Definitely agree -- paper is something that should compliment your overall system, it's pretty hard to get by with paper alone these days.

If my goal is to focus in on what I'm thinking about, pulling myself away from the computer and putting pen to paper does a better job than anything digital has been able to provide me.

Ah thanks for the catch! I also just switched over to a new SSG for my site, must have missed this :)

> The article does not explain what the value of pen and paper has over a digital note pad. It just declares it has one.

The advantage is being clear from potential distractions. A lack of "features" providing a direct line of focus on what you're writing.

Apologies if that wasn't clear from the article!

Nice article. Thanks. It is certainly something that a lot of us here are naturally interested in. But With respect, I don't think that your observations constitute a mechanism. Digital Apps that are deliberately feature-restricted do not hold the same attraction. I believe that there must be some further mechanism at play.

Perhaps as animals were are primed for the tactile, and everything else feels ghostly. I don't know. All I know is that no expand I can come to will convince my young students of the value of analogue.

My preferred answer would be: no batteries required.

This! There's also plenty of research backing up the idea that writing with a pen commits the information to memory more effectively than typing. It makes sense if you consider the extra time and effort being dedicated to what you're writing.

I've ditched pen and paper in the past because it was too slow for me. Over time I've realized that desire to "go fast" can be good in some contexts, and bad in others. Slowing down with pen and paper does a much better job of clarifying and directing my thoughts.

All of the research I've read connects this effect to paraphrasing but, it doesn't have to be, at least for me.

When I get the pen in my hand, everything changes, incl. the way I think.

Also while unrelated, if I'm working on something in English, my whole data processing pipeline switches to English. Everything returns to my native language when I finish. Strange and fascinating.

> I've ditched pen and paper in the past because it was too slow for me....

Same for me. I've gone through that phase too. Tried to be too efficient but found out that excessive speed kills (concentration, in-depth thinking and the broad perspective). Then I've returned to my old ways for thinking.

However, getting used to something like Evernote and Trello for longer term planning complemented writing and supercharged both, at least for me.

> It is very easy to have a "apps and services"-free experience: just kill notifications. Why would the paper make a difference? It's not like your "attention-clawing" misconfigured device is not still at your reach.

Absolutely true, this article is generally a reminder for people (like myself) who can struggle with attention and are a little too easily pulled into things once I'm engaged with a screen.

I try to keep my notifications groomed appropriately, but I also have many allowed through thanks to work. I can groom all I want, but a computer is always going to offer more distractions than paper.

Accountability! It can be scary, but it's also important and a driver for positive change.

I deal with all of these things as well, but have pretty much decided to not go the anonymous route, because I would rather try to build that confidence in myself and embrace the accountability that comes along with it.

That said, I still don't comment or publish much online out of this same anxiety. /shrug. It's a work in progress :)

Thank you. Today I realised, I should take responsibility of my words, and behaviour.

personally I dropped the whole thing, it's useless.

I'm going back to good old life.

> I am constantly worried by the history of how many things we historically applied historical-purposeful reasoning to, totally confident at the time that our explanations made sense – which we now know are not historical-purposeful at all.

I worry about this a lot too. We tend to make sense of the world through the stories we apply to our experience, but with unreliable memories and a desire to find a story that fits what we want to think, confirmation bias even about our own identities leads us to false conclusions.

I think the larger complaint about electron is the memory usage, not disk space usage. Go may have large binaries, but they run fast and efficient.

Exactly. Who cares about 13MB disk usage in this day and age? But RAM is still too easily exhausted on a workstation with a decent amount of multitasking going on.

Personally, it’s the slowness, not the memory use

It seems like the idea of a universal basic income would achieve much of the same long term goals, while not getting things tied up in the complications of treating the US like a business.

The problem that's trying to be solved by this is legitimate, but I don't see much value here beyond it sounding a bit clever. There are ideas out there already that aren't making headway for the same reasons this idea wouldn't.

I've seen a couple comments on emotional well-being and kindness, and I couldn't agree more. Life is about people, and when we optimize for our relationships, life is better for everyone, and everything else falls into place.

As for professional goals, I'm often too aware of the fact that new information over time causes me to change my goals, but that's a natural part of the process and I try not to resist that. Instead I just try to make sure I'm learning and growing in some way or another.

One struggle I've had along the way is balancing what I choose to learn about between what I think will make me more employable or better at my day-to-day work and what I am genuinely interested in. Trying to lean more towards the latter, it's much more rewarding and generally still pays off career-wise.