Jared Henderson in a recent ParkNotes video on Commonplace Books (cleaned up by me):

I think that people found it refreshing to just be like oh I could just do this in a notebook and there’s not like a system .. basically just a repository where I just write things down and I think there’s something about the Simplicity of the idea and then the fact that it’s not digital not on your computer it’s not on a screen .. I think that people just got sick of doing stuff on screens all the time

I know in my head that taking note digitally makes the most sense if you want to maximise the return on investment. If you would like to put everything into a hyper — organised, detail — orientated database, that’s cool and everything, but the appeal of having a notebook is the opposite.

The messiness and disorganisation is the point for me. The simplicity of scribbling (seriously, my handwriting is terrible) into a book every so often is the best feature. It is the key to enjoying the things I do and removing as much of the extraneous things as possible.