Expert Insights: The Supernote as a Valuable Tool for Managing ADHD

By Jeff Rice

ADHD Coach and author of the book "Your Future ADHD Self"

Happy Supernote A5 X and Manta user

Writing can be an invaluable tool for people with ADHD. An almost universal challenge for people with ADHD is having constant mental clutter. This can either be experienced as a relentless flood of thoughts and ideas, or as an overwhelming collection of tasks, projects, and requests that continually pull at the edges of our consciousness so that we don’t forget them. All of these thoughts, ideas, tasks, projects, and requests fight for space in our working memory - the important area of memory needed for us to dynamically plan and problem solve. Multiple studies have demonstrated that working memory is impaired or in individuals with ADHD compared to the general population¹. Having too much on your mind can overload a critical memory system that is already working with what is effectively a handicap. Writing things down is part of the solution.

By writing things down, we effectively tell our ADHD brains, “I’ve got this, you don’t have to keep reminding me of it.” And by doing this consistently, we can reduce the volume of traffic in and out of working memory, freeing it up for all the planning, thinking, and problem solving it is needed for. This form of writing is what I refer to as brain dumping, and there are two forms of it.

¹ Gu, Chao, Zhong-Xu Liu, Rosemary Tannock, and Steven Woltering. "Neural processing of working memory in adults with ADHD in a visuospatial change detection task with distractors." PeerJ 6 (2018): e5601.

The first is full brain dumps. During a full brain dump, you write down (by hand) everything that is on your mind. I typically set a 10 minute timer and as quickly as possible, note all the thoughts, ideas, tasks, etc. that are currently running around in my brain. I do this by hand, rather dictating, or by typing on my phone or computer, because studies have shown that writing by hand tends to make the information more memorable². My own personal experience bears this out. Doing a full brain dump when you wake up in the middle of the night with a million things on your mind (which is a common occurrence for many people with ADHD) can make it much easier to get back to sleep.

The second form of brain dumping is what I call incremental brain dumping. This is where you develop a habit of writing down all the random thoughts, ideas, tasks, etc. that pop into your brain as soon as they appear. This habit of capturing the thoughts, rather than feeling compelled to remember them or act on them can be an effective tool to staying focused and on task, particularly when you are working at a desk or on your computer.

Both of these forms of brain dumps require that you have a place in which to write all this stuff down. And for the brain dumps to be effective, that place has to be somewhere that your brain can rely on. If, for example, you do incremental brain dumps on sticky notes, or a scrap of paper that happens to be sitting on your desk amid a cluttered ocean of other sticky notes and scraps of paper, your brain will not trust that you will be able to come back to the captured thought later on. It might be lost in the clutter, misplaced, or even accidentally thrown out.

² Mueller, Pam A., and Daniel M. Oppenheimer. "The pen is mightier than the keyboard: Advantages of longhand over laptop note taking." Psychological science 25, no. 6 (2014): 1159-1168.

This brings up another challenge with doing and maintaining brain dumps. If you follow this practice consistently, you will accumulate a lot of notes. And if you can’t reliably get back to the thoughts and ideas you capture, your brain will have a hard time letting go of the things you right down. At a conscious or sub-conscious level, it will likely feel the need to try to remember things in spite of the fact that you have written them down. There have been countless times in the past where I have written down a great idea, or details about how I was going to solve a problem, then when the time came to put that information to use, I couldn’t find it. I either couldn’t recall which notebook I wrote it in, or I spent hours scouring notebooks to find the note. This was further complicated by the fact that in addition to doing frequent brain dumps, in my work as an ADHD coach and business owner, I take a lot of other notes.

In an effort to solve my brain dumping, and general note taking challenges, I have tried using various note taking apps on my computer. Computer based note taking apps did have the advantage over notebooks in that the resulting notes were searchable. However, with much of my professional career spent working on computers, having to switch from whatever app I was using for my job, to another app to take a quick brain dump note was disruptive to my flow. I also found that the notes I typed into my computer did not seem to “stick”. I would forget them about as quickly as I typed them. With every computer-based note taking app I tried, I would ultimately always return to using physical notebooks.

That brings up why I believe a digital notebook called Supernote, which I have enjoyed using, can solve this problem.

The Supernote is the perfect marriage of computer based notebooks and physical paper notebooks. And as a person with ADHD, it really is the perfect solution for me.

First of all, it is a pen based note taking system. And as such, I get the benefits of handwriting. The notes I take seem to “stick” in my brain better. Writing by hand slows my mile-a-minute ADHD brain down so that I contemplate the information more as I capture it. Seeing the handwriting creates a better visual connection to the information for me compared to typed text. But with that said, one of the cool things about the Supernote is that you are not just limited to handwriting. The built in handwriting recognition system gives you the option of creating Word documents on the Manta as well - writing by hand and then having the device translate your handwriting into typed text. My experience with both the A5 X and the Manta (A5 X2) has been that the handwriting recognition is outstanding. I rarely have to correct it.

For a couple of years I used the Supernote A5 X. And while the writing “feel” of taking notes on the A5 X was not exactly like writing on paper, it only took me a couple of days to become perfectly comfortable with it. With the introduction of the FeelWrite 2 soft recovery soft film surface on the Supernote Manta that I use now, that writing experience has improved significantly. Writing on the Manta feels like writing with a roller-ball pen. There is enough of a feeling of “resistance” to the writing that it feels much more like writing on paper than on the A5 X, or on other e-notebooks I have tried. My Manta came with the LAMY safari vista EMR pen, whose ceramic nib and balanced feel has made the writing experience that much better. I have always been a bit of a pen snob, and one criticism I have had with other pen-based systems is that the pens frequently feel cheap and an afterthought. Not so with Supernote.

The other huge benefit I have gotten from the Manta is the way it has organized and consolidated my notes. As a person with ADHD, my history with note taking has been littered (literally) with dozens of notebooks, each of which would end up with scattered, disorganized notes from many sources. My shelves and desk would be covered with notebooks - many of which would be purchased and never used - creating clutter and confusion. Finding a specific note from a particular meeting would mean a stressful search through several notebooks. I hate to think about how much time this wasted for me over my lifetime.

The operating system on the Supernote is clearly organized around notebooks and notes. You can create folders to organize your notebooks according to what makes sense for you: topics, clients, projects, etc. And you can create as many notebooks as you want for each area. Sometimes this much customization leads people with ADHD to create too many levels of structure such that things get lost - a common occurrence when people with ADHD create physical filing systems. But Supernote provides the ability to embed keywords and headers into your notes to make it easy to find things. You can also create links between notes that add further functionality into the information you capture. By doing all this under one roof, I have been able to retire dozens of physical notebooks. Now the Supernote Manta is the only notebook on my desk. Everything I need is there. There is no more searching and shuffling through multiple notebooks.

Because the Supernote is all about notes, it also reduces distractions. I have tried note taking on the iPad, for example. And while there is an attraction to multifunction devices, having accessibility to games, browsers, and other distractions on a note taking device is not a good thing for a person with ADHD. There are currently two non-note taking apps you can load on your Supernote, the Kindle e-reader app, and a drawing app (Atelier). While some might see this as a limitation, to me and to many people with ADHD, I see this as a huge feature. The last thing I need is more distractions! The purpose and function of my Supernote Manta is clear, and when I am using it there is nothing to detract from the task at hand: taking notes.

One final thing that I really, really like about the Manta goes to a general philosophy with the Supernote devices: there are no subscriptions associated with it! In a time when more and more applications and devices are going to subscription models, Ratta is creating devices that are based on a one-time payment model. You pay for the device and you get full functionality forever! Not only that, but Supernote devices are created with expandability and upgradeability in mind. Along with free OS upgrades, and a publicly published software roadmap, both the Manta and the Nomad have replaceable batteries. The Manta even has an upgradable motherboard! No other digital notetaker can make those claims.

The Supernote Manta has become a critical part of my daily workflow as an ADHD coach and as a person with ADHD myself, it is a critical part of managing my mental and physical clutter. There are few devices I can endorse so wholeheartedly for people with ADHD.