Every morning for the past 14 months or so I've sat down at my desk with a cup of coffee and spent ~20 minutes writing out a page of thoughts in my Hobonichi Techo journal with my trusty Pilot Metropolitan fountain pen. I try to write plainly and honestly about whatever pops into my head, and before I know it, I'm done.

It hasn't been super life changing, but I do enjoy doing it. Sometimes during the course of the day I'll think back about an aspiration I had that morning, and actually do something I might not have done otherwise.

About a year into this practice my hand started hurting a bit, so I've slowly trained myself to write using the muscles in my arm and shoulder rather than moving the muscles in my hand. My handwriting quality took a nose-dive in the short term, but my hand stopped hurting and I have moments now where my cursive looks nearly as good as it used to.

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pitched 4 hours ago | parent [-]

I do this too but on a laptop. It is more beneficial to use paper but I don’t want readers to think it isn’t incredibly important even without the gear. Like how good running shoes are not important to start running.

	▲	goodmythical 2 hours ago \| parent [-]
		I was honestly just thinking the same thing. Like...damn, why is OP advertising such expensive gear to people who might want to just try something? You can do exactly the same thing with a mead spiral bound and a ticonderoga pencil... Or text notes on an existing device Or audio notes on an existing device Or for the price OP is advertising, get a whole drawing tablet to plug in Or for the price OP is advertising, get a used android tablet There are both cheaper options and, to me, better options that are also cheaper as they offer search, cross linking, algorithmic analysis (what have I been writing about lately, what have I stopped writing about), and easy duplication so that I don't lose my notes. Personally, I use an obisidan vault in a cloud folder...easy duplication on any device, easy review, easy search, easy cross reference... To do what I do on with my notes with a pen and paper, I'd be spending half of my time indexing and notating rather than producing results driven by the notes...which, I guess is valid if the entire goal is spending time with your notes, but I just personally feel like I've got to get something out of the process other than staring at shit I used to think about. For instance, on paper, I'd have to underline or otherwise mark key words and maintain a live index in order to find: what's been worrying me lately, what was that dream that one night, what's my second most common topic of thought...and a million other things. Whereas in reviewing my obsidian vault all of those things are at most 30 seconds away, and I didn't have to do any work on top of writing the notes to get that functionality.