Archive for ‘Notes and Notebooks’ Category
Customizable Notebooks: Have It Your Way…Sorta
As we’ve discussed previously, the key to any notebook system is that it fits your individual needs. What could be better than a notebook that you can customize to your specific sense of order?
In the beginning, there was Levenger’s Circa System. The backbone of Circa Notebooks appears to be rings — but instead of three fixed rings inside the spine of a binder, Circa uses discs (11 for letter-sized, 8 for junior-sized notebooks) to hold together a series of component elements: leather and other stylish covers, ink-friendly paper, tab dividers of various types, calendars and more. The discs come in a variety of sizes, from 1/4″ to 3″, and styles from basic black to designer-level sparkly, allowing you to increase the thickness and fashionability of your notebooks by switching out the discs.
Instead of using a standard hole-punch that creates a series of circles, Levenger designed a specialized punch style (where each “hole” punch looks like a sideways mushroom or umbrella) such that elements can be switched out without tearing the paper edges. This style has been copied, with a little variation by the competition:
Levenger Punch
Ampad Punch
Want your calendar in the front and your notes in the back? Decide tomorrow you want to switch it around? Circa can do that. The Circa System is modular, classy and elegant, but oh-so pricey. Notebook covers range from $60 to $150; the discs, which are sold separately from the covers run $12-$25. Refill pages start at $10 for a set, and if you want to keep any of your own papers, the specialized hole punches range from $30 to $80.
Two years ago, Staples brought out an almost identical notebook style, the Arc System, which I reviewed in my NAPO EXPO 2012 Recap. Arc has the same system of discs (though fewer sizes, and with a less glossy, more utilitarian styling), fewer but still multiple cover options (leather and poly, decorative and solid) and a variety of productivity accessories. Sort the pages to your preference, change them around as necessary, and switch your cover when you move from classroom to internship to boardroom.
The main difference between Circa and Arc was Arc’s more frugal pricing structure, with covers ranging from $12 for poly to $25 for leather; disc expansion packs are only about $3, and plastic/poly dividers and pockets range from $3-$10. Pre-punched notebook, planner and graph paper sets runs $3.50-$4.50, and a specialized punch is $43.
Then just last spring, we talked about the Ampad Versa Crossover, yet another entry into the discs-instead-of-rings customizable notebook arena. As I described it then:
The key to the Versa Crossover Notebook’s appeal, however, is that the paper — indeed, all elements of the notebook, including the covers, flaps, flags, task pads, pockets and dividers — can be re-positioned anywhere in the notebook. That’s because instead of being attached by spiral wires, everything is held in place by the discs nestled perfectly inside uniquely shaped oval “tabby things.”
Same basics, but the Versa has thicker, chubbier discs (like Duplo vs. Lego) and a variety of poly-based elements for creating dividers and holding accessory items. At $12-$17 for the basic notebook and about $3 for refill pages, the pricing is fine, but there’s no hole punch for your own papers, and the types of pages are very limited (to wide-ruled or graph paper).
All three notebooks are spiffy, but I felt like Arc offered the best deal for the money for the average user. Recently, however, a client called my attention to a newcomer in customizable notebooks that’s sorta like Circa, Arc, and the Versa Crossover, but sorta like nothing we’ve seen before.
It’s YoonCo’s Sorta, the Adaptive Notebinder.
If Circa is for executives, Versa is for students and Arc is for just about everyone, Sorta is for the person who says, “Well, I’m sorta doing the entrepreneurial thing during the week, and I’m sorta working on my tunes in the evenings.” It’s for someone who doesn’t necessarily see himself carrying a fine calfskin planner or a paisley-print poly cover. It’s for someone who wants a notebook that’s sorta cool for all the ways he or she “sorta” is.
The Sorta is customizable and has removable, repositionable pages. But there are no discs and no rings, and the page/element options have been created by designers rather than productivity or office supply experts.
To add, remove or rearrange any of the paper elements in your Sorta, bend back the front and rear covers all the way, and the papers “unpinch” from the springback spine of the notebinder. Toss or archive what you remove, and then sort your papers in a stack. Move your graph paper to the front and your sheet music to the back, change out the style of calendar in the middle — and then bend those covers backward, slide your stack of papers back in, and you’re good to go!
There are two basic elements to the Sorta: the outer notebinder and the varying stationery templates.
To see how it all fits together:
Notebinders — The notebinders come in three styles:
- Original ($15.95), which is sort of the reclaimed wood of notebooks, gritty (and hearty) recycled chipboard with accent color choices of black, red, yellow, blue and white;
- Cloth ($23.95) in black, blue, grey and orange; and
- Leatherette ($28.95) in pebbled black
Each notebinder is 6 1/4″ x 8 1/2″ and features one thick, color-coded elastic band for closure and two thin ones for bookmarks. (The bands are standard in the original version and optional for the cloth and leatherette covers.)
Stationery/Templates — Here’s where Sorta wins me over. There’s a huge variety of paper inserts and designs, and they are all kind of quirky. The ink is blue — and none of that stuffy navy or royal blue ink, either. It’s sort of a dark turquoise.
- Calendars — Three one-day day “glance” styles with increasing detail for the Full-timer, Insomniac and Moonlighter, one-week glance in two styles, two-week glance and one month glance. (Note, these are evergreens — you fill in the date on each page type.) They’ve also designed some Sing Another Song planners, based on the notion that, “Let’s be honest—no one can realistically plan ahead past two days. This planning system (named after a Leonard Cohen lyric) acknowledges this reality, forcing you to focus on what you need to do today and tomorrow only. Everything else is backburner.“
- Forms — Contacts, Expenses, To Do lists, Time-tracking sheets, Recurring checklists
- Notepaper — Traditional-ruled, “fat” and “skinny” ruled, “dot grid” (like graph paper without the lines), traditional graph, and isometric graph for 3D design
- Art and Music — Sheet music, ukulele chords, penmanship charts, Kanji (Japanese writing) practice paper, unlined and watercolor-suitable paper, and drawing-a-day pages for two-, three- or six-doodle panels, in case you’re a budding cartoonist or just like to think visually.
- Dividers — each divider is white for the left and center two-third and dreamily colored (blue, green, yellow and pink) for the right third of the page.
Most of the paper elements range from $3.49 to $4.49 for a packet of 25 sheets, with the drawing pages priced at $5.59. The dividers are $2.49 for three in any one color, and $3.29 for a variety pack of four.
A word on design: Sorta’s aim is to be goofily cool. Unlike the attractive but fairly boring traditional notebook stylings of the three leaders in customizable notebooks, the key to Sorta’s style is that it’s not at all corporate, and not coming from a single corporate direction. There are currently five design companies from around the US, in addition to YoonCo, contributing to the Sorta elements, including Barrel Strength Design, Machine Design Company, Ditherdog, Patrick M. Coyle and Monkey Show. (If you’re a designer, consider joining the Sorta design team.)
So, what’s missing? Huge expansion possibilities. The Sorta only holds 40-60 sheets of paper at a time, so it’s better for carrying around just what you really want and need and taking advantage of the easy-to-remove-pages aspect. Also, there are no rulers, no plastic sheets with sticky notes and tape flags, and no poly pocket inserts for digital media or business cards. It’s all paper (and, well, cloth, leatherette and elastic) and the lowest of low-tech. But there’s something sorta nice about that.
What do you think of the Sorta? What kind of customizable notebook is your speed?
Paper Doll Post:
Organize Your Writing Right — With Left-Handed Notebooks
Are you a righty or a lefty? Of course, we’re not talking politics, but handedness. Paper Doll is a righty, but I’m always on the lookout for solutions that make it easier for my left-handed clients to live in a right-handed world.
With file folders, it’s easy enough — it’s just a matter of turning the papers upside down (from my perspective) so that when my clients open their folders (book-style), the tabbed side of the folder is on the left rather than on the right. However, notebooks present a particularly smudgy, and occasionally painful, problem.
Lefties may use their left hands, but assuming they aren’t writing in Hebrew (aha! a clue to a possible solution?), they are still writing from left to right like the rest of us. With typical sheets of paper or notebooks, this means that the left hand often slides or drags over the most recently written material, causing smudges.
Moreover, when writing in a three-ring binder, we righties are can generally keep our bodies entirely to the right of the rings; for a lefty, writing on paper while it’s ring-bound means keeping the wrist tightly bent to keep the forearm away from the rings. (The Handedness Research Institute warns that this is a no-no.) The problem is pretty much the same for spiral notebooks, earning wiry indentations in the hand and arm. How exhausting must this be for our friends on the left?
TOP-BOUND ALTERNATIVES
The easiest solution for left-handers is to use spiral (and other) notebooks wire-bound at the top rather than on the side. Steno pads are fairly good solutions for casual use, provided you’re not distracted by the vertical line down the center (used to guide shorthand).
Mead even promotes their top-bound spiral notebooks for academic and business use as “left handed notebooks.” While these, as well as legal pads and reporter’s notebooks on the low end of the price/quality spectrum, are easy to find, this often condemns left-handed writers to a sort of second-class status.
That said, there are a few upscale top-bound, non-spiral notebooks, including the Moleskine Reporter notebooks (available in black, only). They come in two sizes, Pocket (3 1/2″ x 5 1/2″, 192 pages), suitable for students and others on-the-go, and Large (5″ x 8 1/4″, 240 pages), which work well for professionals.
The Reporter notebooks come in hard and soft (lay-flat) cover options, with acid-free paper choices including ruled, graph (“squared”) or plain pages, and top-stitched bindings. Each have 24 detachable (perforated) pages at the back for quick, removable notes, and all of the Reporter-style notebooks can be used both horizontally and/or vertically (though obviously this works better with graph and plain pages than ruled). Reporter notebooks also have expandable accordion pockets inside the back cover and the traditional Moleskine elastic bands to keep things private. The notebooks range from about $11 to $16 at Amazon, Moleskine, LoveNotebooks.com and fine stationers.
NO STUDENT LEFT BEHIND
Flip-top covers aren’t to everyone’s tastes, however.
Certainly, the left-handed writer can simply flip every spiral-bound notebook to the back and choose to write only on the left (reverse) page of each sheet, but this generally subjects users to being greeted repeatedly by a “plain” cardboard or chip-board backing (uh…fronting?). While righties get their pick of the pretty notebooks out there, lefties are left showing their backsides, as it were, price tags and barcodes and all.
Here, at least, the open market for student notebooks has been responsive. I’ve found a number of right-side spiral notebooks designed specifically for left-handed users.
Ampad makes a cheery (OK, perhaps garish), yellow, 80-sheet, 8 1/2″ x 11″ Left Handed Subject Notebook with the spiral on the right side. Find one for around $3.49 through specialty stores like Gonzaga University’s Zag Shop.
Less well-known stationers are also entering the arena. Roaring Spring makes a 9″ x 11″, 100-sheet, 1-Subject Wirebound Notebook that runs upward from $2.89 at Shoplet and (at an inexplicably higher price) Amazon. The Lefty logo is a cute touch, and the notebook comes in maroon, cobalt, dark green and grey.
TOPS similarly makes a 9″ x 11″ narrow-ruled 80-sheet spiral-bound notebook with cover colors in red, blue, yellow and green. Available from Amazon and office supply stores, prices range from $3.35 to over $9.
All of these notebooks are suitable for students, but wouldn’t exactly be the right fit for a lefty with style.
HIPSTER STYLINGS
Hipsters usually like the Moleskine look, but if your “Too Cool for School” lefty prefers a grittier, Old School look, Baltimore-based Write Notepads & Co.Write Notepads & Co.
manufactures a notebook specifically for left-handers that might fit the bill.
The covers are made from a heavy-duty kraft card stock with brass, twin-loop, spiral rings on the right side. The standard righty version is imprinted with Write Notepad’s regular logo, but the lefty line is imprinted with the likeness of Paul South. (Get it? Say it aloud, sort of drawling. Paul South…for South-paws?)
The notebooks come in two sizes, a 3 1/2″ x 5 1/2″ pocket size (just a touch bigger than index cards) and a larger 5 1/2“ x 8 1/2” version. Each notebook has 120 sheets of paper, and the company notes that the paper is “fountain-pen friendly.“ Both include a Write Notepads & Co.-printed, oversized elastic to hold the book closed, for those who want their left-leaning thoughts kept private. Both sizes are available with either blank or ruled paper, and range from $8 for the smaller notebook and $16 for a larger one.
(If you prefer their traditional “righty” version, note that the bands are white rather than red.)
AMBIDEXTROUSLY ELEGANT
Paper Doll‘s diligent research team came up empty-handed (on the right and the left) with regard to executive-quality notebooks for left-handed writers. However, Levenger’s leather Ambi-Folio does offer a nice touch for keeping up with handwritten and digital work, no matter which hand you favor.
The smooth 10 1/4″ x 13″ full-grain leather portfolio comes in black, red and saddle (a rich brown) and has sections for a top-bound writing pad as well as a tablet or e-reader.
A Levenger notepad is included, and there are right-sized pockets for loose papers, business cards, index cards, and pens (on either side, accommodating lefties and rights). A zippered closure keeps everything safe. The whole arrangement can be flipped to reverse the set up and put your writing pad on the left or right, as is preferred.
SPECIALTY STORES
Aside from the products above, another alternative is to shop online at left-handed specialty stores like Lefty’s, which carries college- and wide-ruled academic, art and speciality notebooks.
And what of Hebrew notebooks, to which I alluded earlier? I suspected that I might find quite a few international versions of notebooks designed specifically for languages written right to left. Sadly, I didn’t have a lot of luck besides elementary school notebooks. Thus, the search continues.
Scientific American reports that approximately 15% of people are left-handed. You’d think in a consumer-driven society, more office supply companies would be developing solution-oriented goodies. If you have any great sources for attractive left-friendly notebooks, please share in the comments section.
Paper Doll Post:
5 Key Points for Organizing With Notebooks
A notebook is a notebook is a notebook. Or is it? The truth is, not all notebooks are created equally.
Notebooks seem like they should be pretty simple. At the heart, they are little books (or pads) of paper that allow us to take notes (or draw, or map). Of course, our notes may not be handwritten, so if our notes are digital, our notebooks must live in cyberspace, too. But there’s more to it than that.
Over the next few posts, we’re going to be looking at some new approaches to notebooks, making it a good time to review five noteworthy concepts related to organizing thoughts and information and making notetaking make sense. Bear in mind the following:
1) You can’t remember everything. The space in your brain is finite. It’s a common myth that most of us rarely use more than 10% of our brains. I’m not a neuroscientist, but I do know that our brains can’t maintain an unlimited amount of information and make it all equally accessible when and how we want it.
Simply put, you can’t think about things in-depth and with context if you’re constantly trying to remember to think of them.
Keeping a notebook doesn’t just enhance your memory; it sharpens your focus. When you merely listen to the world (whether the outside world or your own interior world), it’s easy to be passive. However, keeping notes turns listening into an active experience. The mere act of writing something forces you to put effort into comprehension.
Finally, once the general fact of something is written down (and temporarily stored), your brain can focus on analysis, processing and planning.
2) Loose notes don’t work. One of the ultimate, classic Paper Doll posts was Stay Far From Floozies: Avoiding the Loose Paper Trap. In organizing, we often talk about having a landing strip where we unload all the detritus of the day to ensure that phones get charged and keys remain accessible. (In the morning, the process is reversed and the landing strip becomes a launch pad, loaded with whatever essentials are needed to launch you out the door for a successful and organized day.)
If we skip the landing strip and just drop things wherever we let go of them, we’re dependent upon our eyes or memories for finding them again, slowing down the retrieval process. Having a notebook, one central location for incoming stimuli, is similarly a safer bet than letting notes “drop” on the backs of envelopes, the corners of napkins and the palm of your hand.
3) It’s not really about the notebook — it’s about you. As a professional organizer, I’ve found that the most significant reason a system works or does not, whether it’s for notetaking or calendaring or task management (or laundry or workflow or meal planning), has far less to do with the system used and far more to do with the user.
If an organizing system, or even the containers for your organizing system, do not fit your personal style, whether in terms of aesthetics, format or method of function, you’re going to find excuses to avoid using your system, and you’ll go back to whatever you used before, even if it failed you miserably.
(If going by gut instinct worked, we’d never seek outside help in the first place. Remember, if you always do what you’ve always done, you’ll always get what you always got!)
In Notions On Notebooks: Organize Your Paper Picks, we talked about how price and branding, binding, paper quality, lines, and color all determine whether a paper notebook format will be right for you. Reviewing that post will help you think about what notebook features will help you commit to a notetaking system.
4) The platform isn’t the same as the system. When we talk about notebooks, we tend to interchange the two, but they are very different. The platform is the physical (or digital) rendition of what tools we choose for organizing. At your house, you may store items in drawers, cabinets and lidded tubs, but that’s not an organizing system. Notebooks, like drawers, are containers. They serve a function for supporting an organizing system, but they are not the system, per se.
In the past, we’ve talked about a wide variety of notebook platforms, from environmentally-friendly notebooks (Green-Eyed But Not-So-Monstrous) to hybrid digital/paper notebooks (An Organized Hybrid: The Evernote Smart Notebook By Moleskine, From Paper to the Cloud: Ampad Shot Note) to adjustable notebooks (Presto, Change-o! Shape-shifting Organizing Products #2), and even waterproof notebooks (Paper Doll Writes Between the Raindrops: Waterproof Notebooks).
Whatever format or platform you use for a notebook, recognize that while the platform has to inspire your loyalty, it will only get you so far.
5) A notebook is only as good as the system you use for processing the information you put into it. Notebooks tend to exist for three disparate but sometimes interlocking purposes:
- Creating (journaling, sketching, designing) — What you put in these notebooks may not need to be tracked or managed. Just having a place to put your creations is often enough. However, if you are prolific, and retrieval of the product of your brilliance is an issue, you may want or need an indexing system for tracking what you’ve created.
This could be as simple as numbering your pages keeping a blank page at the front of your notebook for listing what you’ve designed or written. You might want to take a page (pardon the pun) out of philosopher John Locke’s approach to indexing commonplace books.
- Capturing (academic notes, business meeting notes, committee notes) — Once you capture essential information, you are generally asked to process it. The notes you take in your European history course may require you to capture fine detail regarding causes of wars or dates of battles so that you can memorize and regurgitate information. Conversely, notes captured in a client meeting might be the jumping off point for creating something new (an ad campaign, a solution to a problem, a product or service).
If you’re a student, to make sure you’ve got command of the subject, consider the Cornell Notetaking System (which is actually a system for learning and studying and not merely taking notes).
I was introduced to this process as a high schooler, long before I actually attended Cornell University, and it’s so useful, it’s really worthy of its own post. (Lifehacker has an excellent classic post on the Cornell system.)
For keeping up with business or other reading, you might prefer charting, outlining or mapping related concepts.
- Productivity (tasks) — If your notebook is designed to help you amass everything you need to do, rather than everything you need to know, you’ll need to find a workflow that makes sense for your life before you try to pick a snazzy notebook. A few systems that have enjoyed popularity in recent years include:
Bullet Journal — This method was covered in detail last year in Lifehacker’s The Bullet Journal Productivity Method Empowers Your Paper Notebook.
The AutoFocus System devised by time management expert Mark Forster. I’ve always thought my colleague Janine Adams, a Forster devotée, has done an excellent job explaining each iteration of the AutoFocus method. (The newest version of this system is called FinalVersion.)
So, I hope we’re clear that depending on memory or a series of fluttering scraps of paper is no way to master the information in your life. Notebooks can be excellent tools for organizing thoughts, but recognize that success depends on knowing yourself and your aesthetic deal-breakers, and employing information capturing and indexing systems that will keep you sticking to your system long into the future.
Paper Doll Post:
From Paper to the Cloud: Ampad Shot Note
For a while, Paper Doll kept getting asked the same question: Paper or Digital? Nowadays, that’s the wrong question. More and more, it’s not a question at all, because the answer is paper and digital. Hybrid solutions are becoming more common because people need to organize their information in multiple ways.
Last year, we looked at the Evernote Smart Notebook by Moleskine. On the outside, it was a cool paper notebook, designed for writing or sketching and helping you look like a hipster, but on the inside, it was magically connected to cyberspace. With the Smart Notebook, you added little stickers next to whatever you created, used your digital device to align and snap a photo, and the picture landed safely in your preferred Evernote folder, tagged appropriately because of each sticker’s flavor of magic fairy dust.
Today’s entry into the paper/cloud hybrid notebook arena, Esselte’s Ampad Shot Note, with the motto “From Handwritten to Handheld,” is a little less hipster than Moleskine and a little more corporate/classroom.
The Basics: Shot Note comes in seven varieties. Four are band-bound at the top, like a typical legal pad. The 5″ x 8″ writing pads are available in wide rule and dot graph formats (suitable for to-do lists and quick thoughts); the 8 1/2″ x 11 3/4″ writing pads also come in wide rule and dot graph (appropriate for class and meeting notes). All pads have a rigid 60 pt chipboard backing and 40 micro-perforated 22 lb. paper sheets. (The pages are not lined or dot-gridded on the reverse sides, unlike with traditional notepads.)
Two of the Shot Notes are spiral-bound for easy flipping of pages, but are also micro-perforated. The 9″ x 12″ blank sketch pad has an extra-sturdy 80 pt chipboard backing so the artist in you can be nimble. Each pad has 40 sheets of 50 lb. paper. The 9 1/2″ x 7 3/4″ writing notebook is medium ruled, with 40 sheets of 22 lb. paper and a rigid 60 pt chipboard backing. The sketch pad has the spiral at the top; the notebook is spiral-bound on the left side.
For a larger canvas to display your brilliance, there’s a 23 1/4″ x by 31″ blank easel pad with 25 perforated, self-adhesive, repositionable sheets of bleed-free 20 lb. paper.
All of the Shot Note varieties have corner markers to help you align the pages (of which, more later). Note, the corner markers are only on the “front” pages, so if you write on the reverse of the sheets, it’s no different from writing on a standard notepad.
Each of the writing pads has markings in the upper right corner so that you can date your notes. (The sketch pads are undated.)
How Shot Note Works:
- Download the free Ampad Shot Note app for iOS or Android.
- Use the notebooks. Write notes, letters, sonnets. Doodle your name and your sweetie’s, or sketch the next architectural wonder.
- Snap a photo of your creation using the Ampad Shot Note app, aligning the four corners of the page with the app’s doohickey for recognizing the corners. This uploads your page to the app.
Name your file. Add a description and tags. The app will create a date- and time-stamp for you.- Access and view the items you’ve captured. Search by name, tag or date/time-stamp.
Share your items via email, Evernote, Dropbox, Twitter or message from your camera roll.
Why You Might Use the Shot Note Pads and App
You, like Paper Doll, may have a really shaky hand when it comes to snapping documents and pictures with a tablet. While an increasing number of digital devices have grid lines built into the camera apps to make it easier to shoot “straight,” some are easier to manage than others.
Your creativity only bursts forth when you set pen (or pencil) to paper. Maybe you get tongue-tied (finger-tied?) when you type, but really need to have a digital copy of what you create so can share with collaborators or clients.
Maybe you want to share a personal message for a love note or “good luck” blurb, and don’t want to sacrifice handwriting and personal doodles just to be able to have it received immediately.
What other things could you do with the Shot Note?
- Archive your children’s school projects and drawings.
- Share notes from class with your study group.
- Snap your grocery list and share it with your family so two (or more) of you can divide up zones of the supermarket and finish faster.
- Keep your originals safe at home (or at the office) when you’re traveling.
For more on how the Shot Note works, check out the spiffy little video.
Paper Doll‘s Thoughts: I was intrigued by the Shot Note when it debuted at the 2013 NAPO Conference last spring. I still think it’s neato, in the abstract, but there are some practical concerns. First, price. Available at Amazon, Staples and other office supply stores, the Shot Note regular pads lists between $6 and $10, which is pretty pricey for so few pages per pad, though Amazon carries them at a significant discount (a more reasonable $2-$4). The easel pad, listing from $70-$90 (yes, really!) and discounted at about half of that, is pretty darned expensive for 25 monster-sized sticky notes.
Beyond price, it’s not clear what the Shot Note can do that’s really special. Right now, it’s a camera app that nicely lines up the pages of utilitarian-looking notepads, and it’s decently integrated with the major productivity tools. But it strikes me that Evernote seems to have gotten much farther with integrating its camera app, and can even search handwriting as if it were text. Then again, Ampad is in the business of paper, not digital manipulation, so maybe it’s not fair to hold the two to the same standards.
I had one other thought. The Shot Note focuses on the written and the visually artistic, but Ampad could create a Shot Note side-spiral notebook of blank sheet music. I suspect that there are suitable apps for taking the uploaded, snapped, handwritten notes and allowing the paper and apps to make beautiful music together. (No charge for the idea, Ampad. Enjoy!)
Paper Doll Post:
Notions on Notebooks: Organize Your Paper Picks
There’s a stain on my notebook where your coffee cup was…
Notebooks. Use them for recording clues in your current mystery or keeping a diary of the progress of your great romance. Copy down notes for school or draw up ideas for your next big event. A notebook, in the broadest terms, is someplace to keep your thoughts safe from the vagaries and whims of undependable synapses. Your brain is good at thinking things up, but unreliable at preserving your genius.
As Paper Doll, I value the inherent advantages paper has over electronic devices. It’s immediately available — there’s no need to power it up. Unless you’re involved in government or corporate espionage, it’s unlikely anyone will want to steal your notebook (as opposed to your shiny tablet computer). No specialized tools (stylus, cable, charger) are needed. If you don’t have your favorite pen, you can write with a pencil (even one of those stubby ones from miniature golf), a crayon, or if you’re desperate to get that inspiration down on paper, an eyeliner or lipstick.
Sure, there are numerous benefits to keeping your information digitally, too. You can’t back up a paper notebook, except by photocopying (unless you’re a John Adams with son John Quincy around to make copies of everything by hand). You can’t collaborate simultaneously with a writing or work partner. Sure, you can pass a notebook back and forth like a third grade slam book, but simultaneous collaboration requires a cloud service like Google Drive. (Then again, if you share documents across two Google accounts and one person deletes their account, you lose access to all the shared documents created at the other person’s end. And, of course, reduced security of paper notes is only as problematic as your own lack of vigilance, but while the NSA probably can’t see into your breakfast nook, you don’t know when or whether Evernote or Google is granting somebody a peek at your digital accounts.)
These issues and more have come to my mind after reading Janine Adams’ The Virtues of a Nice Lined Notebook and Lifehacker’s Note Taking Styles Compared: Evernote vs. Plain Text vs. Pen and Paper. At some point, we’ll look at how to select the right electronic note-capturing system for your needs. (We’ve already talked about hybrid systems, like the Evernote Smart Notebook by Moleskine.) But today, I’ve been thinking about (what else?) paper notebooks.
Not all notebooks are created equally; neither should you forget that you are unique, and your choices need to reflect your personal needs. Consider the following!
Price and Branding — If capturing information is your only concern, an off-brand, black-and-white speckled composition notebook from the dollar store should suffice.
However, if you’re the kind of person who can’t write a grocery list unless it’s bound in leather, then you might want to look at this classic Unclutterer post, 35 Luxury Notebooks To Organize Your Life.
Or, you may be less hung up on price, but it matters to you that your notebook is stamped with a name like Cavallini or Fabriano for cachet or Field Notes or Moleskine for hipster cool. Or maybe Rhodia‘s little trees on a golden backing remind you of your Grandpa. If these things matter to you, buying a notebook that doesn’t fit your need for prestige may mean it’ll just be clutter in the bottom of the drawer a few weeks from now.
Portability — A small spiral-bound notebook, the kind in which school kids used to record homework assignments and (1970’s-era TV drama) reporters used for interviews, will fit nicely in a purse or a man’s front shirt pocket. Many purveyors have lovely (faux-fancy) small notebooks. But if you prefer a larger canvas, with something closer to letter-sized paper, recognize that the trade off is that you’ll have to carry something else, like a backpack or messenger bag, to protect your notebook from the elements. Well, unless you choose waterproof notebooks, like the ones we talked about a few years back.
Binding — Spiral can be messy when you tear pages out, unless the paper is also perforated. Fancy sewn bindings with gussets allow upscale notebooks to lay flat when open, making them more like traditionally-bound books. If the difference seems subtle to you, your binding choices won’t matter. If you’re a princess with a pea-green, machine-glued binding, you may never fall asleep and get to use your dream-capturing notebook.
Paper quality — Some people can just as happily write on a paper napkin as parchment, but if you have a fondness for luxe inks, you need to make sure your notebook of choice can stand up to your writing implements of choice without any bleed-through. Tip: The Well-Appointed Desk is a great blog for learning about papers and inks and whether they play nicely with one another.
Lines — Lines on the highway to delineate lanes? Essential. Lines on your face? Misery in the mirror. But lines on your notebook page make a difference. If you’re linear and focused and number your lists, you’ll probably want lines. If you’re all about mind-mapping, the blank page will probably suit you better. Of course, the types of lines may make a difference, in which case, alternatives like the White Lines notebooks we discussed in Green-Eyed But Not-So-Monstrous, might be your preference. Lines, grids, graphs — only you know what you need.
Color — Again, that seventh grader in you might long for the black-and-white speckle, but Paperthinks‘ rainbow of recycled leather notebooks (from pocket-sized to large, slim or regular, ruled or unlined) might fulfill your passion for a colorful lifestyle.
Or, you might eschew color for classic Parisian chic, like the Moleskine Black Line we talked about last year.
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.
Tell Paper Doll — what’s your notebook style? What do you think it says about you? Please reply in the comments.
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