What would I do differently?
I've been using Supernote for a while now, and with everything I've learned about it, I've started wondering what I would do if I had the chance to completely start over. Not necessarily which features I would learn first or what I would set up differently, but how I would approach using it from the beginning. I actually think I would do a lot less.
I've always been fascinated by Leonardo da Vinci's notebooks. I can spend forever looking through pages of his drawings and notes because they're just all over the place. You'll have mechanical drawings sharing space with anatomy, random observations squeezed into whatever room was left on the page, sketches going in different directions, and ideas sitting next to each other that seemingly have nothing to do with one another.
There's something about that I've always loved. If you looked at those notebooks through the lens of how we talk about note-taking today, they're not exactly what you'd call organized. There's no carefully planned system separating one subject from another. He was just thinking on paper, and the notebook was there to catch it.That got me thinking about my own experience with Supernote and something I probably underestimated when I first started using it. Moving from an analog notebook to a digital notebook is actually a much bigger transition than it seems.
On the surface, it doesn't feel like it should be. You're still holding a pen. You're still writing on something that looks like a page. You can carry it around like a notebook, so naturally I think we expect ourselves to immediately use it like one.
But there's suddenly all this other stuff available to you. You have headings, keywords, links, templates, folders, Quick Access and all these different ways to organize everything you're writing. They're great tools, and they're a big part of why I enjoy using Supernote now, but when you're first starting out they can also create this weird pressure to figure out your "system." I know I fell into that.
Instead of just writing, I was thinking about where things should go. What notebook should this be in? How should I organize my files? What should my Table of Contents look like? Do I need a template for this? Should I make separate notebooks for different subjects?
I was learning how to use Supernote while at the same time trying to figure out how I was supposed to organize my entire digital life on it. Looking back, I think I was making the transition harder than it needed to be.
If I could start all over again, I think I would create one notebook and use nothing but that notebook for the first 30 days.
I would still read the manual because obviously I need to know how the thing works. 😂 But outside of that, I would intentionally ignore most of the organizational stuff for a while. I wouldn't worry about creating a Table of Contents. I wouldn't go searching for the perfect template. I wouldn't sit there trying to decide what folder everything belongs in. I'd just use it like I used to use a regular notebook.
If I had a meeting, the notes would go in there. If I had an idea for something completely unrelated five minutes later, that would go in there too. If I wanted to sketch something, I'd sketch it. Grocery list? Sure. Something I wanted to remember from a book? Throw that in there too. It wouldn't matter if any of it belonged together. Actually, I think that's kind of the point.
For those 30 days, the only habit I would really care about building is reaching for the Supernote. I'd want to get used to bringing it with me, opening it when I have an idea and writing without first stopping to think about where that idea belongs.
I think that's the part of switching from analog to digital that I underestimated the most. Before Supernote can become your perfectly organized digital notebook, it probably needs to become your **notebook** first.And there's another reason I think I'd leave that first notebook alone for 30 days. I'd want to see what happens.
After a month, I could sit down and flip through everything I'd written and probably learn more about the way I naturally take notes than I ever could from trying to design a system beforehand. Maybe I'd notice that I'm constantly writing people's names and suddenly keywords would make sense. Maybe there are certain subjects I keep coming back to and those naturally become headings. Maybe I keep flipping back to the same few pages and that's when Quick Access becomes useful.Maybe I realize I don't need half the things I thought I needed.That's when I would start organizing.The difference is that now I'd be building around something that already exists instead of trying to predict how I'm going to use the device before I've actually used it.
And that's what brings me back to da Vinci's notebooks. I don't think every page needs to have an obvious purpose when you're creating it. Sometimes you need to let things sit beside each other for a while before you understand how they're connected. Sometimes they never connect at all, and that's fine too.There's something freeing about a notebook being allowed to just be a notebook.
So if I could go back to my first day with Supernote, I'd keep it simple. One notebook, 30 days, and no pressure to have everything figured out. I'd focus on actually using it, carrying it with me, and getting comfortable reaching for it instead of a paper notebook. Once that becomes normal, then I can worry about everything else.
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