July 8, 2016 - Notebooks

I seem to be breaking out in notebooks.

I'm not sure if that is a function of age (forgetting things) or keeping busy (to-do lists), but the notebook section of the local stationary store has me hearing it's siren song.

I've always had a few dedicated notebooks, of course starting with school notebooks. But I seem to be more obsessed with them lately, as well as making greater use of them. And with that, comes the search for the perfect notebook.

I used to be able to function with just scraps of paper, discarded when the tasks were completed. Usually that day or the next. When that became unwieldy due to having to keep track of things on a longer timeline, I added a day planner that lived on my desk and I transferred information to it as needed. That worked well to organize deadlines and contacts.

And then came cell phones, and I needed that information to be more portable, so I added a smaller daily planner with just the essentials. Smartphones, for a while, made even those redundant. I was able to keep everything on my phone. Except those early phones weren't as good for transferring information onto a new phone, and how do you take notes, while actually on the phone? Answer: a notebook.

Now, with regular updates, phones are much better, but I have migrated back to paper in addition to the phone.

Notebooks, with lined pages, have been my go to for the past few years. But as my use of them changes and evolves, so must the notebook I use. Part of it is really conceptual, how do I organize thoughts and keep the separate from grocery lists, and to-do lists. I have fairly small handwriting, so I can actually cram a lot onto a page.

My current thinking is to get a notebook that is either gridded like graph paper or uses dots to imply both lines and grids. In theory, that should make it easier to indent to-do lists and allow the checking off of items on the grocery list.

Off to buy more notebooks.