For loose leaf notebooks, I like disc-bound notebooks like Levenger's Circa format. There are less expensive (Arc) and luxury (William Hannah) options on the market.
I also recommend Travelers brand notebooks, in both the standard and passport size.
And for index cards, Levenger 3x5 cards cannot be beat for quality and variety.
This made my day. I feel a little ashamed though that I still like using paper to consume information, not just write or produce. I’m taking a class and I find myself printing out the articles and underlining and taking notes on them, rather than reading them online like everyone else.
If I want to REALLY understand something I still print it out and scribble all over it. (Sometimes I'll put it in the notebook with everything else, in case I wonder what I was doing on that day a few decades from now.)
"Why paper has this unique power is a mystery to me, but I think we should all stop trying to resist this reality and just accept it."
In my CS major days I heard an interesting metaphor for that: if you are just there receiving inputs from the world you are - at best - a pushdown automata, which allows you to understand at most context-free grammars, which isn't a lot. Add pen and paper and suddenly you are a turing machine, and now you can make sense of every computable function given enough time and space
I'm the person who has separate notebooks for specific uses. :) I have three notebooks on me at any given time (they are not that big and get carried around in the same bag that holds several fountain pens, an e-reader, a physical book, in-ear earphones, and a charging cable that fits all the above electronics).
#1: Quotes that I find thought-provoking (a Field Notes notebook titled "I said what I meant and I meant what I said, a quote by Dr. Seuess), otherwise known as a commonplace book.
#2: Misc. notes about things I found interesting or want to look into further, discovered while reading usually, otherwise known as a 'Hodegpodge' or vade mecum. Unknown source, but the same size as a Field Notes notebook (roughly, A6)
#3 A journal, which I use for thinking on paper. Some people used to call these diaries, but I do not. This thinking is more like a slowed-down version of what goes on in my head throughout the day rather than a daily register of what happened, which is how I think of a diary.
Notes go in the appropriate book and I don't find it a chore at all - having things broken out like this helps me find what I want later. That said, my desk is covered in loose pages from legal pads, most of which will go into file folders for later reference, sorted by work project.
I stop and write when I feel like it, in the appropriate notebook, and I never have to sift through loose papers to find what I'm looking for. Interestingly, it seems I never can find anything I've written electronically. I think this is related to the lack of a physical anchor to reference, like generally knowing where something is in a book because of how many pages are on either side of that location, which is lacking with e-books.
Three-hole punched paper + brass fasteners might be the first paper stack religion I could convert to. Especially appreciate how the system accepts its own ephemerality—thinking matters, archives don’t.
After many iterations I am currently back in (a variant of) your bare minimum iteration - field notes notebooks which are nice and fit in my pocket with a zebra f301 and a commitment to just shred them when they fill up. Explicitly therefore for wip and not reference.
I would highly recommend trying a sketchbook to take notes if you've never tried one before.
The unique texture and heavier weight contribute to a sublime note-taking experience. There's also many different dimensions of sketch paper that still work for writing on because of the thicker pages.
Here are two inexpensive ones I've used before extensively:
I've tried many. I love them, but somehow I find it emotionally difficult to make them "ugly". I find that a beautiful notebook leads me to somehow mentally raise my threshold for how good/correct/permanent something is before it deserves to go in the notebook. That's my main objection (along with the fact that you can't look at 8 pages at once)
I'm also a a chronic printer-paper-taker. I used to do the "unstapled piles of crumpled paper stuffed in my bag" approach, but lately I've been really happy with using a portable scanner to scan my notes at the end of the day. They end up in a folder of pdfs with YYYY-mm-dd_topic file names which are easy to skim through with OSX's Quick View functionality. I use Brother ADS-1200 as a scanner.
You could start out with an app based doc scanner (e.g. Microsoft Lens) to see if the general flow works for you, but the portable scanner is so much faster and more convenient once you have more than a couple of pages to scan.
I love loose-leaf paper for processing emotional topics. Knowing I can throw the paper away if it’s too emotional or too crazy to let continue to exist in the physical realm is liberating. Brene Brown recommends this specifically for her “shitty first draft” exercise and all the irrational chaos that it lets out.
Not exactly the same, but when I had a notebook, I felt like everything I wrote was supposed to be "good" and "permanent". Knowing that I can just throw stuff away makes me a bit more experimental somehow? It also somehow makes me feel like I don't need to fill each page with dense "correct" content.
The system I've come to, after a few years of experimentation:
Loose A5 paper, big enough to fit complete ideas, small enough not to feel intimidating or wasteful.
A six ring leather binder journal thing. The six rings helps keep pages from tearing through.
Nine divider tabs cut from paperboard, roughly organized as three categories of three (plus the section in front of them, so ten total).
First category is work, grocery lists, to-do, that sort of thing. Second is creative stuff, ideas and drawings and whatnot. Final category is sort of miscellaneous and reference - journaling, quotes, things I don't reference or add to very often.
The categories are fuzzy, and the nine subcategories are meant to flow into each other to maximize applicability. For the most part pages have their own set topics, and some have a specific structure too, but there are also some less carefully organized areas. At the front of the journal is an index where I keep track of things in broad strokes.
Behind the index are a few pages for completely random notes, things that I don't need for later or I want to write down quickly without thinking too much. When one is filled up I copy down anything that I want to save to somewhere else in the journal then take it out.
The journal also has pockets to tuck index cards, folded sheets of paper, business cards. Sometimes I keep a little tiny memo pad in there too.
Writing it all down it sounds kinda convoluted. It's evolved piece by piece though - still is evolving - and suits me perfectly. If I were to give one piece of advice on the topic it's to keep working on your system if it's at all unsatisfactory; there will be a lot of trial and error, and as your life changes so will the ideal system, but there's always room to improve things.
i occasionally write them on paper and they get included in the chronological order along with everything else. but i’m not super organized in this regard…
I guess I do throw away a lot of paper. But I want to keep lots of stuff (at least for a while) so it's easier to just defaulting to keeping. It's very easy to just throw it in a binder.
For loose leaf notebooks, I like disc-bound notebooks like Levenger's Circa format. There are less expensive (Arc) and luxury (William Hannah) options on the market.
I also recommend Travelers brand notebooks, in both the standard and passport size.
And for index cards, Levenger 3x5 cards cannot be beat for quality and variety.
"That “book” then goes on a bookshelf, never to be looked at again."
I definitely know what you are talking about.
This made my day. I feel a little ashamed though that I still like using paper to consume information, not just write or produce. I’m taking a class and I find myself printing out the articles and underlining and taking notes on them, rather than reading them online like everyone else.
If I want to REALLY understand something I still print it out and scribble all over it. (Sometimes I'll put it in the notebook with everything else, in case I wonder what I was doing on that day a few decades from now.)
"Why paper has this unique power is a mystery to me, but I think we should all stop trying to resist this reality and just accept it."
In my CS major days I heard an interesting metaphor for that: if you are just there receiving inputs from the world you are - at best - a pushdown automata, which allows you to understand at most context-free grammars, which isn't a lot. Add pen and paper and suddenly you are a turing machine, and now you can make sense of every computable function given enough time and space
I'm the person who has separate notebooks for specific uses. :) I have three notebooks on me at any given time (they are not that big and get carried around in the same bag that holds several fountain pens, an e-reader, a physical book, in-ear earphones, and a charging cable that fits all the above electronics).
#1: Quotes that I find thought-provoking (a Field Notes notebook titled "I said what I meant and I meant what I said, a quote by Dr. Seuess), otherwise known as a commonplace book.
#2: Misc. notes about things I found interesting or want to look into further, discovered while reading usually, otherwise known as a 'Hodegpodge' or vade mecum. Unknown source, but the same size as a Field Notes notebook (roughly, A6)
#3 A journal, which I use for thinking on paper. Some people used to call these diaries, but I do not. This thinking is more like a slowed-down version of what goes on in my head throughout the day rather than a daily register of what happened, which is how I think of a diary.
Notes go in the appropriate book and I don't find it a chore at all - having things broken out like this helps me find what I want later. That said, my desk is covered in loose pages from legal pads, most of which will go into file folders for later reference, sorted by work project.
I stop and write when I feel like it, in the appropriate notebook, and I never have to sift through loose papers to find what I'm looking for. Interestingly, it seems I never can find anything I've written electronically. I think this is related to the lack of a physical anchor to reference, like generally knowing where something is in a book because of how many pages are on either side of that location, which is lacking with e-books.
Three-hole punched paper + brass fasteners might be the first paper stack religion I could convert to. Especially appreciate how the system accepts its own ephemerality—thinking matters, archives don’t.
Scribal in a notebook that you can’t read and move on.
After many iterations I am currently back in (a variant of) your bare minimum iteration - field notes notebooks which are nice and fit in my pocket with a zebra f301 and a commitment to just shred them when they fill up. Explicitly therefore for wip and not reference.
I would highly recommend trying a sketchbook to take notes if you've never tried one before.
The unique texture and heavier weight contribute to a sublime note-taking experience. There's also many different dimensions of sketch paper that still work for writing on because of the thicker pages.
Here are two inexpensive ones I've used before extensively:
- https://www.officedepot.com/a/products/391661/Bienfang-Sketchbook-9-x-12-150/
- https://www.officedepot.com/a/products/309657/Office-Depot-Brand-Sketchbook-Hardcover-9/
I've tried many. I love them, but somehow I find it emotionally difficult to make them "ugly". I find that a beautiful notebook leads me to somehow mentally raise my threshold for how good/correct/permanent something is before it deserves to go in the notebook. That's my main objection (along with the fact that you can't look at 8 pages at once)
I'm also a a chronic printer-paper-taker. I used to do the "unstapled piles of crumpled paper stuffed in my bag" approach, but lately I've been really happy with using a portable scanner to scan my notes at the end of the day. They end up in a folder of pdfs with YYYY-mm-dd_topic file names which are easy to skim through with OSX's Quick View functionality. I use Brother ADS-1200 as a scanner.
I really like this idea. I'm a bit hesitant about buying a scanner, just for this purpose, but it does really seem like the best way to "have it all".
You could start out with an app based doc scanner (e.g. Microsoft Lens) to see if the general flow works for you, but the portable scanner is so much faster and more convenient once you have more than a couple of pages to scan.
I love loose-leaf paper for processing emotional topics. Knowing I can throw the paper away if it’s too emotional or too crazy to let continue to exist in the physical realm is liberating. Brene Brown recommends this specifically for her “shitty first draft” exercise and all the irrational chaos that it lets out.
Could you give me a (hypothetical) example, what topic you would try to emotionally process this way, and how you would do so?
Not exactly the same, but when I had a notebook, I felt like everything I wrote was supposed to be "good" and "permanent". Knowing that I can just throw stuff away makes me a bit more experimental somehow? It also somehow makes me feel like I don't need to fill each page with dense "correct" content.
Genius.
The system I've come to, after a few years of experimentation:
Loose A5 paper, big enough to fit complete ideas, small enough not to feel intimidating or wasteful.
A six ring leather binder journal thing. The six rings helps keep pages from tearing through.
Nine divider tabs cut from paperboard, roughly organized as three categories of three (plus the section in front of them, so ten total).
First category is work, grocery lists, to-do, that sort of thing. Second is creative stuff, ideas and drawings and whatnot. Final category is sort of miscellaneous and reference - journaling, quotes, things I don't reference or add to very often.
The categories are fuzzy, and the nine subcategories are meant to flow into each other to maximize applicability. For the most part pages have their own set topics, and some have a specific structure too, but there are also some less carefully organized areas. At the front of the journal is an index where I keep track of things in broad strokes.
Behind the index are a few pages for completely random notes, things that I don't need for later or I want to write down quickly without thinking too much. When one is filled up I copy down anything that I want to save to somewhere else in the journal then take it out.
The journal also has pockets to tuck index cards, folded sheets of paper, business cards. Sometimes I keep a little tiny memo pad in there too.
Writing it all down it sounds kinda convoluted. It's evolved piece by piece though - still is evolving - and suits me perfectly. If I were to give one piece of advice on the topic it's to keep working on your system if it's at all unsatisfactory; there will be a lot of trial and error, and as your life changes so will the ideal system, but there's always room to improve things.
How do you manage your To Do list?
i occasionally write them on paper and they get included in the chronological order along with everything else. but i’m not super organized in this regard…
I'm a heretic, I find my remarkable e ink tablet gives me all the advantages of paper and some neat digital functions as well.
The one thing it doesn't buy you is the ability to spread 5-10 sheets out on a table. (Niche taste, for sure, but crucial for me!)
To ask the obvious question, why not chuck the paper as soon as your done with it, thereby removing all this hassle?
I guess I do throw away a lot of paper. But I want to keep lots of stuff (at least for a while) so it's easier to just defaulting to keeping. It's very easy to just throw it in a binder.