I keep a paper notebook not because it is efficient, but because it wastes my time in a very particular way. The pen skips when I write too fast, the margin fills with crossed-out sentences I decide not to rescue, and every page records how sure or unsure I was when I showed up that day. None of this scales, and none of it generalizes into advice, which is precisely the point: the notebook proves to me that I was there, thinking something that cost a little effort to hold. A clean, fluent summary of my week would be more legible and more shareable, but it would also launder away the hesitation, the bad ideas, the lopsided emphasis that marks the difference between having an experience and reporting one. What I get from the notebook isn’t polish; it’s the quiet assurance that I didn’t outsource the thinking.

Heh, great writing for those paying attention, on multiple levels.