this sense of fear that I’d eventually be bogged down by the legacy architecture.

I ended up choosing Notion, and that was that. As it turns out, a few years into the journey, I’m realizing that the choice probably didn’t matter all that much. I haven’t stopped taking physical notes; in fact, I just bought another set of my favorite heavy duty 4×6” index cards, and I see the value in paper more than ever. 

Each note card takes me about 10 minutes to write by hand and categorize. That’s an eternity compared to quickly copying, pasting, and organizing from a plugin or whatever. This slowness compounds, and I can hear an imaginary note-taking guru chastizing me for the inefficiency of my method.

While there’s something—probably a lot—to be said for the handwriting process, there’s more to be said about how well it works for me. Firstly, and perhaps most importantly, I enjoy the process a lot, and written well over a thousand notecards, even turning a few hundred of them into a book. As Andy Matuchak writes (via Casey Newton), “The goal is not to take notes—the goal is to think effectively. Better questions are ‘what practices can help me reliably develop insights over time?’, ‘how can I shepherd my attention effectively?’ etc.”

There’s no doubt in my mind I’m a much more effective thinker for the notes. I’m glad I have them in digital form, especially since I’ve been moving around the world more than before, but I’ll probably never stop making the physical notes first.