I was once taking a real analysis class and there was a very gifted student in my class. She pulled out her notebook one day at a study session and I noticed it was kind of unusual - the pages were very large, and made of a somewhat thicker material, with a slightly rougher texture. Ink also seems to set onto its surface slightly nicer, and it doesn't really bleed through onto the other side either.
She explained to me that it was actually a kind of notebook specifically for artists, and that she much preferred it to the normal plain paper notebooks you typically get.
I bought one myself, and I had to agree with her - it was a much 'nicer' experience to write on it - diagrams could be way less cramped, branch out without hitting the edges. The tactile feedback due to the thickness of the paper was also nice - in a way, it felt like the "mechanical keyboard" of paper notebooks.
Never switched back again after that, and many people I work with have found it curious and nice to work with too.
Part of me feels that there may be more than just a gimmick to this. In the way that it's been shown that pen and paper help for understanding versus typing, I wonder if "the niceness of the pen and paper experience" would have an additional tangible positive effect, too
This is famously how Maryam Mirzakhani worked as well. Huge thick A2 sheets where she doodled and did computations; she said she disliked the cramped style of normal notebooks.
She explained to me that it was actually a kind of notebook specifically for artists, and that she much preferred it to the normal plain paper notebooks you typically get.
I bought one myself, and I had to agree with her - it was a much 'nicer' experience to write on it - diagrams could be way less cramped, branch out without hitting the edges. The tactile feedback due to the thickness of the paper was also nice - in a way, it felt like the "mechanical keyboard" of paper notebooks.
Never switched back again after that, and many people I work with have found it curious and nice to work with too.
Part of me feels that there may be more than just a gimmick to this. In the way that it's been shown that pen and paper help for understanding versus typing, I wonder if "the niceness of the pen and paper experience" would have an additional tangible positive effect, too