TimothyOne

Where I draw and paint and write poems and essays. And collect texts from my reading, like a crow collects tinfoil.

A Paper Notebook With Hyperlinks

 

The main reason we are drawn to words written on the internet is how they link to other words far away. The ability to click on a highlighted word and zip off to a connected word or article – this efficiency is most of the magic. “Hyperlinks”. Which power “hypertext”.

But if there were a hyperlink ability in your paper notebook, if you could link one note in your notebook to another note on another page, you’d have most of the value of digital text. You can. Each note just needs a unique “address”, and then you can use these unique addresses to connect notes, by simply jotting an address in the margin, pointing away to the connected note. And you can connect them back and forth to each other. Think of each note as having, what is called in cyberworld, an IP address.


I keep saying “note”. A note is a chunk of your handwritten text in any length from a single line to a page-length essay. Your mind is the definer of what size chunk of text is a single integrated thought. Each of your notes needs its own number, its own unique identifier.


Here’s a simple system of paper hyperlinks:

  1. Number each page. Some notebooks come with page numbers pre-printed. I like to write my own, in the lower OUTSIDE corner. Outside corner, so you can see the page numbers quickly as you flip through with your thumb.
  2. Number each note on a page, starting with “1” at the top, and so on. Write these note numbers on the OUTSIDE margin of the page. It will help you, visually, to draw a line near the outside of the page, vertically from top to bottom. Put all the numbers outside that line, so the hyperlink section stays visually distinct.
    Start at 1 on each page. Some pages might have only 1, other pages could have a dozen numbered notes.
  3. Now that note has an address: 32.5, let’s say. This note is on page 35, number 5. No other writing in your notebook can be confused with this one.
  4. Write connected IP addresses on the outer margin next to the note. And take the second it takes to write the connection both ways, that is, if I write “2.2” next to note 1.1, I write “1.1” next to note 2.2.


Simple, right? But, notice, now, that your notebook NEEDS NO FURTHER ORGANIZATION METHOD. And sequence doesn’t matter; just add notes as you think of them, below the last one (I draw horizontal lines between them, to help my eye.) This is important because most notebook keepers eventually fatigue by needing to organize types of notes or by the mental paralysis of “where do I put this one”? Just put it next.


What about “capture”, the question of how hard is it to add a quick note? Capture is quick and simple. Most notebooks come with a ribbon. Your ribbon stays on the last page, the one with blank pages, and you open instantly to where the next note goes.

Ease of capture matters, so your system must be mobile. The smartphone gave us all this, but digitally. Many writers and researchers are struggling to escape the tyranny of the smartphone and get back to the peace of analog. There’s an entire “zettelkasten” subculture online formed around a method of knowledge management invented a century or so ago. That original system used paper notecards which were filed in drawers. But using notecards is only great for someone who is an academic or somehow rooted in a physical office where the file cabinets can grow. But most of us are mobile, and the paper notebook is mobile. Just get a size that is easy to carry, yet large enough that handwriting a page of purple prose doesn’t feel cramped. And, importantly, find paper you like and a pen you like. The tactile sensation of handwriting matters. When you find the right combo you’ll be addicted to that feeling of writing by hand. For life.


I’ve said “hypertext” – of course you can’t just click on your handwritten reference and go there automatically, like on your computer; you have to actually flip your pages to the connected address. But in practice this does not feel like much friction. Slowing down the tiny amount it takes to scan your own thoughts in your own hand on your own pages actually feels like thoughtfulness. And you’ll find that flipping through your own notes to see the note you need often gives a surprise discovery. Serendipity is worth the friction.

Connect notes by jotting a note address in the margin, as I described. But you can also connect whole pages to each other. This is useful when the entire page is one integrated chunk of writing and it follows on another whole page of your integrated writing. Leave a blank margin at the bottom of each page for jotting in “breadcrumbs”, a pathway back (or forward) to each connected page. So, once you write in a breadcrumb connection, you can quickly flip to each page that connects.

Now you have hyperlink areas along the right margin and along the bottom. Note to note links along the side, and page to page links along the bottom.


This is a visual system. So the more you create small visual cues for yourself the the quicker it is to see and navigate, and the closer you approach all the advantage of digital text.

I do several things in my notebook to give me quick visual cues about pages. These may help you, so I’ll list them, but remember there’s an optimum level of complexity for your mind, and too complicated means failure.

  1. Colors. I do have different types of notes all in one notebook. Many notebook people have different notebooks for different types of content, but I hate the burden of having to think “which notebook is this, and where did I put it?” That much analysis defeats me. So I keep one notebook in which I write: book notes; my thoughts; my first draft of essays, or an outline, or “write X”; scripture notes; Notice I DO NOT use my notebook as a daily organizer or to-do list or habit tracker. Those all lie within other notebook subcultures, like the “bullet journal” community. This isn’t that.
    Too many colors become a burden. Just have a few, for the major categories of what you do in your notebook.
    Also, instead of the usual highlighter markers, use wax colored pencils. The pencils are cheaper, don’t dry out, don’t bleed through the paper, and the pencils allow a quick light scribble over top your writing to add the color without distracting.
    For me,
    • All hyperlinks are orange
    • All book notes, or collected quotes from others (“commonplace book”) are green.
    • All scripture notes are blue
    • My writing that’s a rough draft of a creative piece is in violet.
    • My general thinking is yellow.
    • A square box, empty, but colored in red, is something to look up later.
  2. Typographical cues.
    • I put all hyperlink pointers in a square box.
    • Bottom of the page, the “breadcrumb” section – if there several pages listed there, use arrows between the boxes to show the progression of your work. So at a glance you can see where the topic started and where it left off last before the page you’re on.
    • Top of page: I write a few key words as a topical summary of what’s on the page. These are color coded as well – this lets me see quickly as I thumb through which pages contain book notes, for example.
    • At the beginning of my notebook I’ll reserve some pages for a table of contents. One line per page, duplicating the top of page summary. These lines are also color coded, so I can scan the entire notebook looking for, say, all the book notes (in my case, every green line).
    • The inside edge of pages are reserved for the page numbers of the book I’m taking notes on. Again, draw a line from top to bottom. Keeping the page numbers on the inside margin (page numbers are not hyperlinks) and my notebook hyperlinks in the outside margin keeps them visually far away from each other.

Occasionally a series of notes takes on a theme and I want a quicker list of every note that makes up that writing. So I’ll make that mini-table of contents its own note, right on the page where it occurs – I’ll just head it and list all the note addresses, maybe with a short description of each note. It’s your notebook, don;t be afraid to make up practices that you enjoy.


This system is actually quite simple in practice. I only carry with me a small plastic pencil case which has my favorite pen and the few colored pencils.


But pictures are worth many words. Here you can see several of my actual pages. These are from many different stages of evolution of my own notebook system. Over time all the elements described here will appear. Notice the pages themselves add a letter, which is the notebook itself. So “A.47” is notebook A, page 47. And a note on that page would be “A.47.1”.


There’s a magic to writing by hand. Many thinkers and writers love keeping a notebook, an actual paper notebook, rather than the many “notetaking” or organizing solutions of the digital world. You can find a hundred essays online on how writing notes by hand improves memory. But beyond any utility is the simple pleasure of making on the blank page your own words in your own unique hand.


Handwriting also elicits thinking on the page. Aside from the sensory magic of writing and the aid to memory is the something that happens when you are slowed down a bit, pen above the page, thinking deeper and slower about the next phrase. These are all real qualities that seem to die in the efficiency of cyberspace.