- 11 Dec, 2025 *
I love hand written notes; a poem, a grocery list, a random thought, a to-do, I love it all. There’s something about taking these kinds of notes with a physical pen and paper that is just hard to beat. For one I simply remember things more clearly if I take the time to write them down on paper vs a computer, but I also just love the experience of pen being on paper. I love obsessing over all the fun stationary items in the world, especially notebooks and pens.
Over time I’ve switched from one note …
- 11 Dec, 2025 *
I love hand written notes; a poem, a grocery list, a random thought, a to-do, I love it all. There’s something about taking these kinds of notes with a physical pen and paper that is just hard to beat. For one I simply remember things more clearly if I take the time to write them down on paper vs a computer, but I also just love the experience of pen being on paper. I love obsessing over all the fun stationary items in the world, especially notebooks and pens.
Over time I’ve switched from one note taking method to another. A lot of it depended on my current context, but for the most part I have stuck with a modified bullet journal method. It’s been a simple yet effective approach for taking random notes and accomplishing tasks, but sometimes it felt lacking. For example, I took a vacation about a month ago where I was off work and didn’t have any home chores. In that instance I wasn’t really writing anything down, and I kinda missed that experience. I might take a random thought down every now and then, but I was missing the journaling aspect of note taking.
This changed quickly after I found I Tried Journaling like a Spanish Fighter Pilot . Of course while the title is catchy, it shared a pretty unique method that I had not seen before. The basic idea is to write down short brief updates of what you did at that time of day, generally one sentence or less. I later learned that this is close to a method called interstitial note taking. With the idea planted in my head I started using it over Thanksgiving week and I loved it.
With work starting up again I found a really nice balance of combining this interstitial method with bullet journaling that ends up looking something like this:
x Write up blog post
• Buy Christmas gifts
○ Meeting with accountant @ 1300
0800 - Breakfast with the family
0900 - Worked on PR#80
1100 - Standup
1200 - Lunch
1300 - Meeting
- Now that I know more about taxes for single member LLCs I can better track expenses
1400 - More work
1600 - Movie night and pizza with the kids
• Do discovery work around changesets
In the end I get a flow that makes it easy for me to take quick notes and track / process what’s happening in the moment.
Of course I don’t there is one correct way to do note taking as every one is different and will have preferences. If anything I hope this sparked some ideas for your own system as I’m glad I discovered that initial video.
If you haven’t done any note taking, I would highly encourage you to start! Get a pack of Field Notes with a basic pen and keep it with you wherever you go; you might be surprised what you’ll find.