Best Notebook Ever

I have always been a big note taker. In meetings, on calls, while reading, while planning and while working through a problem. For most of my working life that meant a paper diary. Over the years I have filled a shelf full of diaries.

Paper was great for writing and bad at everything that came after. I would know I had written something good down about a particular conversation or topic. I could roughly remember when. But over the years I mostly lost access to it. Last year I switched to a reMarkable.

It’s an e-ink tablet that does one thing: you write on it with a pen, the way you would in a notebook.

The biggest change is that my old notes are now actually accessible. And I can search my handwriting. That sounds like a small feature. It isn’t. It’s the difference between keeping notes and being able to use them.

The obvious question, and plenty of people have asked me, is why not an iPad. An iPad can do all of this and a lot more. The “a lot more” is the problem. When I open an iPad to write, I am one swipe away from email, WhatsApp, the news and YouTube. Even when I don’t open them, I know they’re there, and some part of my head is waiting for the next notification.

The reMarkable has no app store, no browser, no social media. Nothing pings. When I pick it up there’s a blank page and nothing else to do but think.

Writing by hand is slower than typing, and the slowness helps. I can’t take down a meeting word for word, so I have to decide what matters while it’s happening. When I’m stuck on a problem, I open a fresh page and draw boxes and arrows until it comes apart. I never managed that on a laptop with twelve tabs open beside it.

If you’re the kind of person who reaches for a pen when something needs working out, it’s the best notebook I’ve owned.