One of the results of practicing digital minimalism, is that I have more time to think. The problem is, I’m finding that thinking is hard without being able to write my thoughts down.

Where to write it down, is not as important as being able to write it down.

Processing thoughts and ideas, while trying to keep everything in my brain, is hard. I could spend a good amount of time thinking about something, then my brain will switch gears and think about something else, and I lose most of what I thought about prior to the new idea popping up.

That's because we can only hold on to at most, four to seven items in our head at any time. Which means our brains are not designed to think through or remember multiple things at once. It also means that if we try to keep everything in our head, we will be taxing our brain. It is not an efficient way to think. And so, I have to write my thoughts down.

When I say notebooks, I don't mean those lightweight laptops that the tech industry calls notebook. I mean real paper notebooks. These paper notebooks are distraction free.

If you've been following this online journal, you probably already know that I keep a Bullet Journal. I mean I only ever mention it every other post or so. I also have a Work Journal. I also have a number of Field Notes notebooks lying around. I use these Field Notes notebooks in a variety of ways. One is a Food Journal. Another is Baby Caleb's milk, temperature, wet/dirty diaper, health tracker. Another is a backup satellite Bullet Journal. Another is a catch-all notebook for whatever needs to be written down.

For a week or two before I started my digital de-clutter phase, I was trying to figure out which pocket notebooks to get. The idea being that they will take the place of my smartphone if I needed to take notes. The idea on top of that was to reduce my smartphone usage even more; by not using it to take notes. And by not using my smartphone to take notes, I won't even need to pull it out of my pocket or drawer or wherever it is at, thereby lessening the chance it will distract me during the day. When I finally tried it out in the real world, the results surprised me.