This post marks the one year anniversary of publishing Dave’s Take. I am thankful to have started. While I have some gripes with the weekly cadence, described below, the experience has exceeded expectations.

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When you’re a child, adults seem to have this air of authority about them. In addition to their large stature, they have many years of lived experience. They establish formative rules – bedtime at 9 pm, no dessert until you’ve eaten your broccoli. You ascribe a certain degree of credibility to them because they are adults. And you generally assume they have their life put together because they are old.

Then at some point, as you mature and become an adult yourself, the shroud of authority starts to lift. You realize there are a whole bunch of completely clueless adults out there who are just doing their best to get by. This is one of the more fascinating transitions in life. You discover that age is in fact not correlated with maturity after a certain point, and you stop ascribing this higher sense of moral authority to old(er) people.  

A close friend of mine, James, recently shared with me, “adults are just doing their best with the tools they have available to them. And sometimes those tools are inadequate for life’s work”. I really liked that. It’s a nice way of accepting that even gramps can be a reprobate.

Since I started working, I’ve always taken notes in a hardcopy notebook. Real paper! It’s generally inefficient. My writing is hard to read. Once a notebook is full, I throw it in the recycling and so the content is gone forever. I’m usually jotting down short form notes or simple reminders, so interpreting what I wrote even a few months ago can be challenging or impossible. A notebook is one more thing to carry when I travel.

And despite all of this, I love it. I have tried digital notetaking at various times, most recently on the Microsoft Surface, and I find the experience is a poor substitute. The pleasure of physically writing is real.

While most of my note taking revolves around to-do lists, the single most powerful thing about physically writing is distilling my thoughts. Often, that feeling of “I have a million things I need to get done” will translate into only a few important to-do’s once it’s down in writing, making it much more approachable. If I’m trying to think my way through a complicated topic, writing all the thoughts going through my mind down on paper will have a hugely calming and clarifying effect.

A few years ago, I started keeping a notebook on my nightstand. If there are times I can’t sleep and it feels like there’s too much on my mind while in bed, jotting down a few quick notes is an easy way to download those thoughts and leave them on the page. It’s been a great aid and tool for me.