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Next notebook

    Back when I used to grade/mark on paper, I moved to using a fountain pen instead of ballpoint pens. I found that writing with a fountain pen was much less tiring on my hand. The pen would smoothly flow over the paper. That reminds me how much marking I used to do; there was a lot of essays to be graded.

    At first I used a black ink, but it didn't stand out well from the students writing (which was often printed). So I moved to a variety of blues and blue-black inks. That probably what set me on my quest to find the perfect ink. TL;DR, there isn't one—it depends on the task, the paper, and my mood.

    After some time, I found that I was using my fountain pens (yes, they had multiplied) for all my paper-based note taking. For sometime, I used the pocket-size Moleskine notebooks; that must have been around 2005. That size was same as the notebooks that Brendon Potter used (to good effect when he was the deputy director of the MBA programme).

    Moleskines notebooks were about the only ones I could find that worked well with fountain pens.

    My current workflow is that for meetings, seminars, and the like, I make notes in my notebook. If there are any to-dos, I flag them (thanks 3M) and transfer them into Org Mode as part of my Daily Review.

    Nowadays, there is so much choice. But since around 2014 I've been using the A5 Leuchtturm 1917 notebooks (even though I can't say the name properly). They've many features that make them better for my purposes: page numbers, index pages, and etc. My 'ruling' of choice is the DotGrid. The orange notebook below, is a Rhodia. Nice paper, but I missed the page numbers, and I'm too lazy to number the pages by hand. I use A4 Rhodia DotPads, for sketching out bigger things, such as web page designs, deck designs–for the garden, or network diagrams. I still use the pocket-size soft Moleskines for notes I do in my garage workshop (as I'll often stuff them in my pocket when I go to the hardware store).

    I keep the A5 notebooks I use for work in case I need to refer back to them. For example, I was at a conference with Paul Jarzabkowski were she described her 'model' for collecting data and using it for producing papers. I drew it out, and still find I go back to it from time to time.

    My pile of notebooks since 2014

    As part of my Monthly Review I like to write out the month as it helps shift my thinking into what to. This is what my December 'spread' looks like.

    The 'spread' of my notebook for January 2023

    It's a new format I trying for my new notebook. My plan is that during my Weekly Review I'll add to it if there are big things coming up in the week. I don't think I a 'weekly spread'. I'm also trying to keep it pretty straightforward. I see many examples of people of the Internet doing quite elaborate spreads, but that's not really me.


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    Word count: 600 (about 3 minutes)

    Published:

    Updated: 22 Dec '22 15:03

    Author: Peter Smith

    Permalink: https://petersmith.org/blog/2022/12/22/next-notebook/

    Section: blog

    Kind: page

    Bundle type: leaf

    Source: blog/2022/12/22/next-notebook/index.org