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It’s Journal Day!

Posted on by Patrick Rhone

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Today, December 9th, is a day I designated last year as Journal Day. There are many ways to celebrate, or traditions one could keep, to mark the day. Heres some ideas.

  • This might be the day to take out previous journals and reflect on where you were then versus where you are today.
  • This is a great day to open a new journal and begin to plan for the coming year — for instance, what things you’d like to accomplish or places you’d like to travel to.
  • You might let someone you trust read one you have kept and get to know the “real” you.
  • Perhaps gift a journal to another person in your life who practices or you feel could benefit from doing so.
  • Or, maybe, be so bold as to spend a year keeping a journal for someone else in your life whom you love and spend your days with — write down their day as you saw it or the things you were thinking about them at that time. How wonderful a gift would it be to allow someone close to “see” themselves and their year through your eyes?
  • Like the above, start a journal for your kids that are too young to keep their own. We forget so much of those early years. This is a way to remember those special times. This is the sort of thing that would make a meaning high-school graduation gift when they get older.

These are just a few of the ways you can celebrate. If you come up with others, I would love to hear about them.Shoot me a message on Twitter or use the hashtag #journalday and I will try to add them here. I will also be adding more later in the day celebrating all things journalling. Stay tuned!

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If Diligence is a Skill — Shawn Blanc

Posted on by Patrick Rhone

Every day, the blank page is your batting practice. You’re not here because you’ve arrived, nor because you’re a superhero of focus and creative output. No, you’re here because you love it and you want to get better.

via If Diligence is a Skill — Shawn Blanc.

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Baron Fig Limited Editions

Posted on by Patrick Rhone

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Our friends at Baron Fig released some lovely limited editions over the weekend. The Three Legged Juggler is an orange colored take on their lined Confidant notebook. It comes beautifully packaged with a placard of the poem that inspired it. The Lightbulb is a purple colored take on their Apprentice pocket notebooks with a neat little lightbulb icon printed on the cover. Both are nice if you are looking for something a little bit different.

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How much of the year is left

Posted on by Patrick Rhone

How much of the year is left

I realized last night as I finished yesterday’s logbook entry just how little time was left in the year. You can see DEC 1 on the calendar, but your brain doesn’t really register it the way the chunk and heft of the pages turned behind you does.

I was thinking the same thing the other day about my Hobonichi Techo. Another advantage to keeping a daily logbook or journal is the very tangible sense of time passage it provides.

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Analog At Heart — The Saddleback Notepad Holder and Tibolt Pen

Posted on by Patrick Rhone

by Uri Fridman

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Even though I live in the digital world, I am at heart still an analog person. Growing up in a time when digital was just appearing and analog was still a big part of the world, I learned early onto appreciate the power that good quality things can bring. One of the things that has stayed with me since then was the need to jot notes and ideas on paper as opposed to using software.

I’m on the road a lot, but I also have periods of time when I’m in the office. When that happens I rely on a Saddleback Leather Shop Notepad Holder to hold my notepad and pen. The pen, by the way, is a Titanium TiBolt made by Fellhoelter. Both pieces are extremely well built and provide years of use and abuse for the money.

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Usually my ideas start in this notepad. I just create a brain dump of what I have in my mind and I begin sketching out the different options. it’s not unusual to have 10 or more pages full of notes and sketches at the end of the “session”. Usually, they are like a puzzle and you can line them up together to form the whole idea. To me it’s a great way to quickly and clearly begin working on the idea. From there, I call my team and we’ll translate this to a whiteboard, where everyone adds their part.

The thing is, having a good pen and a piece of paper makes you feel that the ideas, the information you want express, is actually alive. Sure, you can use brain-mapping software or just jot notes in a text editor, but on a piece of paper, with your hands… It fees real. It feels like it’s not going to be deleted and you can work with it.

Again, maybe it’s the fact that I lived through those years of analog and digital, but – like a good quality mechanical watch – I think some of the analog world is still superior to the current, increasingly digital world.

By the way, when I’m on the road I use a Baron Fig Apprentice to do exactly the same.

Uri is one of the writers at redteams.net.

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Polaroid Journaling | My Polaroid Blog

Posted on by Patrick Rhone

Polaroid Journaling | My Polaroid Blog.

When I’m feeling down or a bit nostalgic I will reach for a stack of Polaroids and sort through them for forgotten moments in time. I discovered an even better way of looking at my pictures by keeping them in a small reporter’s notebook by Moleskine.

An interesting way to journal as well as a nice marriage of two analog mediums.

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The Lettermate

Posted on by Patrick Rhone

The Lettermate

An envelope addressing guide for those of us that have trouble writing in a straight line.

Only $15. What a neat idea.

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My First Baron Fig — Shawn Blanc

Posted on by Patrick Rhone

My First Baron Fig — Shawn Blanc

My Baron Fig and I made a pact. I would use it for the most mundane, menial, impermanent things I could think of. And if I ruined this book by filling it with nothing of consequence, then I would order another to sit on the shelf and collect dust as it waited patiently for something more historic and epic.

A lovely ode to a dependable notebook. I love these sorts of “after I’ve used it for a really long time” reviews.

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Connecting your paper notebooks with the digital age — Life Hacks — Medium

Posted on by Patrick Rhone

Connecting your paper notebooks with the digital age — Life Hacks — Medium

Most of the subjects I write about are related to abstract artifacts?—?emails, meetings, web pages, digital pictures. One of the things I missed most after switching to pen and paper was having a reliable way to reference these digital bits. However, I devised a plan to fix that.

What he comes up with is mindblowingly clever. Going to steal and implement the heck out of this.

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Eraser-off | The Well-Appointed Desk

Posted on by Patrick Rhone

Eraser-off | The Well-Appointed Desk

I decided to put a few different types of erasers head-to-head and see which one works best. Its not the brand of eraser that is the key attribute but rather the type of material used to create the eraser. There are two common types of erasers for everyday use: plastic/vinyl erasers usually white and almost all are now latex-free and compound rubber a bit gritty with a pumice-like material embedded in rubber.

Educational. I learned more about erasers and the performance of a few of the better ones than I thought was possible.