Best Results Organizing

Last week, in Noteworthy Notebooks (Part 2): The Big Names in Erasable Notebooks, I talked about some of the advantages of a hybrid notebook to organize your notes, one where you can write on paper (or a paper-like substance), digitize what you’ve created, and erase it. It helps the environment and gives you the one-two punch of creating ideas or art without tangible clutter.

But a conversation with my colleague Seana Turner in the comments section reminded me of another advantage I hadn’t considered including: perfectionist procrastination and the problem with fancy notebooks!

I’ve spoken before about my beloved purple legal pads. While I’m not helping the environment, the legal pads I use aren’t too fancy. I’m never afraid to mess up a page with a scribble, a splotch, or a stupid idea. The same isn’t true (for me, and for many people) when it comes to gorgeous, sumptuous notebooks.

Seven years ago, in Notions on Notebooks: Organize Your Paper Picks, I talked about some key points to consider when selecting notebooks: price (and branding), portability, binding, paper quality, lines (or dots, or graphs, or none), and color. I also pointed out: 

CAVEAT: Over the years, I’ve had many clients who loved the sensory delights of fancy-schmancy notebooks: the colors, the materials, the bindings. They haunted bookstores and stationers and gift shops and bought them giddily, as if they were guilty pleasures. But they never used them. Why? For the same reason we save the “good” china for a special occasion and never wear that perfect outfit because the event doesn’t live up to the dream occasion we imagined when we bought it.

Could you dare write “broccoli, Lemon Pledge, dental floss” in a $52 leather-bound, crimson notebook? If not, either stick to manhandling those sexy notebooks in the stores (but skip buying them) or purchase notebooks with fancier covers but replaceable inner workings. Switch out the paper parts of the notebooks when you’ve filled them with brilliance or drivel, but keep your signature-style colors and fabrics on display as you desire. 

Noteworthy Notebooks (Part 3): More Erasable & Reusable Notebooks Share on X

So, perhaps, the erasable Rocketbook and Wipebook notebooks we discussed last week offer that solution, an opportunity to create temporarily without fear of sullying a notebook. While last week we covered the big names in erasable, reusable notebooks, there’s too much of a bounty not to discuss other options.

SORA REUSABLE PLANNER

SORA, created by the Toronto-based IPPINKA team of designers, is a multi-sectional, customizable, reusable planner that features removable whiteboard pages. Like many of the modern products in Paper Doll’s Noteworthy Notebook series, SORA began with crowdsourcing via a Kickstarter. Although the campaign only started in Fall 2020, SORA is already a star.

Note merely a blank notebook, SORA was designed to work as a planner to help improve and simplify professional and personal life with “whiteboard pages that stimulate goal-oriented and idea-driven scheduling over and over again.”

Each notebook comes with one Staedtler Lumocolor® correctable 305 F Dry Erase Pen in black, which can be erased using the pen’s built-in eraser, a tissue and a little bit of pressure, a damp cloth, or EXPO whiteboard cleaner. (So, unlike last week’s discussion, no microwave oven is necessary!)

SORA is formatted as an A5 (UK/European) notebook measuring 8.27″ x 5.83″. Its thin, flexible pages mimic traditional paper, and the notebook comes with 30 erasable whiteboard planner and tracker pages: 

• Yearly Planner – This erasable planner lets you see your entire year so you can plan well in advance. The planner is undated for maximum flexibility.
• Two Monthly Planners – Two erasable planner spreads enable you to plan both the current and upcoming month, viewing recent past accomplishments and planning going forward. These planners are undated.
• Weekly Planners – Two erasable, undated, weekly planner spreads let you envision and organize essential events and tasks for the current and forthcoming week. 
• Wellness Trackers – SORA’s two wellness tracker pages let you select two different health and fitness goals to improve. More water and more steps? More cardio sessions and a greater variety of vegetables? Strength training sessions and meditation? You pick!
• Habits Trackers – With five habit trackers, SORA help you track your professional and personal habits and make sure that you “don’t break the chain.”
• Blank, Lined, Dot-Grid Pages – It’s not really a notebook unless there’s a place to write and draw, so SORA includes 6 pages each of blank, lined, and dot-grid pages.

[Paper Doll’s suggestion: I’d prefer three weekly and monthly planner spreads to allow you to refer to the prior, current, and upcoming weeks and months so you could flip forward and backward.]

Aside from erasability, the key feature of SORA is that the arrangement of the pages is completely customizable, so you can rearrange the pages to suit your needs.

SORA uses eight 16mm binding discs, similar to what we saw when we discussed customizable  notebooks like the Ampad Versa Crossover and the Sorta. So, instead of perforated notepad pages you can only use once, twist-prone wire binding, or loose sheets bound in bulky three-ring binders, SORA’s disc system lets you use the notebook open, or folded back on itself at any page to minimize desk space used.

SORA’s pages are waterproof and smudge-proof, so the notes won’t smush or accidentally erase like a typical dry-erase marker would. 

The individual pages are removable, so they are camera-ready if you want to scan your pages and upload them to your preferred cloud service. (Unlike the notebooks we discussed last week, SORA doesn’t have a proprietary app.) 

You can purchase a SORA notebook planner for $34 directly from the official site.

nuka ETERNAL STATIONERY

Ukrainian creators Katya Michalko and Nikita Vladykin, aged 17, joined by Eugene Shylo, aged 20, developed something novel with nuka Eternal Stationery. Rather than creating yet another whiteboard notebook with an erasable pen, they went back to basics and invented a better pencil and paper!

It all started with, you guessed it, a crowdfunding campaign. They began last spring, and though the community embraced their little vision quickly, everything from COVID to Chinese New Year to international manufacturing kerfuffles slowed down the process. But funders received their orders in April 2021, and soon the nuka Eternal Stationery (AKA: notebook) will soon be available for traditional purchase, too.

Let’s start with the nuka pencil. This is not your Grandpa’s old #2. The nuka pencil seems like an ordinary pencil, but it never needs to be sharpened and there are no inserts like with a mechanical pencil.

Instead, the six-inch nuka pencil writes with a metal alloy tip which oxidizes polypropylene paper. According to the nuka team, this technology makes pencil inkless (but also, y’know, graphite-less), eliminating any concern of about ink blobs, smudged writing, or wearing what you’ve written on your cuff or the sides of your hands. 

Oh, and the pencil is magnetic. That’ll be important a bit later.

Next, there are 96 sheets of “virtually indestructible” paper in the 8″ x 5″ notebook. The paper is water-resistant and sturdy. You can’t tear it, and you definitely won’t rough it up by erasing too hard. And yes, you can erase the pages.

Although the team hasn’t explained how they’ve done it, or what by secret process they’ve developed it, the pages are waterproof, so even if tiny humans (or furry friends) spill all of your coffee onto your notebook, you needn’t fear losing your million dollar idea or key dialogue for your novel. Your writing also won’t fade over time. All the team has said (and remember, Ukrainian is their first language) is, “We don’t use traditional materials as timber neither for notebook, nor pencil. That definitely helps to save our planet resources.”

But nuka IS a rewritable notebook. Erase small portions with any ordinary eraser, but you can eliminate a whole page by wiping it with a bit of hand sanitizer. (Given the past year, you probably have a LOT of that!)

Although you should use the pencil, the nuka team did research how other writing implements interact, and they report, “Out of the 200 writing instruments we used to test the notebook’s ability to be wiped off, only two types of instruments proved to be difficult; gel pens and permanent markers. While you can use these instruments on the notebook, you might not be able to remove them at all afterwards.”

The silicone cover over the bound pages of the notebook has space for a magnet in the spine, so you’ll never lose your fancy-pants nuka pencil because it’s always attached to the notebook! (Just don’t take it into an MRI machine!)

Finally, there’s the forthcoming nuka app to help you digitize and synchronize your notes across any smart devices so that even when your notebook isn’t at hand, or after you’ve erased something previously uploaded, your works of genius can be retrieved from the cloud. 

The combination nuka eternal stationery (notebook and pen) sold for $69 during the crowdfunding stage; watch their social media to see when it’s available for traditional purchase. (And watch this video. It’s fun!)

INFINITY NOTEBOOKS

For something a little more down to earth, there’s the Canadian Infinity Notebooks. 

First, Infinity Notebooks are durable. The pages are made from a long-lasting polyester paper. The company claims the covers and the pages are highly tear-resistant and completely waterproof, and pages are designed to be added or removed “thousands of times” without damage.  

Next, like everything in this category, the notebooks are reusable. Write or draw in your Infinity Notebook using any of the following supported writing utensils:

• Pilot FriXion Pens (You’ll recall these from the last post.)
• Uniball R:E Pens 
• Pilot FriXion Highlighters (Wait, did you know there were erasable highlighters?) 
• Pilot FriXion Stamps (Like fun little analog emoji for erasable notebooks.)

[The website notes that: Pilot FriXion Markers can also be used with the Infinity Notebook, and while they erase well, they are not recommended because the ink takes longer to dry and is prone to smudging.]

Whichever of the supported writing/marking solutions you choose, the ink will bond with the paper to stay put, but will erase cleanly with a damp cloth or paper towel. You can also use the eraser that comes with the pens, which lets you make small, incremental corrections without risking erasing a larger area of your work.

Next, Infinity Notebooks are customizable. We’ll be talking more about customizable notebooks next time, but, like the SORA described above, the Infinity Notebooks use disc binding so that you can add, remove, or move pages or sections to wherever you want.

You can also swap covers and pages, so while you only have to carry one notebook to class, you could return to your desk and move each class’s notes to one dedicated to a specific course. Or, you can just designate different sections of your notebook for planning and goal-setting, journaling, task lists, etc., and move pages accordingly.

In addition, because Infinity Notebooks are compatible with most popular discbound systems, you can use accessories and features from other product lines, like planners, trackers, calendars, sticky notes, tape flags, and more. (The company also plans on expanding its own line of discbound products to accessorize the Infinity Notebooks.)

Currently, the Infinity Notebook only comes in Executive size, measuring 8.5″ x 6″. There are six choices of colors for the poly covers: Par Blue, Black, Azure, Forest, Purple, and White. 

Each notebook includes eight black binding discs, the two poly covers, 30 ruled pages (15 sheets), 6 checklist pages (3 sheets) and 4 mini checklist pages (2 sheets). Each also comes with one Pilot FriXion pen and use and care instructions.

The Infinity Notebook is $36 on the website; packs of 5 additional pages (in either ruled, checklist, or mini-checklist) are $7.99. They also sell the fun Frixion stamps, imported from Japan, for $3.99 each.

(HOMESTEC/GUYUCOM/NEWYES) SMART NOTEBOOK

Maybe you want to explore erasable notebooks at a lower price point, in case you don’t like the experience?

I’ve found that three different companies are marketing the same “Smart Notebook,” with identical marketing copy (complete with the same grammatical quirks) so whether it’s Homestec, Guyucom, or NEWYES, you’ll find the same product, available in five different sizes, for between $10 and $14. In fact, if you look at the Amazon page for the Standard B5 (UK/EURO sizing)/6.9″ x 9.8″ version of the Homestec Reusable Smart Notebook and scroll down to the graphics that compare the other sizes, you’ll see NEWYes referred to in the chart. 

There’s no reference to what, if anything, makes the paper special, which makes me wonder if it’s just standard paper. It simply references using NEWYES erasable pens, for which you should allow 15 seconds for the ink to dry, after which you can erase using the eraser that comes with your erasable pen, a damp cloth, or a hot hair dryer! (Well, at least it’s not another microwave oven!)

After writing and before erasing, they recommend downloading and using either of two apps, the NEWYES Note or CamScanner, to send notes to Google Drive, Dropbox, Evernote, Box, OneNote, iCloud, and email, either as PDFs or jpegs.

The marketing copy claims that each notebook can be reused over 500 times. Interestingly, these warn not to use your notebook in the sun or when it’s above 140° F/60° C (yikes!), or the ink may disappear.

Why do I get the sense that this will become some kind of reverse-invisible-ink plotline on a sitcom?

This version of the notebook has a black cover with wire-O binding and comes with 7 planning pages, 30 lined pages, and 30 dot-grid pages, as well as one NEWYES-branded erasable pen, and a set of colorful adhesive indexing tape flags for bookmarking or noting important pages, all for $13.58.

There are three other main sizes of the SMART notebook (no matter the branding): 

• Letter Size (11.2″ x 8.7″) with a black or navy blue cover, 2 NEWYES reusable pens, and 1 set ofcolorful adhesive indexing tape flags
• Notebook Memo Size (6.7″ x 4.2″) with a black cover, 1 NEWYES reusable pen, and 1 set of colorful adhesive indexing tape flags
• Notebook “Standard” Size A5 (9.1″ x 6.9″) with a black cover, 1 NEWYES reusable pen, and 1 set of colorful adhesive indexing tape flags

All of the above versions are designed primarily for notetaking; there’s also an A6 (6.7″ x 4.2″) sketchpad version with 40 lined pages and 40 dot-grid pages for $11.88.

All blogs and videos I’ve found reference that you can replace the NEWYES pen with a Pilot FriXion erasable pen.

OUTLIERS NOTEBOOK

Finally, after reviewing many erasable notebook options, I came across, well, an outlier. In fact, the Outliers Notebook. The web site says that the design team formed in United States, but all of the employees are in Turkey; the headquarters in Delaware is a virtual office but all the prices are in Euros. 

The notebooks come in three sizes: Executive and Standard Outliers notebooks both measure 8.66″ x 5.9″, and the Pocket version is 5.5″ x 3.54″. The Executive comes with either a faux-leather or cloth cover, magnetic closure, and 224 pages of 80 gsm acid-free paper; in addition to blank or ruled options (you can’t mix them in one notebook), there’s an annual planner and habit and goal trackers. 

The Standard Outliers version offers the same features as the Executive, but with a cloth cover. The Pocket version is only 191 pages, has an elastic closure. (It appears to have a cloth cover.) Cover colors include black, dark grey, light grey, red, navy, purple, light grey, orange, and green.

Each notebook comes with a proprietary Outliers pen.

Aaaaand because you knew there had to be one more, Outliers recommends erasing the notebook in a microwave oven. No microwave? That’s OK, they say; you can use your hair dryer. They also warn, “Notes on your Outliers Notebook disappear at 60°C and come back at -10°C. Unless you leave your notebook in environments that are either too cold or too hot for long periods of time, your notes will be safe and previously erased notes will not return.” 

I’m thinking this will also show up in the sit-com!

However, taking us all the way back to the concerns about the original Rocketbook Wave we discussed last week, they say, “You can erase your notebook in the microwave for an indefinite number of times; however, the notebook should ideally be reused up to a maximum of 5 times due to natural wear and tear that may occur through usage.” So, it’s not super reusable, but just a little reusable!

Each page of the Outliers notebook contains QR codes that indicate the page numbers. Outliers (iOS and Android) apps include QR code scanners, which read the QR codes, recognize page numbers and automatically index all your pages in the correct order as PDFs. Users can add keywords to digitized notes and search within the Outlier app, and of course, share via email or to cloud services.

Outliers claims superior image processing by augmenting the page resolution, stabilizing the brightness, and providing automatic perspective corrections by detecting the scanned page area, no matter the angles from which you shoot. 

Outliers Notebooks can be purchased directly from their site, but again, please note that pricing is in Euros. The Executive versions are 28 and 26.5 Euros (faux leather and cloth versions), the Standard Outlier is 25 Euros, and the Pocket version is 18 Euros. (That’s about $34, $32.23, $30.40, and $21.88, respectively, as of the writing of this blog.) If any of our Paper Doll readers in the EU are up for sampling this option, please report back on your experience.

Next week, we’ll move on to a new category, notebooks you can customize and truly make your own. Until then, if you’ve missed anything, you can catch up at:

Noteworthy Notebooks (Part 1): Re-Surveying the Landscape
Noteworthy Notebooks (Part 2): The Big Names in Erasable Notebooks