How I use Rocketbook for Notetaking & Brainstorming

I, like so many, utilize physical notetaking to assist my memory and learn new things.  I like to freestyle brainstorm on paper.  This is common.  Notes, especially notebooks, do not match my goal of minimalism, and it also makes it harder to compile information from multiple sources, as the information is not searchable.

After many years of post-TBI planners, I now have a whole bookshelf of information. I wanted to find one specific note from a conference, and I have yet to locate it, even though my mind can picture where exactly on the page it was and what that page’s form was. I have yet to locate it after several days of trying and ultimately giving up.

Hence, I started moving to different styles of notetaking.  I’ve been using Notion and Rocketbook to fill my needs.  I like Notion as the planner function since it’s always on my phone, and Rocketbook serves as my brain dump and active working out of plans.  I can then scan them to digital.

Introduction To Rocketbook

I’ve now been using Rocketbook for about a year.  The idea is simple.  There’s an index of icons that you assign to specific locations on the cloud, such as Google Drive folders, Dropbox folders, email, and more.  You do this in the app for your phone that you use to scan the pages. 

This is a physical notebook and a Friction pen.  I started with the cheapest ruled pages, and it’s mostly worked well.  There have been a few cases that I could have used grid paper, but it’s been okay.

So it works like a normal notebook.  NOTE: The pen has an eraser, but I found out that it doesn’t write back over what you erase very well, so if you can wipe it off with a wet cloth, that seems to work better.

The entire page can be wiped clean with a wet cloth and reused.  So this notebook works really well for all the to-do lists we’re making that are short-term or brainstorming or even to write the random stuff from phone calls down.

Converting Rocketbook to Digital Copies

I’m not a big fan of sending files to email, but that’s available, and for meeting notes, that could be very helpful.  My sister was a secretary of a club and wrote meeting notes on her Rocketbook notebook. It will also do a convert to text function that works pretty well when there aren’t doodles.

I back up most files to Google Drive.  I created a Rocketbook Notes folder in there that the files go to, and I can move them accordingly from there.  Sometimes it’s business-related, so those go to the business Google Drive into a Notes folder as well, which I reorganize accordingly.  Currently, I do have it convert everything to a text version as well, which seems to be always on or always off, so I default it on.

Drawbacks to Rocketbook

The first drawback I came across is that you can’t just add pages to the spiral notebook.  I would love to get some grid pages and add them, but there are versions that will allow this, but not that cheap, basic one.  In the summer, I discovered that the pens stop working when they’ve been in a hot car for too long.  I threw it in the freezer when I got home,e and months later, it still doesn’t work very well.  It ruined a brand-new pen.  You can get refills at least.

The second drawback is that it cuts the page down.  So even though the notebook page is an 8.5×11″ page, the scan cuts off the entire bottom of the page where the QR code and icons are, so don’t keep writing down there.

Accessories:

One solution to scan other pages is to use beacons.  I don’t have any, so I haven’t tried that yet.  Instead, I received an acrylic board to lay over and scan pages from Etsy for Christmas from my sister.  This provided the added benefit of some rigidity to a way-too-floppy notebook.

Here’s the link to this product.  I was able to hand-thread the acrylic page in without heating the coils, but the maker of this product has instructions to do this if you want.

They also have four colors of pens.  I have not tried anything but the black due to price.  I’m not really used to using different colors so the cost was more than I was willing to pay just to try it out.  They are an option if you always use colored pens.  I believe the colors are black, red, blue, and green.

There are types of notebooks that have planner pages, which might have been a better fit for what I’m used it, but I’m liking being able to access those on the cloud through Notion so I haven’t pushed for that.  I was a big fan of Brendon Burchard’s High Performance Planner, and they are expensive, but it’s really helped me with interpersonal communication and attitude.  I hope to find a reasonable way to recreate that through Notion, but I haven’t figured that out yet.  I believe there’s a digital version through his Growth Day platform, but it’s too expensive to just use the planner.

Benefits:

This pen and paper have a good feel to them, though the pen is not as smooth as you could get.  The pages are reusable.  The convert to text feature is very good, at least in English and with my handwriting.

It’s been working pretty well for brainstorming.  I can take a finished list and create a Notion Project out of it and then wipe the page clean.  It works great for to-do lists that you can just wipe away when done as well.

The main benefit for me is that I can work how I need to learn and organize my thoughts, while still being digital.  This is the only physical paper I need (except graph paper…still need to solve that).

Recommendations:

I don’t think they have yet developed the perfect system.  I love the spiral-bound feature for laying the notebook flat.  It needs more structure.  This thing is flimsier than the nice cardboard backs to notebooks.  It won’t work so well if you live in places that stay warm all year round, so just remember to keep the pens on your person; the notebook seems to be fine in the heat.

If you want an all-in solution and you’re used to portfolio-style notebooks, I’d go for their Pro notebook full-sized so you can add different page types as needed.  Start with the set that’s as close as you can to what you want.  Then add pages as needed.  For some, like my sister, who don’t carry a big bag everywhere they go, the smaller executive version can be a good fit.  Right now, the notebooks is working pretty well for me and it’s the cheapest entry. 

They also sell a notebook that is only graph paper.  If you’re used to writing on graph paper, then this will work fine for you.  For most people, the graph blocks are too small for it to appropriately be their main notebook so I wouldn’t recommend this for most people.

Improvements:

I’d add the acrylic frame to any spiral notebook as it just helps to add firmness, and you don’t have to carry around the beacons.  Recognize that the reflective surface may cause you trouble with glare while uploading, so you may have to try a few times.

If you get the Pro version, which has clip-in pages, are much easier to add and exchange, I’d suggest getting a portfolio to hold them and buying the beacons to store in there.  There are always pages that you will want to include or upload into your files that aren’t in the notebook.  I haven’t tried embedding them into the same file yet, but if that’s possible, then even better.

Check out more on how I organize my computer files for my method of managing the digital clutter and organizing the notes. You can also see how I use Rocketbook to organize my tax documents.