I feel more creative sitting with paper and a pencil in hand than with hands on keyboard.

So, I find myself logically drawn to digital kanban boards and various views or projections, like:

• calendars
• gantt charters
• graph diagrams
• mind maps

And simultaneously, being drawn to back to freehand, writing on paper.

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Digital Tools for Organization

So, I've been exploring with tools like Figma, Obsidian, and more recently, TLDraw.

Figma and TLDraw allow for typing, and a type of freehand (that is not yet nearly as gratifying as pen or pencil on paper).

Freehand Tools for Generation

• Pen or pencil on paper
• Stylus on a digital canvas

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Finding balance in a modern writing toolset

Ultimately, digital provides more dynamic affordances after-the-fact.

Paper and pencil provide a high number of affordances (a lot of freedom), to start. A digital canvas can do some of the same, plus more: infinite canvas, tools, metaprogramming elements and layout.

There is a cost to engaging the digital affordances too.

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OCR (optical character recognition) has existed for years and the software libraries and tooling continue to improve and become easier to acquire, deploy, and use.

So, I've been exploring ways to continue to use paper as an interface, and lower-the-cost to digitizing the work, so that useful information (if not the whole image) become integrated into my digital ecosystem; where my information lives.

Where I build, maintain, and search, curate, and refine.