Expand Your Writing Potential with a Smart Notebook and Pen

ProfHacker 2018-04-03

[This is a guest post by Kendall Giles, an Assistant Professor of Practice in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Virginia Tech. He also teaches in VT’s online Masters of Information Technology program. His research interests include cybersecurity, machine learning, AI, and the intersection of technology and society. You can read more about him at kendallgiles.com and you can follow him on Twitter @kendallgiles.--@JBJ]

When I mentioned to my wife that I needed another notebook, she pointed to a bookshelf in my office and said I had a problem. “You’ve got an entire shelf of notebooks, some with just a few pages used. Why do you need another one?”

Why indeed. Though my writing workflow is increasingly digital, I can’t shake the excitement of opening the cover of a new notebook, smoothing my hand across the paper, and writing. With each new project I would crack open a pristine notebook, labeling the first page with date, project title, and a rough start of a few notes or comments. I dreamed of filling the pages with ideas and sketches, carefully creating an index with my own notation scheme so I would be able to find the information later.

Over time I did fill some notebooks with notes and writing, but many notebooks sat neglected after a promising start as projects were abandoned or postponed. And as I looked at the stacks of black journal covers on my bookshelf, I had to admit my wife was on to something. I knew I would never dig back through those pages.

I did get that new notebook though, the Rocketbook Everlast. It is debatable whether or not I now write better, but I at least think I write smarter because the Everlast notebook is, in a sense, the notebook evolved. When paired with the Pilot FriXion Erasable Gel Ink Pen and Rocketbook app, the pages are reusable and the app sends scans of each page to desired digital destinations.

The Everlast notebook is available in two sizes¹, Letter (8.5 inches x 11 inches, 32 pages) and Executive (6 inches x 8.8 inches, 36 pages). For portability, I chose the Executive Size. The notebook comes sealed in a pouch, and tearing open the wrapper evoked smells more of Silly Putty than the old book smell of musty vanilla. The notebook’s pages are bound with a plastic spiral and lay flat when open. The front and back covers are black; each page is numbered and has a subtle dot grid pattern (you can download a pdf version). The notebook comes with one FriXion pen–fine point (.07 mm) and black ink.

The notebook pages are made of a synthetic poly blend rather than wood pulp, thus the wafts of Silly Putty. The synthetic pages are essential for how the notebook works. The magic is that when used with the FriXion pen (and you should only use the FriXion pen with your Rocketbook Everlast notebook), you can re-use a page by simply wiping away the ink with a damp cloth. In fact, any Frixion pen, marker, or highlighter works this way with the Everlast. I was skeptical of this process, but it really does work. Meeting notes, doodles, or story idea sketches that you’ve already synced with the app or otherwise don’t want? A gentle wipe with a damp cloth restores the blank page.

If reusing the pages was the only trick in the notebook’s arsenal, it would still be worthy of consideration. However, the notebook becomes “smart” when paired with the free Rocketbook App, available for iOS and Android. At the bottom of every page is a series of icons. These icons can be assigned in the rocketbook app to various digital “destinations,” and the app currently supports Box, Dropbox, Google Drive, Evernote, iCloud, OneNote, Slack, and email. If you “mark” an icon–by drawing an X or a check mark or maybe even a big old dot–then when you scan the page with the app a digital copy of that page is sent to the destination tied to that marked icon.

For example, you could then use one icon for notes to be sent to a personal email address, a second icon for notes on a class you are taking to be sent to Google Drive, a third icon for research paper ideas to be sent to a folder in Dropbox, and a fourth icon for ideas to think about later to be sent to Evernote. So not only are the notebook pages reusable, but you also can send a copy of your pages to a desired destination in the digital ether.

In practice, I found that the whole notebook process worked better than I had expected, though there were a few issues. The pen writes legibly and reliably, but the ink can have a slow start and skip before it flows smoothly. The ink takes about 15 seconds to dry, meaning it can smear if you aren’t careful—this especially can be an issue for left-handed writers if you drag your palm across the page as you write. Once dry, the ink doesn’t smear or smudge and looks good on the page. I found the pen’s fine point (.07 mm) to be a little thick for the page’s grid size, to my taste, but the extra fine point (.05 mm) of the pens from the 7-pack with assorted color inks, also made by Pilot, was perfect.

The gel ink in these pens is thermo-sensitive, which not only gives the pen its name but means the ink is erased due to the friction heat caused by the pen’s eraser. While the eraser won’t leave behind rubber residue or damage the page like, say, a typical graphite pencil eraser, the heat-sensitive nature of the ink means you should not leave the pens or notebook in a hot environment such as your car–the ink can disappear. In fact, the ink turns clear at 140^∘F, and Pilot says the ink color is restored when cooled to at least 14^∘F. Also, be careful when writing with the pen on documents other than the notebook—I wouldn’t use the pen to sign anything financial or legal, for example.

In my tests, the app’s scanning feature accurately captured the ink on the page and marking an icon resulted in the pdf copy correctly being sent to the desired destination. However, if my notes strayed too closely near an icon then the app recognied that as a “mark” and dutifully sent a copy to that icon’s linked destination, so avoid writing near the icons unless you mean to mark them.

The notebook inside cover has spaces where you can write down the linked destination for each icon in case you need a reminder (Did the Diamond Icon mean the pdf copy would be sent to Folder X in Dropbox or email address Y?). And in case you are curious, the warning not to microwave the notebook, also on the inside cover, is a caution for users of Rocketbook’s original Kickstarter product, the Wave notebook, which erased text when microwaved instead of when cleaned with a damp cloth, as with the Everlast.

As for cleaning the Everlast notebook pages, wiping with a damp cloth works as advertised, though it may take a few tries before you get the right amount of dampness in your cloth—too little water does not clean completely and too much water makes a mess. Also, you may want another cloth handy to dry each page before writing on the page or closing the notebook.

An added bonus, Rocketbook also makes available other pdf page designs you can print out and use without the notebook, such as graph, lined, and sheet music pages.

So, all in all, I’m very happy with the Rocketbook Everlast Notebook and Pilot FriXion Pen. The notebook pages are reusable, the ink is erasable, and the app makes getting digital copies of my notes sent to desired digital destinations a painless process. Most importantly, my wife is happy as well, since I no longer clutter the shelves with half-used notebooks.

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Have you tried an Everlast notebook, or another smart notebook? Let us know in the comments about your experience!