One “Flaw” Of Physical Notebooks (Which Is Actually An Advantage)

Well, I want to talk briefly about one of the so-called “flaws” of physical notebooks and how it is actually an advantage. I am, of course, talking about the limited number of pages. Yes, technically speaking, digital documents do have a finite length – limited by the amount of storage on your computer, memory stick, website etc….

But, given that about 620,000 words of basic plain text (eg: “.txt”) can take up only about eight and a half megabytes, it’s basically unlimited in functional terms these days. Even with more bloated modern document formats – or a happy medium, like rich-text format (“.rtf”) documents – text doesn’t exactly take up a huge amount of room on a computer compared to pictures, videos, games etc…. Even with the latest fancy document format from a large company, you’d have to write billions – or perhaps trillions – of words before you even came close to maybe filling up even a fraction of a modern hard drive or SSD.

And, yes, this sounds like a massive advantage and a massive advancement over old-fashioned pen and paper. And, in some ways, it totally is. It’s like an “infinite words” cheat code of some sort. Still, although its definitely useful in practical terms, it means that you miss out on something that you get with physical notebooks. Namely noting the passage of time and feeling a sense of achievement.

Back in last December, I somehow managed to finish the third volumes of both my physical gratitude journal and my physical fan art sketchbook within about a day of each other. Unlike endless lists of digital documents and scanned images, this had something of an “end of an era” feeling to it. These two books, which had been a daily fixture of my life for about eight months and four months respectively, had come to an end. Like a travelling companion and I had parted ways after a journey.

Contained in both books were memories of that time – written descriptions of every day or paintings of stuff I enjoyed at the time – and they had a defined beginning and ending. If I need to look back on a very specific four or eight month window of my past, then I can just pick up one of these books and open it. It also gives me a feeling of achievement too – like I have an actual physical thing to show for all of this time.

And, of course, when I start the next volume of each notebook, I get the feeling of a new beginning as well – I get to decide what I keep the same and what I change. It’s like adding chapters to your life, and it’s something that you only really get with physical notebooks.

Not only that, there’s also something of a rhythm and progression to using notebooks – the way that you’re eager to fill up some pages at the beginning, the way that the notebook just seems “ordinary” and “endless” when you’re in the middle of it and the weird feeling of tension when you near the end, nervously counting pages to work out how many more days of it are left. Wondering whether you should slow down and savour your remaining time with the notebook, or speed up and get started on the next one as soon as possible.

There’s also the fact that notebooks have continuity in the way that digital documents don’t really have. Yes, if you’ve got one document which you add to regularly, then you’ll experience some of this. But, most of the time, people tend to write lots of shorter, separate documents. Like the draft of this article, which is a single “.rtf” document file which isn’t connected to anything else.

On the other hand, with notebooks, there’s more of a linear progression and continuity to them. Things you’ve written on different days are connected by virtue of being in the same notebook. And I haven’t even talked about the intimacy and physicality of putting pen to paper either, something you don’t really get when you type on a keyboard (even if the results are more legible).

Yes, none of this is “efficient” or “practical”, but it is much more organic and satisfying in emotional terms. As your life progresses, you have different notebooks which travel with you for a time before concluding. Each one is a snapshot of a particular time. They’re long enough for you to get familiar with them, but short enough that you’ll also get used to changing notebook every few weeks or months. And, although nothing more can be added to a finished notebook, it is still there as proof that your time was not wasted. It is a thing that you made, something unique to you.

Finishing a notebook is a bittersweet experience, it’s the end of one era – but the beginning of another. And you don’t really get this with folders of digital documents or whatever. Yes, the limited length of a notebook might be a “flaw” in objective terms – but in subjective, emotional terms, it’s part of what makes them such meaningful things to use.

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Anyway, I hope that this was interesting 🙂