I remember buying my first Moleskine notebook in college. It was my first exposure to "fashionable office supplies", a foreign concept to me growing up. It was a super nice object. In fact it was so nice, I didn't want to use it to just take notes in class, because what a waste. I also didn't want to use it to just scribble personal notes and todo lists in, because what a waste. In the end, I never wrote anything in that notebook at all: what a waste.
Now I tend to view fashionable office supplies as productivity fetish items. It's easy to geek out on that stuff, but does a better notebook make me more productive? Seems to make me less productive, if history is an indicator.
Yeah, I will occasionally find myself reading reviews of immaculately designed mechanical pencils, or minutely engineered Japanese scissors. But I try not to lose sight of the advantages cheap, lousy stuff has too: disposable, easy to replace, low barrier to use. These qualities are also valuable.
Same feeling here. I have a collection of Lord of The Rings limited edition Moleskin notebooks [1] and they make me feel like I'm writing into some compendium of time.
I find it to be worth it, considering that even premium office supplies aren't that expensive compared to other life expenses.
I have been a sucker for nice mechanical pencils for well over 2 decades and gone through tons of books or just bunch of papers stapled together, nothing fancy.
Been meaning to get into fountain pens, any good recommendations please?
> Now I tend to view fashionable office supplies as productivity fetish items. It's easy to geek out on that stuff, but does a better notebook make me more productive? Seems to make me less productive, if history is an indicator.
I agree with you 95%. This comment is really just wanting to explain that 5%.
I have found that a little extra money goes a long way, and that a lot of money doesn't ever go far enough.
My bullet journal "daily caries" are:
* Apica CD 5mm grid notebook - $14.00 (one per year)
* Pilot Metropolitan fountain pen - $17.00 (one time purchase)
* Disposable black refills for the fountain pen - $5.00 per 20 (maybe twice a year)
In the realm of fancy pens/notebooks these are pretty cheap, but I really enjoy them. I feel like they are at a very nice sweet spot where they're cheap enough that I could lose them, but not "too good to use".
Maybe I'm lying to myself, but I feel like I journal more often because of how much I like them. It's just nice to use nice things.
I used to never find my pencil and continue to have to go and fetch a new one at the office. Then I bought a 200 usd Lamy 2000 and now I always have a good pen at hands.
I used to have a pile of coffee mugs piling up at my desk at work. Then I bought an expensive designer coffee mug and only used that one, suddenly my work area is clean.
It's about knowing how you can trick yourself to without any effort increasing your well being. I've flaws, sometimes I can buy then away by tricking myself.
Hahaha, it's good to read this and see its not just me. I also have an unused Moleskine notebook and numerous other 'Nice' looking notebooks that I never write in as I feel it would just be a waste.
I just go for a cheap and cheerful one that I am happy to write any old nonsense in
Same, I write fiction and years ago when I was starting out I bought the fancy Moleskine and Field Notes notebooks, among others. Those have never had more than a few pages filled in. I have however filled 11-12 A4 notebooks of various lengths with longhand writing that cost ~$2-5 each. Same with pens, I never want to use fancy pens or notebooks, a 5 pack of basic pens do the job just fine (though I do now have a favorite, UB-120 uni-ball micro rollerball pens).
It's fun to read about this fancy and nicely designed stuff as you say, but the less fussiness around writing for me, the better.
I think the biggest advantage to buying my own stuff is standardization. Nothing drives me crazier than a bunch of schwag notebooks of different shapes and sizes all jumbled in a drawer.
> In the end, I never wrote anything in that notebook at all: what a waste.
Years ago I took some bookbinding workshops. The guy running the program ended up making tons of books for the lessons which he ended up giving away. One of the thing he did was to scribble on the first page so it wasn’t pristine, so that the recipients wouldn’t want to use it for being “too nice”.
Book-binding... I have been wanting to do this so I could bind my own books, mostly for fun and "wow" factor, if nothing else. But it either got pushed out due to something (seemingly) more important/immediate or I didn't go that extra mile!
Watched several videos on the inter-tubes, but nothing clicked... Didn't ever explore the option of bookbinding-workshop!! Care to share some details about this workshop (location, what to look for, pitfalls, etc.)!!
I use moleskine notebooks all the time, stop fixating on price and just use them when you feel inspired. I used to be like the other dude in the thread who says they never want to write in them but just do it lol. $20 is $20
I prefer the larger sized, thinner pages books for this reason, I can care less and still take loads of notes
Eh, depends on the product. Moleskin Cahier journals are truly pedestrian-looking things, but they have decent, unlined paper and a good size and shape for quick, project-specific notes on your desk. And they handle wear better than small, cheap notebooks. (Aside from those hard-covered composition books, which is something I've tried in the past. And those have spine/glue problems.)
While the Field Notes limited editions are blatantly collectibles, most are similar enough to the standard items to just use. Get one of the fancy leather covers if you worry about damaging them, then stick it in your pocket when you need to take a note. (Given most are the same price as their standard notebooks, it's really more of a fun little decoration for the everyday tool.)
And a Fisher AG7 is just handy to clip to the notebook in your pocket, so you always have a normal-feeling ballpoint pen that will always work. It's the only pen I've managed to hold onto long enough to get refills.
I once bought a Moleskine notebook, it was so precious i never used it. I then gave it to my niece, she didn't use it either, last time I heard she gave to somebody else too.
Long story short you buy these things as jewellery and not as tools.
Plain old notebook available in any nearby store works for me. And yeah any pen works too.
I have bought a nice leather bound notebook, the one you sit down with a cup of coffee to write something important. I never use it.
I instead just got myself a cheap detective-style notepad I can keep in my pocket to write down all the crap the comes to mind, everywhere I am, even while standing up. That's exactly what I need.
The trick is to buy a nice leather sleeve for a standard size of notebook, then buy cheaper inserts.
You might find that you enjoy the quality of paper of other notebooks, but it gets you over that "this notebook is too nice for my random thought"-block.
Cheap and disposable: short hand pads from a high street chain of cheap stationery shops in the UK (The Works). One pound for 150 leaves with top spiral. Pages stuck up on wall for todos &c, discarded when complete. Also a ream of A4 photocopying paper which I use on a clipboard for diagrams sketches and mind maps and drafts.
More permanent: generic A5 sketchbooks from artist materials shops. Typically 80 leaves of 100g/m^2 off white plain paper and board covers with sewn signature bindings. Around a fiver each.
Recently discovered somewhere in the middle: Muji 'Pocketnote' A5 plain notebooks with paper covers and a lot of leaves (over 100). Flexible, thin shiny pages (no good for sharpies/gel/ink) but cheapish around three pounds and a nice feel.
None of these are so expensive to become precious.
Once you get over the "don't use them" part, they're exquisite to use. Pens, I tend to agree that I like being cheap on them so I can lose them and replace easily. Notebooks, I don't lose because the value is the data.
Agree with you one hundred percent. I was more concerned about the way i use the fashionable office supplies than what my intention in buying them was in the first place.
> "They aren’t a record of my thinking process. They are my thinking process."
This exactly! I think with pen and notebook. I also think without pen and notebook, such as during my driving and running. Without notebooks, I often find myself think in circles and having hard time to recall what I just realized a short moment ago. With pen and notebook, it is more relaxed. Often I don't revisit my notebooks. So the notebooks are mainly serving as a thinking aids than to serve as a database. Replacing them with digital sounds nice, but in reality it is just a distraction. Having the record to go back to is a short term benefit; the few pages of notes that I do end up revisit often quickly become part of paper or presentations, or tweets and moments, or more often, prototype code. I have accumulated a drawer of used notebooks. They only have sentimental values. And they have more sentimental values in paper forms than in digital forms.
The notes i took in college were almost never looked at again after I took them... they were more of a method to retain the information. I also found that the classes where I was using a laptop to take notes were the ones that I retained the least from. the notes are the process.
One of my professors said his retention method when he was a student was to take light, quick notes during lectures, but then at home the same night, write out their contents in complete sentences in a separate notebook. It sounded like a good system for someone (not me) who is organized enough to keep up with it.
I looked at the OP article and it seems too fetishistic for my tastes. What happened to ordinary yellow legal pads, or spiral bound school notebooks? For daily casual jottings, I used to use paperbound pocket notebooks, but they kept falling apart with use. Now I just carry a folded up piece of 8.5"x11" printer paper and transcribe any content needing preservation to a computer when I get around to it. The rest is ephemeral and I can throw away the paper when it gets full. Lately I read on Stephen Wolfram's blog that he does the same thing I do. I don't know if that's a good sign or a bad one.
b) as soon as possible after the class, refine those lecture notes by combining it with references from the textbook and other readings or handouts.
c) visit your instructor during office hours to clear up things you weren't able to during (b)
Unfortunately the advice didn't come with any time management tips so I was almost never able to follow it. The worst of it was revisiting my unrefined notes 3-4 days after I took them. They often seemed to read like gibberish, especially if I had not been studying the reading material in the meantime.
If anything, computer notes distracted me from the lecture. But writing out summaries from slides after the lecture was invaluable, even if I never looked at those summaries again.
In college my process was take written notes in class, then studying consisted of transferring those notes to my computer by typing them in/expanding where needed. Never looked at them after that.
I used Moleskine for several years. Each last a year apiece. Now the Miquelrius softbound: similar size, but 300 sheets for 600 pages.
Entries are numbered sequentially. Some are a single sentence, others are a code snippet; still others a paragraph.
"Log pages" go between chunks of consecutive pages. After getting full, these are taped at the edge with shipping tape, to flip to them more easily. The log page gets its own number and a luxurious two pages.
As entries are added, I flip back to the nearest log page and add <number> plus a single title sentence.
I rarely title entries themselves.
As pages start to separate from the binding, duct tape keeps them stuck to the cover.
There's so many pages; you can try all kinds of customization. I've been trying to combine Zettelkasten with GTD, but just going crazy with "how to start" versus "just do the thing."
Sharpies bleed through. Pages are graph style as blue squares, but I'm used to it.
My fidget tool is flipping through with my thumb--but only the older pages. Keep the new pages pristine, because skin oil will mess with the ink!
I aim to use a wax sheet, like what stickers use, on the proceeding page where my hand would rest, to mitigate the issue.
In all, I've reached the limit of notebooks, and from here it's automating awk or something, and really making a computer archive of this stuff.
I always promise myself to keep a good index, but I never go back to the notes. Maybe occasional entries, which will be rewritten into a new notebook--but I'm glad to have written something for my future, sentimental self.
A slip box is still possible--but instead of references to other works, they are your longer-form notes in the notebook. Then it's third-order storage, in a sense. A compromise to needing more space than an index card, but the desire for discoverable brevity.
Yup. In the context of thinking as a sort of "digestion" - I can think only when writing or walking / running. I can hardly do any thinking just thinking.
Some years ago, I was on the margins of notebook enthusiasm, but never went all-in, because I quickly discovered that while I really enjoyed the physicality of notebooks, I came to dislike their pre-digital limitations. I still prefer the free-form capability to mix text and drawing and color and scribbles that pen or pencil on paper offers, but I then scan the finished pages into the computer.
As a result, my favorite notebook is now a pad of A4 paper with a good weight, ruled, and perforated so I can easily detach pages and feed them through the scanner.
I have a similar digitization system, however in some cases typing is just easier.
For example when taking meeting notes that will become minutes, I’d much rather type. My notes from a meeting for distribution aren’t my own individual thoughts so this is primarily transcription. Writing is far too slow to keep up with discussion and it needs to be digitized or typed up later. There would be benefit to learning shorthand but I’d still have the digitization hurdle.
If it’s an online call another more modern option is recording the meeting and adding automatic transcription, but I haven’t seen this done often.
For scanning notes with the iPhone I saw a kickstarter for a notebook that is the same aspect ratio as the iPhone screen and has a black border. I thought about making my own throwaway version of this by just cutting down A4 paper and putting a couple paper clips through card stock.
I switch between field notes for every day notetaking because they can fit in a pocket and are basically disposable but high quality and are allowed in areas where electronics cannot go, and my remarkable for places where electronics are allowed or for more long form that syncs to my computer / Obsidian.
Exactly so. I love the idea of scribbling in a leather-bound gilt edge notebook, like a modern Thucydides. I can't find anything later without flipping through, and I hear people keep index in the notebook! Ain't nobody got time for that. I throw all my notes into a text file, check them into git and grep away! For impromptu notes I still use my National Brand Computational Notebook with grid ruled green sheets, roommy real estate, thick paper, page number, $12 each.
Two small tips that got my GTD system going on paper:
- Don't worry too much about having a perfect written system, I always was worrying too much about having the perfect system and this meant that I ended up not writing anything down because I hadn't found the perfect place to put it. Don't be afraid of re-writing things, think of re-writing as re-thinking, rather than as having made a mistake that you are correcting. Your system is an organism that evolves with as you keep thinking through the things.
- Nested lists are a nightmare to look at, and add too much context that you don't want. Nested lists are ok for project planning, brainstorming, and thinking. But keep nested lists away from any page that you want to look at often. Better to have 10 separated pages with 10 lists than 1 page with 10 sub-sections. In general try to keep the system as dumbed down as possible, because the point of having a written system is that you can look at it when you don't feel like thinking and the system provides very basic steps for your head to do (like pick one thing to do from here, or remind me of all the people I am waiting for to come back to me with answers, ...)
Thank you for sharing that. I've been testing paper systems with inspiration from GTD for the past few months. I agree that it was much easier when I let go of fearing rewriting. But so far I do find it difficult to not feel overwhelmed with the great number of pages that I've accumulated and often duplicating certain topics when I forgot I already had a page for something. I also wish for better indexing habits to find what I'm looking for. I've contemplated setting a limit on the number pages I accumulate and then when reached entering them into a persistent digital storage (markdown files synced across devices) and then starting over again on paper.
Overall I keep wishing for the notebook to fix my productivity problems and I'm slowly admitting that it is actually something in my internal orientation that needs to shift.
What type of information do you find yourself losing track of? The GTD sections shouldn't be that big even when tracking a huge amount of projects, like if you had for example 100 projects and 100 next actions that you are actively working on. Each of those shouldn't take much space, maybe 1-2 lines on a notebook for each one project and each task, clear outcomes for projects, and a simple actions for next actions, about 20 pages overall? And that's for a huge amount of projects, I've never gotten anywhere near that in active projects, maybe 50-80 projects at times. Those 2 categories, plus a calendar, and a "waiting for" list, are the sections you may be looking at often on your day to day work when following GTD.
Everything else about your "active" projects goes a bit out of scope of what is defined by GTD and should go to "project reference material", like project planning, TODO lists, project structure, notes from meetings, sketches, ... those are kept in a much messier form by me, but I feel like as long as the big picture and hard commitments are clear on the GTD part, it's ok if sometimes I have to "dive down" into a specific project mess to clarify some things. It's just not ok if those 2 are mixed and make looking at your day-to-day GTD sections a nightmare.
I keep my paper GTD system on an A5 ring binder, something like a Filofax but a cheaper brand, with 1 plastic divider for each 4 (projects, next actions, waiting for, someday/maybe) of the 5 GTD hard-categories [1], with each section having about 1-5 pages. The calendar goes to Google Calendar just because it's convenient how it auto-adds meeting invitations.
For project reference material I keep an alphabetic index [2] on the same A5 binder for small projects, some dedicated folders or notebooks if the projects are huge, or a directory with files if the projects have some digital material, images, or links, that can't be easily tracked on paper. Those will look very different for each different project so don't really have much of a "system" for it, aside from keeping the hard-landscape tracked on GTD.
So pleased to see the Leuchtturm 1917 dotted grid at the top of this list. It's been my go-to notebook for the last few years. It comes with some nice stickers for labeling so that you can find past notebooks on the shelf. Lots of colors are easily available on Amazon.
The Leuchtturm is my go-to as well for the last few years. I’m also glad they are very easy to source.
I like to have mine around for jotting ideas down and drawing diagrams. I don’t have a system or anything. I think I used to be far more prescriptive about what I put in it but now it’s just a playground for my ideas and that suits me really. I carry around everywhere so it’s ready to be used.
I enjoy taking notes. A colleague sent me this link, so I'll post here to amuse him.
My favorite notebook is the National Brand "Engineering and Science Notebook" - which has become my go-to. [0]
I like to diagram, so having the reverse page be graph paper makes it easier for me. I also prefer spiral bound since they tend to hold up better in travel, but that's purely subjective.
The article doesn't mention Moleskine once, yet it seems several comments are about that brand. What's going on there?
Notebooks should be about utility first. I have a Staples brand of 3.5 x 5.5" notepads that come in 3-packs. They are almost exactly passport-sized in terms of height, width and thickness, so they fit perfectly in a pocket, to the point where it's almost invisible. Once I'm done with them, I can store them in an index card box.
THAT for me has been the key to taking paper notes consistently. Create a situation where the friction to start writing on a pad in my pocket is lower than pulling out your phone and getting distracted by a lock screen notification before you can even open the notepad app.
>The article doesn't mention Moleskine once, yet it seems several comments are about that brand. What's going on there?
The reason the comments mention Moleskine is that its the first "fancy" brand of paper that the majority of people have heard of. Its also actually quite terrible in terms of quality to the point of being almost unusable with fountain pens and also with a lot of standard pens you might find in an office supply section of a department store.
Think of them like mechanical keyboard with beautifully engraved keycaps. Will they make you better programmer, probably not. Are they minimal requirement, definitely not. Will people appreciate it and enjoy using it, yes for some. Will people find them wasteful, yes for some.
"Beauty, Art, Aesthetics, Appeal, Pleasing, Sexy" serve purpose which are beyond utilitarian but human.
If lot of people are praising something, probably because they liked it and wanted to share about it. If you can afford it, you can choose to give it a try and make an opinion and decision for yourself.
It combines the versatility of using your own paper, like a three-hole-bunch binder, but with the reliability and compactness of a wirebound notebook. Choose whatever paper you like, print out your desired grid system, reorder pages, add tabs, etc. and still have the same notebook.
When you need to archive pages, you can remove them from the notebook and throw them in a scanner.
I'd say the initial cost of the notebook and punch is steep, but not if you're comparing to $20 hardbound notebooks like Tomoe River or Moleskine.
Apparently, paper has enough "structural stiffness" or whatever (don't know the detailed physics), that it won't pull "away" or "up" from the discs by itself. Forcing a page out can be done for sure, so you need to be aware of this and put the paper in/out of the discs with a special kind of gesture/movement, that bends the paper instead of tearing it. Still, both the static forces and each in/out gesture do put a bit of stress on the paper, so you tend to prefer a slightly thicker kind of paper for this than in typical notebooks. Common xero/printer paper with 80g/m2 is decent enough for me, although if really needed, thinner paper can also work, but it will be much more flimsy and prone to falling out. Still, if some of your pages get tired around the holes, you can do an "emergency repair" by taping them over with e.g. washi tape, and re-punching the holes. I found the repair procedure imperfect for a number of reasons (esp. that I can't seem able to keep the page from warping when I apply the tape), but still better than letting the pages fall out, so I only use it as a last resort.
What I found even more interesting, is that the technology was invented quite long ago - I think I read that it happened even before the 2nd World War, though the earliest concrete date I can find now is "before 1948" (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disc-binding and https://atoma.be/en/the-atoma-quality/). IIUC it's patented by the company founded by the original creators, https://atoma.be. But apparently it's been since licensed (?) to some other companies, and/or the patent has expired. Notably and fortunately, most of the current producers stay compatible with the original system (the general dimensions, positions, and distances of the holes are the same), so you can exchange the punches, discs, pages, and other accessories. That said, as shown in the link above, there are slight variations in the shape, which results in more/less friction when turning the pages depending on the exact shape of the hole in the page vs. the exact shape of the disc's cross-section. Also, weirdly to me, each of the subsequent companies tries to sound like they're the one and only creators/"innovators" of this technology, while (usually) following the
Anyway, there's some more info you can gather from teh Internets and youtube, and there's some small community on reddit: https://old.reddit.com/r/Discbound/
I don't recommend buying their refills. The benefit of the system is to buy your own paper stock and print out your preferred line/grid system, and punch it yourself.
Readit News
Now I tend to view fashionable office supplies as productivity fetish items. It's easy to geek out on that stuff, but does a better notebook make me more productive? Seems to make me less productive, if history is an indicator.
Yeah, I will occasionally find myself reading reviews of immaculately designed mechanical pencils, or minutely engineered Japanese scissors. But I try not to lose sight of the advantages cheap, lousy stuff has too: disposable, easy to replace, low barrier to use. These qualities are also valuable.
It makes me feel like a freakin' wizard to pull them out and write in them. It's great. Bonus wizard points for using a nice fountain pen.
I find it to be worth it, considering that even premium office supplies aren't that expensive compared to other life expenses.
[1] https://amzn.to/3F1qdaG
You must be young. If I used something like that at work, the young yahoos would laugh me out of the building.
I agree with you 95%. This comment is really just wanting to explain that 5%.
I have found that a little extra money goes a long way, and that a lot of money doesn't ever go far enough.
My bullet journal "daily caries" are:
* Apica CD 5mm grid notebook - $14.00 (one per year)
* Pilot Metropolitan fountain pen - $17.00 (one time purchase)
* Disposable black refills for the fountain pen - $5.00 per 20 (maybe twice a year)
In the realm of fancy pens/notebooks these are pretty cheap, but I really enjoy them. I feel like they are at a very nice sweet spot where they're cheap enough that I could lose them, but not "too good to use".
Maybe I'm lying to myself, but I feel like I journal more often because of how much I like them. It's just nice to use nice things.
I used to have a pile of coffee mugs piling up at my desk at work. Then I bought an expensive designer coffee mug and only used that one, suddenly my work area is clean.
It's about knowing how you can trick yourself to without any effort increasing your well being. I've flaws, sometimes I can buy then away by tricking myself.
I just go for a cheap and cheerful one that I am happy to write any old nonsense in
It's fun to read about this fancy and nicely designed stuff as you say, but the less fussiness around writing for me, the better.
I now use free vendor notebooks from events and random pens. And a £2 flip notebook for daily to-dos.
Years ago I took some bookbinding workshops. The guy running the program ended up making tons of books for the lessons which he ended up giving away. One of the thing he did was to scribble on the first page so it wasn’t pristine, so that the recipients wouldn’t want to use it for being “too nice”.
I prefer the larger sized, thinner pages books for this reason, I can care less and still take loads of notes
While the Field Notes limited editions are blatantly collectibles, most are similar enough to the standard items to just use. Get one of the fancy leather covers if you worry about damaging them, then stick it in your pocket when you need to take a note. (Given most are the same price as their standard notebooks, it's really more of a fun little decoration for the everyday tool.)
And a Fisher AG7 is just handy to clip to the notebook in your pocket, so you always have a normal-feeling ballpoint pen that will always work. It's the only pen I've managed to hold onto long enough to get refills.
Long story short you buy these things as jewellery and not as tools.
Plain old notebook available in any nearby store works for me. And yeah any pen works too.
I instead just got myself a cheap detective-style notepad I can keep in my pocket to write down all the crap the comes to mind, everywhere I am, even while standing up. That's exactly what I need.
You might find that you enjoy the quality of paper of other notebooks, but it gets you over that "this notebook is too nice for my random thought"-block.
More permanent: generic A5 sketchbooks from artist materials shops. Typically 80 leaves of 100g/m^2 off white plain paper and board covers with sewn signature bindings. Around a fiver each.
Recently discovered somewhere in the middle: Muji 'Pocketnote' A5 plain notebooks with paper covers and a lot of leaves (over 100). Flexible, thin shiny pages (no good for sharpies/gel/ink) but cheapish around three pounds and a nice feel.
None of these are so expensive to become precious.
The choice of notebook impacts your productivity. As you yourself admit.
The notebook that works best for someone depends on the person. Your reaction to Moleskine notebooks is particular to you.
"Better" is what is better for the individual.
This exactly! I think with pen and notebook. I also think without pen and notebook, such as during my driving and running. Without notebooks, I often find myself think in circles and having hard time to recall what I just realized a short moment ago. With pen and notebook, it is more relaxed. Often I don't revisit my notebooks. So the notebooks are mainly serving as a thinking aids than to serve as a database. Replacing them with digital sounds nice, but in reality it is just a distraction. Having the record to go back to is a short term benefit; the few pages of notes that I do end up revisit often quickly become part of paper or presentations, or tweets and moments, or more often, prototype code. I have accumulated a drawer of used notebooks. They only have sentimental values. And they have more sentimental values in paper forms than in digital forms.
PS: my current favorite notebook is this one https://www.amazon.com/Universal-Sugarcane-Notebook-College-... A hard cover and thick ring has become a necessity for me.
I looked at the OP article and it seems too fetishistic for my tastes. What happened to ordinary yellow legal pads, or spiral bound school notebooks? For daily casual jottings, I used to use paperbound pocket notebooks, but they kept falling apart with use. Now I just carry a folded up piece of 8.5"x11" printer paper and transcribe any content needing preservation to a computer when I get around to it. The rest is ephemeral and I can throw away the paper when it gets full. Lately I read on Stephen Wolfram's blog that he does the same thing I do. I don't know if that's a good sign or a bad one.
a) take lecture notes in class
b) as soon as possible after the class, refine those lecture notes by combining it with references from the textbook and other readings or handouts.
c) visit your instructor during office hours to clear up things you weren't able to during (b)
Unfortunately the advice didn't come with any time management tips so I was almost never able to follow it. The worst of it was revisiting my unrefined notes 3-4 days after I took them. They often seemed to read like gibberish, especially if I had not been studying the reading material in the meantime.
If anything, computer notes distracted me from the lecture. But writing out summaries from slides after the lecture was invaluable, even if I never looked at those summaries again.
Entries are numbered sequentially. Some are a single sentence, others are a code snippet; still others a paragraph.
"Log pages" go between chunks of consecutive pages. After getting full, these are taped at the edge with shipping tape, to flip to them more easily. The log page gets its own number and a luxurious two pages.
As entries are added, I flip back to the nearest log page and add <number> plus a single title sentence.
I rarely title entries themselves.
As pages start to separate from the binding, duct tape keeps them stuck to the cover.
There's so many pages; you can try all kinds of customization. I've been trying to combine Zettelkasten with GTD, but just going crazy with "how to start" versus "just do the thing."
Sharpies bleed through. Pages are graph style as blue squares, but I'm used to it.
My fidget tool is flipping through with my thumb--but only the older pages. Keep the new pages pristine, because skin oil will mess with the ink!
I aim to use a wax sheet, like what stickers use, on the proceeding page where my hand would rest, to mitigate the issue.
In all, I've reached the limit of notebooks, and from here it's automating awk or something, and really making a computer archive of this stuff.
I always promise myself to keep a good index, but I never go back to the notes. Maybe occasional entries, which will be rewritten into a new notebook--but I'm glad to have written something for my future, sentimental self.
A slip box is still possible--but instead of references to other works, they are your longer-form notes in the notebook. Then it's third-order storage, in a sense. A compromise to needing more space than an index card, but the desire for discoverable brevity.
However I don't understand, can you explain what the log page does?
As a result, my favorite notebook is now a pad of A4 paper with a good weight, ruled, and perforated so I can easily detach pages and feed them through the scanner.
Content warning for the following paragraph.
I then destroy the originals.
For example when taking meeting notes that will become minutes, I’d much rather type. My notes from a meeting for distribution aren’t my own individual thoughts so this is primarily transcription. Writing is far too slow to keep up with discussion and it needs to be digitized or typed up later. There would be benefit to learning shorthand but I’d still have the digitization hurdle.
If it’s an online call another more modern option is recording the meeting and adding automatic transcription, but I haven’t seen this done often.
For scanning notes with the iPhone I saw a kickstarter for a notebook that is the same aspect ratio as the iPhone screen and has a black border. I thought about making my own throwaway version of this by just cutting down A4 paper and putting a couple paper clips through card stock.
Exactly so. I love the idea of scribbling in a leather-bound gilt edge notebook, like a modern Thucydides. I can't find anything later without flipping through, and I hear people keep index in the notebook! Ain't nobody got time for that. I throw all my notes into a text file, check them into git and grep away! For impromptu notes I still use my National Brand Computational Notebook with grid ruled green sheets, roommy real estate, thick paper, page number, $12 each.
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- Don't worry too much about having a perfect written system, I always was worrying too much about having the perfect system and this meant that I ended up not writing anything down because I hadn't found the perfect place to put it. Don't be afraid of re-writing things, think of re-writing as re-thinking, rather than as having made a mistake that you are correcting. Your system is an organism that evolves with as you keep thinking through the things.
- Nested lists are a nightmare to look at, and add too much context that you don't want. Nested lists are ok for project planning, brainstorming, and thinking. But keep nested lists away from any page that you want to look at often. Better to have 10 separated pages with 10 lists than 1 page with 10 sub-sections. In general try to keep the system as dumbed down as possible, because the point of having a written system is that you can look at it when you don't feel like thinking and the system provides very basic steps for your head to do (like pick one thing to do from here, or remind me of all the people I am waiting for to come back to me with answers, ...)
Overall I keep wishing for the notebook to fix my productivity problems and I'm slowly admitting that it is actually something in my internal orientation that needs to shift.
Everything else about your "active" projects goes a bit out of scope of what is defined by GTD and should go to "project reference material", like project planning, TODO lists, project structure, notes from meetings, sketches, ... those are kept in a much messier form by me, but I feel like as long as the big picture and hard commitments are clear on the GTD part, it's ok if sometimes I have to "dive down" into a specific project mess to clarify some things. It's just not ok if those 2 are mixed and make looking at your day-to-day GTD sections a nightmare.
I keep my paper GTD system on an A5 ring binder, something like a Filofax but a cheaper brand, with 1 plastic divider for each 4 (projects, next actions, waiting for, someday/maybe) of the 5 GTD hard-categories [1], with each section having about 1-5 pages. The calendar goes to Google Calendar just because it's convenient how it auto-adds meeting invitations.
For project reference material I keep an alphabetic index [2] on the same A5 binder for small projects, some dedicated folders or notebooks if the projects are huge, or a directory with files if the projects have some digital material, images, or links, that can't be easily tracked on paper. Those will look very different for each different project so don't really have much of a "system" for it, aside from keeping the hard-landscape tracked on GTD.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Getting_Things_Done#/media/Fil...
[2] https://appelboom.com/filofax-refill-personal-cream-alphabet...
I wrap my latest notebook in a Coal Creek leather cover to look all fancy (and hold my phone and pen). https://www.coalcreekleather.com/collections/a5
I like to have mine around for jotting ideas down and drawing diagrams. I don’t have a system or anything. I think I used to be far more prescriptive about what I put in it but now it’s just a playground for my ideas and that suits me really. I carry around everywhere so it’s ready to be used.
My favorite notebook is the National Brand "Engineering and Science Notebook" - which has become my go-to. [0]
I like to diagram, so having the reverse page be graph paper makes it easier for me. I also prefer spiral bound since they tend to hold up better in travel, but that's purely subjective.
[0] - https://www.amazon.com/dp/B001E69X52
Notebooks should be about utility first. I have a Staples brand of 3.5 x 5.5" notepads that come in 3-packs. They are almost exactly passport-sized in terms of height, width and thickness, so they fit perfectly in a pocket, to the point where it's almost invisible. Once I'm done with them, I can store them in an index card box.
THAT for me has been the key to taking paper notes consistently. Create a situation where the friction to start writing on a pad in my pocket is lower than pulling out your phone and getting distracted by a lock screen notification before you can even open the notepad app.
The reason the comments mention Moleskine is that its the first "fancy" brand of paper that the majority of people have heard of. Its also actually quite terrible in terms of quality to the point of being almost unusable with fountain pens and also with a lot of standard pens you might find in an office supply section of a department store.
"Beauty, Art, Aesthetics, Appeal, Pleasing, Sexy" serve purpose which are beyond utilitarian but human.
If lot of people are praising something, probably because they liked it and wanted to share about it. If you can afford it, you can choose to give it a try and make an opinion and decision for yourself.
https://www.levenger.com/CIRCA-326/ABOUT-CIRCA-1233.aspx
Arc is cheap and available in person at Staples.
It combines the versatility of using your own paper, like a three-hole-bunch binder, but with the reliability and compactness of a wirebound notebook. Choose whatever paper you like, print out your desired grid system, reorder pages, add tabs, etc. and still have the same notebook.
When you need to archive pages, you can remove them from the notebook and throw them in a scanner.
I'd say the initial cost of the notebook and punch is steep, but not if you're comparing to $20 hardbound notebooks like Tomoe River or Moleskine.
https://old.reddit.com/r/fountainpens/comments/bccgt0/discbo...
Apparently, paper has enough "structural stiffness" or whatever (don't know the detailed physics), that it won't pull "away" or "up" from the discs by itself. Forcing a page out can be done for sure, so you need to be aware of this and put the paper in/out of the discs with a special kind of gesture/movement, that bends the paper instead of tearing it. Still, both the static forces and each in/out gesture do put a bit of stress on the paper, so you tend to prefer a slightly thicker kind of paper for this than in typical notebooks. Common xero/printer paper with 80g/m2 is decent enough for me, although if really needed, thinner paper can also work, but it will be much more flimsy and prone to falling out. Still, if some of your pages get tired around the holes, you can do an "emergency repair" by taping them over with e.g. washi tape, and re-punching the holes. I found the repair procedure imperfect for a number of reasons (esp. that I can't seem able to keep the page from warping when I apply the tape), but still better than letting the pages fall out, so I only use it as a last resort.
What I found even more interesting, is that the technology was invented quite long ago - I think I read that it happened even before the 2nd World War, though the earliest concrete date I can find now is "before 1948" (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disc-binding and https://atoma.be/en/the-atoma-quality/). IIUC it's patented by the company founded by the original creators, https://atoma.be. But apparently it's been since licensed (?) to some other companies, and/or the patent has expired. Notably and fortunately, most of the current producers stay compatible with the original system (the general dimensions, positions, and distances of the holes are the same), so you can exchange the punches, discs, pages, and other accessories. That said, as shown in the link above, there are slight variations in the shape, which results in more/less friction when turning the pages depending on the exact shape of the hole in the page vs. the exact shape of the disc's cross-section. Also, weirdly to me, each of the subsequent companies tries to sound like they're the one and only creators/"innovators" of this technology, while (usually) following the
Anyway, there's some more info you can gather from teh Internets and youtube, and there's some small community on reddit: https://old.reddit.com/r/Discbound/