Out of Pages offers subscriptions to notebooks for people who love thinking on paper.
If you are the type of person that fills up your notebooks with a certain regularity, this service might be just the thing you need. Sign up for automatic delivery by mail of either Moleskine or Field Notes notebooks on the schedule of your choosing (for instance, every 3 months). If you finish one up before your next schedule delivery they include a postcard you can send them to get it sooner. It’s a neat idea. I only wish more notebook brands/types were available.
I’m fascinated by the new (to me, at least) uses people find for notebooks.
While I was in San Francisco, my friend Dawn showed me one of the ways she uses a small Moleskine Reporter’s Notebook while she is traveling. Often, if she meets someone new, she hands them the notebook and asks that they write anything they want in it. It could be long or short. Just their name or their life story. Anything they want.
I found it a neat idea. Similar to the notebook-as-greeting-card idea that I linked to a while back. Other people get to write themselves into your story. And you get to take away something personal and tangible to remember them with.
Last weekend, I had the opportunity to attend the MPR News Top Coast Festival. I thought it was the perfect opportunity to give Sketchnoting the event a spin. Sure, there are lots of small details I could point out and nitpick. But, ultimately, it is about capturing the key ideas and images that made the conference memorable for me. I’m pretty darn proud of how they turned out.
I have long admired the Sketchnotes that my friend Mike Rohde did at conferences. Mike pioneered this style of visual note taking many years ago and I’ve been a big-big-fan from day one. I’ve always wanted to learn how to do it myself but have never been comfortable with my drawing skills. Mike gave a Sketchnote Workshop in Milwaukee last year that I attended. It was fantastic and, between that and his book on the subject, it went a long way for improving both my skills and my comfort level. If, like me, you look at Sketchnotes or drawing by others and say to yourself, “I could never do that.”, I totally recommend checking out what Mike has to offer.
I have a long and rocky relationship with pen and paper. Ive often romanticized the idea of keeping a paper journal to record the passage of my life. Yet, despite many attempts over the years, Ive never been able to stick to any kind of journalling habit for more than a couple of weeks at a time.That was until I came across Ryder Carrolls brilliant Bullet Journal concept and mashed it up with Patrick Rhones Dash/Plus pen and paper markup system into a "Hybrid Journal".
Nice mashup of the two paper based markup systems by James. A reminder that, while adopting someone else’s system as is is OK, adapting it and making it your own is better.
Years ago, I worked in the IT department of a residential school. There was a lot to manage, from help desk requests to purchasing, maintenance, networking issues, and other administrative tasks. I typically had several projects ongoing at once, large and small. Nearly all of them had support files that needed to be referenced or updated regularly. This is where the Noguchi system was brilliant, as it moves frequently-used files together while creating an archive of seldom used files.
I used this system too for a while back in the day. It would work really well for organizing writing projects. Just throw the notebook/manuscript with all of your related research and materials into a single envelope.
Children not only learn to read more quickly when they first learn to write by hand, but they also remain better able to generate ideas and retain information. In other words, it’s not just what we write that matters — but how.
“When we write, a unique neural circuit is automatically activated,” said Stanislas Dehaene, a psychologist at the Collège de France in Paris. “There is a core recognition of the gesture in the written word, a sort of recognition by mental simulation in your brain.
So much educational focus is on typing, which is important, but kids need to learn how to draw letters and transcribe on paper. It’s not a matter of one technology outperforming the other, it’s about brain development.
Just a heads up that I (Patrick Rhone — Editor In Chief) will be in San Francisco this week participating in Apple’s World Wide Developer Conference as part of some of my other responsibilities. Therefore, things will slow here for a bit. Not to worry, I have plenty I’m cooking up for when I return.
And, if you will be in San Francisco this week, I’m having a meetup on Wednesday night you are more than welcome to swing by. I’d love to share a pint or two with any of you.
I’ve long been fascinated with the various methods and organizational systems people use to take notes. I’ve even been known to spot something someone next to me in a meeting is doing and then pepper them with questions about it afterwards. I’m a real nerd that way.
I’m especially interested in markup systems — the little marks and symbols some use to process, prioritize, or otherwise make sense of the notes they have taken. There are many of these sorts of things out there, some well known and others not. Therefore, I thought I would start a post that would begin to round up some of these things — mainly as my own way of tracking them. These are in no particular order and is in no way complete. It is my hope as well that those reading this will get in touch if they see one missing.
Bullet Journal — This exploded onto the scene a few months back, thanks in no small part to it’s well designed website and video. It seems easy to implement and provides a lot of context in a minimum amount of space. Another unique feature is the incorporation of daily and monthly calendars and an index.
Getting Sh-t Done (GSD) — Mainly for task tracking and time blocking. It’s been out there for quite a few years and there are a lot of fans of this approach. It sure does look cool.
Michael Hyatt’s Smart Notes — Designed for taking notes in meetings to allow a quick processing of their meaning afterwards.
Word Notebooks — Word Notebooks are similar in size and execution to Field Notes, but it is the markup system incorporated into their pages that set them apart. I have seen a few people who have taken the idea behind that system and adopted it into their notebooks and workflow.
Dash/Plus — Full disclosure — this one is mine. I developed it almost ten years ago as a way to handle tasks, meeting notes, and since have extended it to my daily logging. It involves using a dash before ideas, notes, tasks, etc. and then building upon that dash during review. I designed it to be versatile and I encourage others to adapt and extend it for their own needs — it’s very flexible.
Hybrid System — James Gowans adapted both my Dash/Plus system and Bullet Journal and created a hybrid of the two. Sounds really swell in practice and James does a great job of explaining what he took from both and why.
The Strikethrough System — Mike Vardy’s markup system that emphasizes completely striking through items and incorporates energy level based contexts.
A note of encouragement: There is no “one true way” for any of this stuff. Perhaps you like the functionality of my Dash/Plus system but wish you also had the calendar/index of the Bullet Journal system. Mash them up? Maybe there is something that you want to track that is not covered in any of the above — make up your own. That is the beauty of this stuff (and paper and pen in general) — you’re not locked into someone else’s idea of how a thing should work. The page is blank, own it.
I have something so much better, at least in my humble opinion. I use a sheet of lined paper that I tuck under my blank page to create perfectly straight lines that are there. But not. Using a guide sheet does not require any prep time. Just slide the sheet behind your current page and start writing.
Great tip from Ana. But, where does one get such a sheet?
I have created lined paper guides in 6mm, 7mm, 8mm and 10mm spacing. Each .pdf file includes a full 8.5×11 US Letter sized guide and a smaller 5×7? guide that you can trim to fit in the average A5-sized notebook. Print out your favorite line width spacing on a laser or ink jet printer. One copy of the guide sheet can be kept in each of your favorite notebooks and should last for a long time. The guide sheet often doubles as a blotter sheet, pen primer or to protect the next sheet from pesky bleed through.
