A Notebook to Reclaim Your Mind
The analog tool for escaping passive scrolling and thinking clearly
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🏷️ Categories: Attention, Learning, Writing.
We live trapped in a storm of information.
The average person consumes more than 35 GB of information every day (Bohn & Short, 2012). Many spend their days consuming other people’s thoughts, endlessly scrolling through artificial, highly edited content optimized solely to retain users and feed the algorithm behind it. We have been transformed into passive consumers of meaningless digital noise.
As a result, original thinking is dying.
Your ability to determine who you are, what you value, and where you’re going is crumbling in front of a screen that dictates what you should think about based on an algorithm, constantly shifting your focus between trends and 30-second viral videos.
This needs to stop.
Keeping a notebook is one of the few tools left that allows you to slow down an increasingly accelerated world, process chaos at a manageable scale, and structure your own mind before the algorithm does it for you.
This is the essential guide to using a physical notebook and what to put inside it.
The Myth of the Perfect Record
Many people begin their notebooks with the wrong mindset.
They believe they must create a flawless record of their lives, imitating what they see online: neat, aesthetic notebooks that, of course, have all been edited to fit the perfect photo. That approach turns writing into a performance rather than genuine thinking. Instead of exploring your mind, you end up imitating the very thing we’re trying to escape.
This is something writer Joan Didion warned about years ago:
“The notebook that is meant for public consumption is a structural device for collecting a series of witty observations. We are talking about something private, fragments of the mind too brief to be used elsewhere, an indiscriminate and erratic collection whose meaning exists only for its creator.”
— Joan Didion, On Keeping a Notebook
Real writing is messy and far less polished than what you see online.
It is the intentional act of sitting down with your thoughts and forcing them into a physical form through poorly written passages, half-finished diagrams, and crossed-out ideas everywhere. In doing so, you create a space where your past cannot become malleable, preserving your lessons, mistakes, and ideas.
Everything is safe there, on paper, in your hands.
The Power of the Tangible in a Digital Economy
Total digitalization is stripping away part of our humanity.
When everything is pixels and interactions through avatars, life feels more superficial, social relationships become less satisfying (Boyd & Ellison, 2007), and our minds struggle to grasp concepts as deeply (Carr, 2010).
Everything has become fast and shallow.
A physical notebook creates friction and remains tangible. You can fill it with fragments of everyday life, turning writing into a time capsule where everything valuable to you can coexist in one place, far removed from digital noise.
A sketch you made on a napkin with friends at a restaurant.
A sticky note containing an idea from a meeting.
A hand-drawn concept map.
Clippings, photos, labels...
Everything has a place in this space for thinking, remembering, and creating.
The Mental Refuge
Building an analog thinking system requires only a minimal set of tools. You do not need complex software or another productivity app to begin. You simply need to reconnect with analog slowness.
Here are the essentials you should carry in your backpack:
A Notebook: Any notebook in a size that works for you.
A4: 21 cm × 29.7 cm (8.3” × 11.7”): The standard sheet-of-paper size. Difficult to carry by hand but excellent in a backpack. Ideal for drawing, attaching photos, clippings, and all kinds of materials alongside your writing.
A5: 14.8 cm × 21 cm (5.8” × 8.3”): Half the size of an A4. Compact and portable. The most popular format. Think of a planner. It offers the perfect balance between portability and writing space.
A6: 10.5 cm × 14.8 cm (4.1” × 5.8”): Small and practical, roughly the size of a pocket notepad or smartphone. Ideal if you want something that fits easily into a bag or pocket. Perfect for carrying everywhere.
Make this choice a conscious experience. Visit a bookstore and touch the paper. Find a canvas that suits your needs. Choose a format and don’t be afraid to experiment with others. It was never meant to be a permanent decision.
A Pen or Pencil: Keep it simple. Use your favorite basic pen and nothing more. Over time, you may upgrade to a higher-quality writing instrument or experiment with fountain pens, but everything has its time. The obsession with doing everything perfectly is what prevents 99% of people from doing anything at all. Don’t fall into that trap.
Sticky Notes or Page Tabs: A good notebook houses multiple interests and intellectual obsessions. You need a simple navigation system. Use colored tabs to label different “lines of thought” (such as Philosophy, Marketing, or Psychology).
A Highlighter: Optional if you already use sticky notes. But if you prefer building your color-coding system directly into the text, that’s perfectly valid.
It’s a simple way to highlight fundamental principles and key ideas worth revisiting when writing your next essay or project.
Beyond this, most accessories are unnecessary and only add complexity.
Setting Up Your Mental Refuge
Before writing your first line, you must structure the space where your mind will operate. Clarity in your environment encourages clarity in your thinking.
Define Your Navigation System: Decide whether you will use sticky notes or a highlighter to distinguish between your intellectual obsessions. Then leave the first pages blank to gradually build a living index of everything you record. This opening space is mental infrastructure in formation, capable of adapting as your curiosity evolves. The number of pages you reserve depends on your notebook size (A4, A5, or A6).
As a general guideline, 5–10 pages are usually sufficient. The goal is to leave enough room for the index to expand naturally as your mental refuge grows.
Divide the Mental Territory: Decide how you will organize your notebook.
Will you create fixed sections for each topic from the beginning, like a traditional subject notebook? Or will you write freely and categorize information as you go, allowing ideas to grow organically and fractally?
There is no wrong answer. Only the approach that best fits the rhythm of your thinking and your lifestyle.
That’s it.
The analysis is over.
It’s time to stop passive consumption and start using your notebook.
What to Capture in Your Mental Refuge
If your mind doesn’t know where to begin, start by collecting intellectual raw material without excessive filtering.
Research: Notes extracted from books, lectures, magazines, conversations, observations, videos, podcasts, quotes, and thoughts. Whether consumed intentionally or discovered while aimlessly scrolling, these become the foundation for synthesizing your interests and making sense of the world around you.
References: A record of sources you’ve already consulted and others you plan to explore in order to investigate your interests more deeply.
Action Lists: An Ivy Lee–style list containing your six most important tasks, or an inventory of your medium- and long-term goals.
Outlines, Images, Clippings, Mind Maps, and Drawings: Include anything that is not pure text but still supports your thinking, preserves memories, or fuels creativity for future projects.
It’s Essential
Carry your notebook everywhere.
Do not leave it on your desk or gathering dust in a corner. Put it in your backpack, bag, or pocket, and always keep your pen or pencil nearby. If you’re waiting in line, sitting in a café, riding public transportation, or enjoying a quiet moment while everyone else reaches for their phones to get another hit of dopamine, open your notebook. Read previous notes. Write about your recent days, your thoughts, and your future actions.
Reclaim your attention.
Processing reality on your own terms is the first step toward becoming yourself again.
— Álvaro
Want to learn more? Here are 3 related ideas to go deeper:
Thinking Is Uncomfortable, That’s Why We Don’t Do It Anymore
Autopilot: What ChatGPT Is Doing to Your Mind (and You Don’t Notice)
✍️ Your turn: How much of the information you consume every day is actually processed into thoughts rather than simply accumulating as mental noise?
💭 Quote of the day: “The point of keeping a notebook has never been to maintain an accurate record of what I did or thought. It is to remember what it was like to be me. That is always the point.” — Joan Didion, On Keeping a Notebook
See you next time! 👋
References 📚
Bohn, R. E., y Short, J. E. (2012). Measuring Consumer Information. International Journal Of Communication, 6, 980-1000. URL
Boyd, D., & Ellison, N. B. (2007). Social Network Sites: Definition, History, and Scholarship. Journal Of Computer-Mediated Communication, 13(1), 210-230. URL
Carr, N. (2010). The Shallows: What The Internet Is Doing To Our Brains.
Didion, J. (2017). On Keeping a Notebook URL
Try Morning Pages from Julia Cameron’s The Artist’s Way. Spiral notebook with pilot pen. Write 3 pages every morning first thing. Been doing it for years.
Ben May
Benmadonic@gmail.com
Lissa brought me here. I've been feeling the urge to go more analogue recently and appreciate this. I think carrying a notebook and noticing things that I normally pass by will be a lovely adventure.