When I was in high school I had a four color pen I used for making notes, a habit I carried through to college.

I’d taken cognitive psychology classes and saw that human perception and reaction times could be impacted by color (Stroop test as a data point), so I wanted a little bit of extra advantage in my note taking. Also, it helped me stay more engaged with topics I was taking in.

The problem with the four color pens is they were generally low quality, would blotch and break, which was frustrating, so I stopped using them after college.

As I travelled more for work, I realized I actually needed a good pen. In meetings I needed notes and it wasn’t always convenient or appropriate to whip out a laptop.

I looked at a wide range of different pens, including fancy ones that wouldn’t let you call them pens and were “writing instruments”. I was in Geneva when I discovered the LAMY brand at a store on a side street.

I’ve gotten a few LAMY pens at different points, but my favorite one to date is the four color LAMY 2000 with black, blue, green and red color cartridges.

It’s the same size as a nice pen, but has this really cool extra feature that I love. When I’m making notes, I can underline and emphasize and circle bits in different colors, and I love it.

The one draw back unfortunately is that it can be a little tricky to get the color you want on the first try. Unlike my high school pens that had one actuator per color, the LAMY 2000 uses the orientation of the pen when you hit the button on the back to get the right color out–so if you want red, you have to rotate until you see the thin red band at the tip of the pen, let gravity oriented the internal mechanisms, then hit the button to get the red pen tip out.

So if you’re in a rush and care about pen color, use another pen. But if you have some time and want elevated, color coded notes, this is the pen I’d use.