Archive for ‘Office Supplies’ Category
In Search of Lost Time: Productivity, Proust, and the Culture of Availability
Marcel Proust’s seven-volume novel, In Search of Lost Time, translated from the French À La Recherche du Temps Perdu, was first translated into English as Remembrance of Things Past and is known for its theme of involuntary memory.
It’s apt because, as I tried to decide what to write about this week, conversations and internet discoveries kept bringing me back to the concept of time: the way we accommodate our time for others, how we aspire to (and fail to) use time for tasks, and how we struggle with “managing time,” which is really an attempt to manage our thoughts, actions, and inner selves.
So, rather than a typical Paper Doll post of how-to and what-to, today’s post is a chance for you to look at my Proustian involuntary thoughts and memories. I’m going to share the thoughts that resulted; please join me in these rabbit holes of time-related thought.
IT ALL STARTED WITH SOME ROCKS
I wasn’t even searching for anything about time. But one of my superpowers is to notice headlines with words related to my work, like organizing, time management, clutter, lost, missing, etc. And a headline caught my attention.
A Billion Years of Time Are Mysteriously Missing. Scientists Think They Know Why.
I mean, I’ve had clients lose checkbooks and passports, Halloween costumes and crockpots, birthday checks and tax returns. And, as we’ll get to, I’ve heard them complain about many ways they lose (and lose track of) time.
But I can’t say that any of them have ever reported losing a BILLION YEARS!
Scientists are savvy. They can tell how old a body is by its bones. Cut down a tree and they can look at the rings to know its age.
Well, geologists can reconstruct whole chunks of our Earth’s history from the rocks, fossils, and detritus of eons under the surface. And it turns out that while we were all searching for free COVID tests and KN95 masks, playing Wordle, and seeing how Irish fisherman were putting Vladimir Putin in his place, found a big, gaping whole in our planet’s history.
Well, not a hole. Maybe a wormhole? But definitely a huge lapse in time where there’s no evidence that anything has been going on. It’s like how you eat lunch and figure you’ll just check your Twitter feed before getting back to your next project, and then next thing you know it’s 5 o’clock and there’s no evidence of what happened with your whole afternoon!
Rock/Geology Photo by Aaron Thomas on Unsplash
More than one billion years of time is missing! This period is known as the The Great Unconformity, and it’s been puzzling geologists, who have been trying to figure out why sometimes, in some places, there are 550 million-year-old rocks sitting on top of completely ancient layers of rock that apparently date back as far as 1.7 billion years ago. And there’s no sign of what happened during all those lost eras, epochs, periods, and TV seasons.
Scientists are still working on the mystery, and there are some theories you can read about at the above link. But this is what first got me thinking about lost time.
LOST TIME
Do you ever wonder where the time goes?
In the last few days, I kept hearing people say some version of, “How is January over already?”
Last week, a client was referring to something that happened “last year” when her spouse chimed in that, no, what she was thinking of was actually two years ago, in 2020.
Culture of Availability
Some of the amorphous aspect of time is because modern life just moves at a different pace, with a greater sense of immediacy baked into “instant” messaging and expectations of immediate responses. If we’re “always on,” when do we have the opportunity to recuperate and rest our engines?
If we’re always living for others’ expectations, when are we living our own lives?
If we're *always on,* when do we have the opportunity to recuperate and rest our engines? If we're always living for others' expectations, when are we living our own lives? Share on XIn ye olden days, people wrote letters. They arrived when they arrived (if at all, not unlike the current postal kerfuffles); if you needed someone’s attention sooner, you sent a telegram.
Eventually, you could place a phone call through the operator (and later, directly), but there was no guarantee you’d reach someone when they were in. (And on the flip side, much time was lost in the lives of young women who waited by the telephone, as immortalized in the plaintive prayers in Dorothy Parker’s famed A Telephone Call short story.)
At work, one might have a secretary to take messages during business hours, but it would be another half-century before “important” people (doctors, physicians, movie stars) would have answering services.
Answering machines were still uncommon enough in the 1970s that the opening sequence of The Rockford Files, with a new inbound message each week, was still novel.
(But click to hear the show’s actual theme music.)
And of course, voicemail was still even further away. And this doesn’t take into account all of the other places we can be found today — and where we are expected to reply. There’s email, texts, Facebook messages, Twitter DMs, WhatsApp, SnapChat, Slack, and who knows what else.
To that end, I direct you to I’m Not Sorry for My Delay, a recent piece in The Atlantic about our culture of availability.
The piece quotes Melissa Mazmanian, an informatics professor at UC Irvine, about the trend that started with the post-beeper, circa-1999 invention of RIM’s BlackBerry.
BlackBerry Photo by Randy Luon on Unsplash
With this magical “two-way pager” came the almost-miraculous ability of professionals to conduct business on-the-go, and it’s easy to see how, in two decades, we got to what we have now, including the ubiquity of ways we can — and are expected to — be available. The author notes that “The superpower morphed into an obligation” and Mazmanian calls it a spiral of expectations.
Yeah, it is!
Certainly, the more work we are expected to do, and the more often we are expected to be available (at the in-person meeting that could have been a Zoom, the Zoom that could have been an email, and the email that could have just not been), the less time we have for anything, and especially, anything important.
As an organizing and productivity expert, my job is to guide clients past the morass of overwhelm brought on by this spiral of expectations. The key (and I do not mean to ignore the difficulty in the simplicity) is to set and maintain boundaries. For example:
To set boundaries for yourself:
- Know how, when, where, and by whom you are often distracted.
You can’t change what you can’t identify. If you tend to get lost online, but aren’t sure where the quicksand is, try an app that tracks your time and gives you a report of where you’re spending it. RescueTime, Toggl Track, and MyHours are a few good options to consider.
And if your lost time is more vague and non-techie, try keeping a time log for a week. Set a phone alarm at frequent, regular intervals prompt you to fill in the log. A few years ago, A Life of Productivity’s Chris Bailey interviewed time management expert Laura Vanderkam about how to track time. There’s even a link to time logs you can fill in, either via excel or on a printable log.
- Make some rules regarding how you will respect your time.
You can start with a classic Paper Doll post, R-E-S-P-E-C-T: The Organizing Secret for Working At Home.
Set specific office hours. When does your work day start and end? When will you do only “work” things” and when will you do only “home/family” things and, yes, shockingly, when will you do only “personal” things? While there’s certain to be overlap in some parts of your day, having a plan for who gets to pull you or push you when is a mighty first step in controlling your day.
- Head technology off at the pass.
Your employer may dictate when you must be available and via what technology, but the rest of your time, you get to decide! Try removing all (or even all but one) social media app from your phone for a week. (You can easily download it again next Monday.) If you have an urgent need to see what’s going on at Twitter or wherever, you can always use your browser.
Turn off your app notifications. That doesn’t mean you won’t know someone tried to reach you. You’ll just only know when you decide to go find out. Read your email at the time you’ve blocked off for email review instead of having to focus while your email dings at you. Check your Twitter retweets and DMs when you decide to, rather than having your phone “whoosh” at you all day.
To set boundaries for others to respect:
- Put a message in your signature block of your emails, letting people know that you check and return emails once in the morning and twice in the afternoon (or once a day, or never). The key is to set expectations.
Maybe you’re one of those folks who prefers a call to an email. Or an email to a text. Or perhaps you want everyone to call your assistant…who happens to be on a planned leave for the next six months, or forever, so everyone better be forewarned! 😉
The point is that if you set an expectation, nobody else (except within the realm of what your employer can control) has any final say.
- Change your voicemail’s outgoing message to reflect your availability. Decades ago, I was shocked by a colleague’s outgoing message that said that “all calls would be returned by the end of the next business day.”
Really?
No getting back to her home office from a full client day and returning calls at 8 p.m. as she rushed to make dinner? No returning calls that came in on Saturday afternoon? No identifying with Superman that someone out there needed her?
And no turmoil over the idea that if she weren’t sitting by the phone to answer a prospective client’s call AND she didn’t return the call the minute she finished with one client, even though she was supposed to be at her daughter’s dance recital, the person might call another company? (Some echoes of Dorothy Parker’s story, perhaps?)
After having spent my first career in the fast-paced world of television, where a succession of general managers and master control room operators would call me at dinner time, at 3 a.m., and on holiday weekends, this was a revelation. And it’s one I teach to my clients.
Notwithstanding hiccups (a toddler’s meltdown, a canceled flight, fire, flood, blizzards, or burst pipes, you get to decide what to do with your one wild and precious life.
*Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?* —Mary Oliver, The Summer Day Share on XIf you’ve been following good time management guidelines, you’ve mapped out what you need to accomplish, grouped categories together, time-blocked your tasks, and scheduled them.
The next step is to analyze whether anything new that comes in is (truly) more urgent or (really-and-truly) more important enough to kick a pre-scheduled activity out of its slot.
And if it’s not? Well, it can go on the schedule for another day.
- Only use the messaging apps at which you want to be reached. In my stride toward giving Facebook less and less control over my time, I deleted the app from some devices and deleted the Facebook messaging app from all of them. Only my friends and clients know my cell phone number; my public-facing phone number is my office landline, and you can’t text it.
Living in a Pandemic (and Still Not a Post-Pandemic) World
Of course, not all of our lost time is due to the culture of availability. Much of it is still dictated by the vagaries and whims of living and working during COVID.
All of the benchmarks and signposts of our week (and children’s weeks) have come unglued. To gain as much control (as possible) over the flow of your time, I encourage you read some of my lovingly crafted (and only rarely unhinged) posts from the past two years (but especially the very first one):
Does Anybody Really Know What Time It Is? 5 Strategies to Cope With Pandemic Time Dilation (Seriously, kids. Read this.)
The Perfect Unfolding As We Work From Home
Rhymes With Brain: Languishing, Flow, and Building a Better Routine
Count on Accountability: 5 Productivity Support Solutions
TIME- AND TASK-RELATED PRODUCTS CALLING OUT TO ME
So, all of this has been on my mind. Massive lost geological time. Lost time due to the culture of availability. The weirdness of pandemic time. And then two products kept showing up in my analog and digital life.
Post-it® Noted Line
Post-it® has developed a whole series of Noted products only tangentially related to the regular (but beloved) Post-it® Notes we use daily.
Yes, they’re paper. And yes, they’re adhesive. But if traditional Post-it® Notes are quotidian, workaday items for the home and office, and Post-it® Extreme Notes (which I covered in Sticky to the Extreme: Organizing Information in Extreme Situations with Post-it® Extreme Notes) are Brawny Man-level solutions, Noted items seem to be up-and-coming executive who appreciates pretty things.
The Noted line, which I’ll cover in greater depth in a future post, includes notebooks, organizing tools, pens, and of course, notes. But in my forays online and off, I kept finding myself face-to-display with a few Noted products related to keeping track of your tasks and time, including:
Noted by Post-it® Daily Agenda Pad — This 100-sheet pink pad measures 3.9″ x 7.7″ and is designed as a no-frills agenda pad to schedule or track your day hour-by-hour. If you generally use a digital calendar and are finding you’re missing the tactile granularity of a paper calendar, you might want to try this. You can affix a note to the front of a notebook or portfolio or stick it on your wall or the top of your desk to keep it in view.
Noted by Post-it® Daily Planner Pad — Like the agenda, the planner is 100 sheets/per pad of adhesive notes with a more task (rather than appointment) oriented view. The Daily Planner Pad measures 4.9″ x 7.7″ and has section headings for:
- Do That Work (with a checkbox on every line)
- Move That Body
- Drink That Water (with little water glass illustrations you can check off)
- Morning, Noon, and Night activity spaces
- “Etc.” for free-writing and other activities
Noted by Post-it® Habit Tracker Notes — If your lost time is keeping you from hitting your goals and keeping up with your habits, these 2.9″ x 4″ habit tracker notes (also available in a mini size) give you a teeny, tiny calendar-esque view to check off your important habits. Stick it in your planner or on your desk to track whatever habits you want to acquire or eschew. (This one one has a self-care theme, but there’s a generic Habit Tracker version.)
Mover Erase Combo
The precursor of the Mover Erase Combo had been just on the periphery of my attention for the past few years as part of Bravestorming’s crowdfunded Mover Line. (Mike Vardy, the Productivityist, mentioned it once and the notion stuck somewhere in the recesses of my brain.)
But for the last week, though I’m certain I hadn’t clicked on anything to put a cookie in all of my devices, it kept showing up! If a white board and sticky notes had a baby, and the midwife were magnetic, and the baby shower were thrown by crowdfunding sources, you’d get Mover Erase Combo, a reusable (analog) system for scheduling, accomplishing tasks, and brainstorming ideas.
I’m still wrapping my head around the new iteration, but rather than losing any more time (heh) before sharing it with you, I thought I’d see what you think of the video.
Please share your thoughts in the comments, below.
Readers, I doubt anyone would imagine that Marcel Proust and I have much in common. I’m certainly more likely to hit on unanticipated memories when I scarf down a Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup than he experienced with his famed madeleine:
“No sooner had the warm liquid mixed with the crumbs touched my palate than a shudder ran through me and I stopped, intent upon the extraordinary thing that was happening to me.”
But lost time and thoughts pervaded this week, and I thank you for letting me indulge in them.
Paper Doll Post:
Ask Paper Doll: Should I Organize My Space and Time with Color?
This is part of a recurring series of Ask Paper Doll posts where you can get your burning organizing questions answered by Paper Doll, a 20-year veteran professional organizer and amateur goofball.
Dear Paper Doll:
It’s only January and I’m already at a loss for motivation. I’ve been thinking about using color to organize my office and maybe my calendar, but the more I look at my options, the more overwhelmed I get. How can I organize by color and not constantly be tinkering with my systems and remembering what color goes where?
Signed,
Feeling grey with a case of the blues
Grey sky, grey streets, grey mood? Even if we weren’t in the second winter of a pandemic, January is a tough month to feel sparkly. We’re still nine weeks away from Daylight Saving Time, so our late afternoons are dark and gloomy. Plus, after the ongoing glow of holidays from late November through New Year’s Day, of course you’re feeling a loss of spark.
And yes, color is a great way to pump up the mood. If color weren’t so vital, Pantone wouldn’t be known worldwide for coming up with its color of the year. By the way, Paper Doll is a huge fan of this year’s color, Very Peri.
But organizing by color and organizing with color can be very different things.
ORGANIZING BY COLOR
Some people are enthusiastic about using color to organize everything in their homes, offices, and lives. Maybe they have a signature color that serves as a personal brand; others believe in color-coding and sorting everything by hue. Paper Doll isn’t necessarily keen on that. Using color to decide where something goes and with which it is grouped depends on the situation.
Organizing clothing or shoes by color? Sure. Imagine you have all of your long-sleeved shirts hanging in the closet, in roughly ROY-G-BIV color order, or group all your black pumps together, then the blue, then the red, and so-on within your collection of heels.
This will make it easy to recognize you’ve tipped the scale toward full-on goth when you’ve got 17 black turtlenecks, or may be mistaken for Dorothy if most of your shoes are ruby red. Sorting and ordering your clothes and shoes by color makes sense, but probably as a secondary sorting characteristic within clothing/shoe types.
Organizing your calendar by color? Absolutely! Whether you grab a selection of pretty markers to fill in your paper planner (medical appointments in red, billing or tax dates in green, social events in purple) or use the settings in Outlook, Gmail, or any other digital calendar, you can color-code to your heart’s delight.
And the best thing? If you select the wrong color, you don’t need white-out or an eraser to fix it. One little click, and you’re back in business!
Organizing files by color? Mayyyyyyyybe. I hate to sound coy, but the effectiveness of a system based on color-coding files depends on the level of commitment of the user.
In the abstract, it can be great to organize your files (either tabbed folders or hanging folders) by color. Figure out what your overarching categories are, and assign colors to those categories, whether in your reference or action files. For example:
- Red folders — Urgent tasks or information you always need to get your hands on in a hurry
- Green folders — Financial information related to taxes, payable accounts, and investments
- Blue folders — Planning, like for vacations or work projects
- Yellow folders — Client information or class materials
- Purple folders — Creative tasks
and so on. Color (as we’ll see below) stirs emotions, creates enthusiasm and motivation, and triggers action. What could be better?
The problem isn’t with the system, per se, but with the users. If you let yourself run out of yellow folders just as you sign on a new client, what will you do? Are you likely to order new folders in that color scheme right away? If so, you’re set. If not, you may let a pile of papers related to that client languish in the corner of your desk, risking them getting mislaid or lost.
Plus, keeping many different boxes of colored tabbed folders can be expensive and get out of balance quickly. You may use three times as many purple folders as red ones and your red box may sit year after year, mostly untouched.
If you want to embrace color, there are a few other options beyond a full-on color-coding assault. You could:
- Pick your favorite color, and use those tabbed folders exclusively.
- Start with just two or three of your most used categories and pick colors to define each of those. You’ll still be using color as a sort of trigger or label, as above, but you won’t be going “whole hog,” at least not at the beginning.
- Use plain manilla tabbed folders, but pick a beloved color for hanging folders. (Because hanging folders hold tabbed folders, and can generally accommodate three-in-one, we don’t run out of them as quickly.) Traditional olive/army green hanging folders aren’t likely to cheer anyone up, and using a fun hanging folder uniformly through your filing system will brighten your mood without requiring you to keep up with a complex system.
(These purple Smead hanging folders are bright and bold, and are available in most Big Box stores and at Amazon for $17.89 for a box of 25.)
Organizing your spices by color? How experienced a chef are you that you could catch yourself before you added a visibly similar (but wrong) spice to a recipe? Ground nutmeg, cloves, and cinnamon look alike; but would you want to risk grabbing the wrong one and making iced nutmeg rolls or clove-raisin coffee cake?
Are you willing to mistake similarly-red cayenne pepper for paprika? Perhaps it’s better to group spices by the categories of usage (baking tasks vs. preparing meat/vegetables, etc.). SpiceAdvice has a nice Quick Reference Spice Chart sorted by usage categories.
Organizing your books by color? Oh, gracious. This question has stirred quite a bit of controversy over the last few years. I mean, there’s this person:
I feel like coordinating books by color is one of those things you either love or are wrong about. pic.twitter.com/U6GfIZLgnQ
— Jennifer Wright (@JenAshleyWright) July 15, 2020
I’d take umbrage, but I’m too busy worried about how cold her legs must be.
And then there’s Clea Shearer and Joanna Teplin from the Netflix program Get Organized with the Home Edit. They’re known for their passion for color-coding, and they did that with a few bookshelves on their show. But they were children’s books, and let’s face it, the way tiny humans pull books off shelves, it’s not like alphabetized books are going to stay that way. (Their background, at the above link, shows a full set of bookshelves for grownups arranged by color. I’m looking around for my fainting couch.)
Magazines have been rife with headlines in favor of organizing books by color. For example, Jezebel ran with a piece called Sorry, Color-Coded Bookshelves Look Good, while Slate stood up for the design-oriented folks with Arranging Your Books By Color Is Not a Moral Failure.
Of course, in this highly competitive media market, every online magazine’s job is to stir controversy and curry clicks. Thus, I suspect these headlines recognize that those of us who read may care more about the content of our books than using them as decor and are trying to drive some righteous indignation clicks to their sites.
But Paper Doll stands firmly in the NOPE category on organizing books by hue. The color of a book’s cover is about marketing; it was almost certainly chosen by a marketing team based on the designs in fashion for that genre during that season. The color may not even have been approved by the author or seem to make sense. I mean, even early versions of Alice Walker’s The Color Purple didn’t have a purple book cover or spine!
I’m a practical person. I believe that function should always come before form. A gorgeous outfit that doesn’t cover all your fleshy bits and gives you frostbite? Nuh-uh. A bookshelf that requires you to remember the color of the cover vs. letting you just walk over to peruse the category (fiction? organizing? recipes?) or authors? I can’t countenance that.
I’m not saying you can’t do it; I’m saying I can’t advise it.
And that’s because, as a professional organizer, my role is to help you live a more organized and productive life. Sure, I’ll leave your space looking better than it did before, but my reason for being in your space is to leave it working better than it did before.
ORGANIZING WITH COLOR
So, what’s the difference?
Organizing by color requires creating a system. With clothes or shoes, it might just be ROY-G-BIV and keeping things in order. When you put away your clothes, as you approach with a freshly-laundered shirts on hangers, you’ll be able to put away each item in the general color order. It’s your closet, so you don’t have to be too persnickety unless Vogue is coming to do a photo layout of your walk-in, in which case, good for you!
With file folders, as described above, organizing by color requires a stricter system. In effect, you’re deciding, up front, what all of your categories will be and assigning colors to those categories. You have to be willing to stop, each time you create a folder, to consider what category the contents of the folder belong to, and select that color every time. If you’re comfortable with that, then you have my blessing. I just don’t want to see you get stressed out.
You also have to be relatively sure that you’ll “feel” this association going forward (unless you’re just having fun and don’t care whether there’s a cognitive connection between your colors and your categories); if you soon realize that you hate the color orange but have assigned orange to your accounts payable, you might stop filing your paid bills or (eek!) avoid paying them altogether.
Organizing by color can be great, and I’m absolutely in favorite of it, as long as you, as an individual, feel comfortable sticking to a system. If not, that’s OK. There are still magnificent ways to organize your life with color, without adhering to strict or narrow categories.
Organizing with color lets you pick functional objects that add a pop of color but don’t require a lot of mental or physical effort to maintain.
It’s more thematic than systematic.
It’s sort of how we talked about about goals and resolutions vs. picking a word of the year. (If you haven’t read Review & Renew for 2022: Resolutions, Goals, and Words of the Year, this is a great time to help you get back on that motivation kick!) Goals — and the habits we embrace to achieve them — are like the systems for organizing by color; a word, mantra, or theme of the year, rather, provides a sense of focus, and color can do that for you.
Pantone does it with the color of the year; you can brand yourself, or your year, with color that’s meaningful to you! Think, “2022 in Royal Blue!” (Good luck rhyming a year with periwinkle or burnt sienna, though.)
Let’s get a sense of what color psychology tells us. Our friends at Quill created a nifty explanation to help explain some of the meanings of color in “Color Code Your Way to an Organized Workspace with Office Products.”
Do you have to use the specific colors that are associated with specific feelings? Of course not. I don’t particularly find the color yellow to be “associated with hope, happiness, and positivity.” I don’t even buy the original yellow Post-it® Notes because yellow just doesn’t do it for me. (I’m so into pinks and purples, as you might have guessed.)
But do experiment and take advantage of the aspects of the psychology of color to make your space your own.
A FEW FUN WAYS TO INTRODUCE COLOR INTO YOUR LIFE THIS SEASON
Our friends at Time Timer have come up with some gorgeous, new colorful timers.
First, they’ve released their original 8″ timers in Learning Center Classroom Sets (of 3) in two different color schemes. But you don’t need to be using them in a classroom to brighten up your office or workspace. There’s a primary color set:
and a secondary color set:
These sets are priced (for pre-order) at $104/set. Again, these are designed for learning activities, but there’s no reason why you couldn’t have one timer in your office, one in your kitchen, and one in your workout area.
Each set comes with three Original 8″ visual timers (for up to a 60-minute duration) with magnetic backs and fold-up feet, three dry erase cards for labeling the current activity (great for helping you focus during a 25-minute pomodoro task), and one free download of the Time Timer Desktop App.
They’re also selling a Time Timer MOD® – Special Edition Tie-Dye version (for pre-order) for $36.95. I’m a big fan of the little MODs, and this 3 1/2″ square MOD provides a tiny pop of color while helping you visualize time passing, and keep you motivated to accomplish your tasks.
For a burst of color for office supplies, consider Poppin desk, wall, and office accessories:
You can buy their products directly from the Poppin website, or at Staples, Quill, and The Container Store. Be sure to check out Poppin’s Work From Home section for more fun, motivating bursts of color.
Do you like to wrap yourself up in color or just use it for accents?
Are you comfortable with intricate color-coding systems, or do you just want to surround yourself with your favorite hues?
And what’s your favorite color?
Meet me in the comments and tell all!
Paper Doll Post:
The Humble Index Card: Organize Your Life, Then Organize Your Cards
When was the last time you used an index card? Chances are, you don’t give a lot of respect to the humble three-by-five, but we owe so many of our systems, including almost every type of categorization and computerization, to what first got plotted out in a precursor of the little cards we know so well.
Index cards, of a sort, have been around ever since the 1760s, when Swedish botanist Carl Linnaeus, the father of modern taxonomy (the science of classification), figured out that he could name, categorize, and keep track of animals, plants, and minerals. All that Latin nomenclature, with genus and species and sub-species, needed to be written down somewhere, and Linnaeus figured out how to square it all away.
I know, it’s hard to believe someone had to invent an index card, but realize that file folders weren’t even invented until the late 1800s, filing cabinets came to market in 1898, and paper clips showed up around 1900. If you crave more about the history of office supplies — and I mean, who doesn’t? — you might like to check out:
A Place for Everything: The Curious History of Alphabetical Order by Judith Flanders (which is about so much more than just alphabetical order, and provides some eye-opening backward glances into how hard it was to organize information throughout most of recorded history).
The Perfection of the Paper Clip: Curious Tales of Invention, Accidental Genius, and Stationery Obsession by James Ward, which offers intriguing narratives (with a British twist) on how all our office supplies were developed.
In the world of Evernote and OneNote, of CRMs and productivity apps, the humble index card often gets lost in the shuffle (if you’ll pardon the card pun). But there are a variety of ways to organize information and knowledge to help you lead a more orderly life — inexpensively, easily, and without internet access.
I have nothing against using the web and all the magical apps available to help you achieve your goals, but Paper Doll would be doing a disservice not to note the old-school ways you can organize your life with index cards. And of course, while I’m at it, I’ve got a deep dive on options to help you organize those index cards to keep clutter at a bare minimum.
WHAT CAN YOU DO WITH AN INDEX CARD?
Think back. What was your earliest interaction with index cards? Was it Grandma’s recipe for your favorite cookies, perhaps with an oily thumbprint in the upper corner of a card covered with her curling scrawl? Maybe you learned how to do geometry proofs with each card bisected vertically? Or perhaps you studies for the SAT vocabulary section using index cards as flash cards?
In this digital age, you can still do so much with a package of 3″ x 5″ index cards from the dollar store. Off the top of my head, you can use an index card or stack for:
- Address Collections – The problem with a print address book is that once you fill up a “popular” letter (M? S?) until all the blanks are filled, or if one of your vagabond friends has used up an entire page of one letter of addresses for her travels hither and yon, you need to acquire a new address book to make up for the oodles of scribbles and cross-outs. Sure, using the Contacts app in your phone is ideal, unless you’ve somehow failed to back your phone up to the cloud, in which case, one accidental trip through the washing machine can erase a lifetime of contacts. But index cards were a simple, inexpensive precursor to a Rolodex and continue to make an appealing alternative to digital address apps. Using one card per person/family lets you keep track of addresses, phone numbers, email addresses, the names of newly-arrived babies, and so on. When one card has enough cross-outs and re-writes, just replace it with a new index card rather than a whole new address book.
- Customer Relationship Management (CRM) — Yes, a CRM software program is the gold standard for new businesses, and I wouldn’t encourage you to start a business by keeping this kind of information on paper. But if you’re the kind of person who just doesn’t embrace technology for everything, using an index card with your client’s name, phone number, birthday/anniversary, and key preferences might be a good way to help you get started. When your customer reaches out to you, or vice versa, you can put a date on the line, with a quick note about the conversation, letting you trace the history of the relationship over time.
- Expense Logs — In the olden days, we wrote checks and then noted information about the transactions in our check registers. Paper Doll still uses a register for every transaction, but is prompted by receipts (from debit card transactions, mostly) to remind myself what to log. However, just carrying an index card in your wallet gives you an easy way to keep track of your financial activities in the moment. Write the date, the amount, and a one-line description of what you bought. If you tend to use cash, this will help you track your expenses without need of logging into your bank account; if you use your debit or credit card, mostly, this offers assistance for keeping tabs on your day-to-day spending (as using plastic doesn’t “feel” like money, and you may not realize how much outlay is going on).
- Meals and Snack Logs — Are you on any kind of eating plan? (The word “diet” is so last century!) Whether you’re keeping track of protein grams and carbs for nutritional reasons, calories for health, or exact foods to figure out a mystery allergy, index cards offer a quick solution.
- To-Do Lists — Start your day with your three most important goals on an index card. When you have only three inches by five inches of real estate, you’re going to be pithy and get to the point. (Sure, you can use a Post-it® Note, but lined index cards give you a little more formality.) I like to pick 1 big task, two medium-sized tasks, and three small tasks, but even these should fit on a “today” card.
- Wanna-Do Lists — Yes, if your friend recommends a book, movie, restaurant, or podcast, you can pull it up in your phone, but only if your phone is handy. (And then, how much more likely are you to then be distracted by your phone and ignore your friend?) Keeping a running list on a card or two in your wallet or purse lets you pull it out when the context is right — when you’re trying to find somewhere to eat on Saturday night or roaming the bookstore (or even surfing online) to find something to read.
- Flash Cards — I love my Duolingo for learning Italian, but to remember attraversiamo, già, and sempre, or to distinguish among ora vs. poi vs. allora, you can’t beat a flash card. Whether you’re learning bones and ligaments in medical school, national capitals and top exports in geography, or embracing those definitions for the SAT verbals, flash cards are inexpensive and easy to make, quick to shuffle, and require no battery charge. Plus, research shows that we remember what we hand-write, with greater context and nuance, than what we type.
- Recipes — This one can’t surprise you. For a century, families have passed down handwritten recipes on index cards.
- Household Inventories — Sure, you’ll create the best, most complete inventory if you video your possessions and log them in software like HomeZada or Sortly, or even in a self-created database in Airtable, but if you want to do a quick-and-dirty inventory of your space, noting descriptions, model numbers, serial numbers, etc., an index card inventory is a great start.
- Research — Whether you’re writing a report for Social Studies or looking up some genealogical records, index cards provide a way of encapsulating information. You can use numbers and letters to code which things are related to what. My 7th grade English teacher taught us to create an outline (with Roman numerals and letters, breaking down each section), putting each bibliographic item on its own card with its own code, and then each fact or quote got a card, linking it to the outline and to the bibliographic source. Not only did I use this method (with small modifications) in college and graduate school, but I incorporated into research I’ve done for my ebooks and other publications. The size of the index card forces you to focus on bite-sized pieces of information.
- Maps for Creative Endeavors and Adventures — Writing a novel? Use index cards to keep track of the essential traits of each character, and then map out your plot points, and put it all up on a bulletin board. (This method is actually the model for the popular Scrivener software.) Planning a vacation and can’t decide among all the options? Make a card for each alternative, with essential information like dates and times each museum or attraction is open, then sort by location (Paris, London, Madrid? Niagara Falls, Buffalo, Rochester?) and order by priorities. Bring the stack with you on your trip, and if weather or a venue closure blocks your plans, you’ll be able to pick the next priority in the stack!
SPECIAL USE OF INDEX CARDS: THE HIPSTER PDA
Have you ever heard of the Hipster PDA?
Back in 2004, Merlin Mann, writer and founder of the productivity website 43 Folders, (somewhat) jokingly turned his back on the increasing complexity of what we used to call personal digital assistants (like those pre-iPhone Blackberry and PalmPilot devices). He put forth the idea of using a small stack of index cards and a binder clip to gather essential information and keep it at hand.
Teo, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons
While Mann may have been applying the concept with a bit of tongue-in-cheek goofiness, the followers of David Allen’s Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity (GTD) approach picked up the idea of the Hipster PDA and ran with it. In GTD, one of the focuses is on keeping context lists, so that when you’re at the office, you have an Office list; when you’re at the supermarket, you have a Piggly Wiggly list, and so on.
While most people are keeping that kind of list in the reminders app of their phone, fans of the Hipster PDA have a context card for each item or task to be slotted where appropriate.
The Hipster PDA requires only index cards (used vertically or horizontally, as you prefer) and binder clips. If you want, you can use multi-color card packs to color-code different features or contexts. There are even crowdsourced templates all over the web (here’s a set at DIY Planner) and on Pinterest to help you use index cards to create the productivity approach of your dreams.
HOW CAN YOU KEEP YOUR INDEX CARDS ORGANIZED?
The answer may seem almost ridiculous. After all, a simple rubber band around a packet of index cards should be enough to keep them from spreading out across a desk drawer, a high school locker, or an office. But if you’ve ever come across an old stack of index cards, wrapped in a rubber band like that, you know that rubber bands dry out and break. That’s why the Hipster PDA uses binder clips.
For many, the main drawback to using index cards is the potential for disorganization or card clutter. However, there are a variety of solutions you can use, whether you want your card stack to be mobile or just neatly arranged on your desk our counter. I’ve gathered alternatives for corralling 3″ x 5″ cards, as they are the most standard, but you should be able to find similar solutions for 4″ x 6″ and sometimes even 5″ x 8″ index card storage.
Note card rings — Don’t be tempted to think you can organize your cards with traditional keyrings, the kind where you have to pry the metal apart with your fingernails or a key. Use a search term like bookbinder rings or loose leaf binder rings. You want the kind that lets you push inward from both sides and then pull the sides apart to grant you access. Depending on the thickness of your card stacks, you might want to get an assortment of sizes. A few dozen rings (which you can always use for other purposes) won’t run you much more than $5 or so.
Index card binders — If you want your cards to have a little more protection, you can opt for a miniature binder, similar to the kinds of three-ring binders you’d use for loose-leaf paper. This Oxford Index Card Binder has a poly cover, two rings, and two poly dividers. It’s available in red, blue, or green for about $13.
Index Card Cases/Boxes — If you have small stacks of index cards you want to keep attractively but make portable, another option would be a poly index card case or box. I really like these colorful ones from DocIt. Each poly case (available in blue, pink, grey, or green) has a snap closure, holds 100 cards, and includes five dividers with adhesive label tabs. You can buy one for about $5, or packs of four ($12.99) or 24 ($35.99).
If you want a greater variety of colors for a similar price, check out these four-packs from Emraw. Note that these aren’t accordion-style; I find that accordion-style index card cases hold fewer cards, and chances are you won’t need the kind of mini-sections they enable.
Plastic Index Card File Box — This is probably what you used in school, and it’s a stalwart of the office supply arena. Plastic is water-resistant, durable, inexpensive, and won’t rust, and these kinds of card file boxes usually fit easily in a drawer or on your desktop, but are light enough (with secure enough closures) that you can pop them in your backpack. But, of course, it’s plastic, and not everyone likes petrochemical products. (Plastic = petroleum = dead dinosaurs.) You can buy a brand name version at any big-box store, or get one at your nearest dollar store for no more than $3-4 each, or try this Alfion set of four for about $16.99 from Amazon.
Metal Index Card File Boxes — I grew up with Paper Mommy‘s gravy-brown metal index card file box housing one set of her recipes. The metal version isn’t as lightweight as the plastic ones, and they usually lack a secure closure, making them poor options for mobile card storage. They also tend not to be very pretty. However, with a little creativity (and some paint, washi tape, or contact paper) you can make your card box match your personal style.
You used to be able to find metal card file boxes in the same size/shape as the plastic file boxes above, but in recent years, larger/deeper metal cases have become more popular. This Steelmaster card file box has a 900 card capacity and is 8 1/2″ deep; it costs $26.60 at Amazon.
Collapsible Card File Boxes — If your need for card file storage ebbs and flows, you might want to consider a collapsible index card file box. This one from Snap-N-Store holds 1100 3″ x 5″ index cards. The box is made of sturdy fiberboard with a water-resistant laminate cover, metal snaps and steel-reinforced corners. It runs $10 at Amazon.
Decorative Solutions — While the above solutions are standard, you should be able to find a wide variety of “fun” options for organizing your index cards if you search beyond office supply stores.
If you want an old-fashioned wooden file box, perhaps as a gift box already filled with recipe cards, your best bet is to haunt Etsy or specialty craft shops; the search terms “wooden recipe box” should pull up something useful. I found this ArtMinds® wooden recipe box for $6 at Michael’s.
I have to say, however, that my favorite index card storage option, from an aesthetic perspective, is the Oxford at Hand Note Card Organizer. Each metal organizer has a non-skid base to keep it in place and prevent it from squeaking against your desktop or countertop. It’s designed to hold 3″ x 5″ cards and comes with 25 matching dot-grid cards, but of course you can use any card style.
The Oxford at Hand Note Card Organizer comes in Charcoal Grey as well as three designer colors: Coral, Shoreline Blue, and Orchid Bouquet. They run $22.75/each, but must (unfortunately) be ordered in sets of 6 or 12 if you buy directly from Tops Products (Oxford’s parent company). However, you can get a single case in the Charcoal Grey and Shoreline Blue versions on Amazon for $12.99/each. (I’m still searching for a vendor selling just one in Orchid Bouquet, so please write in if you see them anywhere!)
Of course, there’s so much more to be said about index cards (sizes, styles, patterns), storage, display options, and uses, but we’ll have to save that for another time. Do you have a strategy for using index cards that I didn’t mention? A favorite storage solution for cards that I didn’t include? Please share in the comments below!
Disclosure: Some of the links above are affiliate links, and I may get a small remuneration (at no additional cost to you) if you make a purchase after clicking through to the resulting pages. The opinions, as always, are my own. (Seriously, who else would claim them?) For more information regarding how Best Results Organizing handles affiliate links, please see the affiliate section of the site’s Privacy Policy.
Paper Doll Post:
Vibrant and Vertical: Organizing Paper for Back-to-School
What time is it? (No, this isn’t a follow-up to my Does Anybody Really Know What Time It Is? 5 Strategies to Cope With Pandemic Time Dilation from May 2020, though that may be worth a visit — for all of us.)
It’s Back-to-School Time! (If you said “Howdy Doody Time,” thanks for playing our Boomer Edition!)
THE ASPIRATIONAL PROMISE OF NEW SCHOOL SUPPLIES
After almost 18 months of weirdness and boondoggles, kerfuffles and plague-related malarkey, time has little meaning. But really and truly, it’s back-to-school time. And reminders are everywhere. Leaving aside the specific anxieties of returning to school in this (oh, man, I’m going to say it) unprecedented era, the new school year (whether you’re 5 and entering kindergarten or 55 and going back to finish a degree) holds both panic and potential. We may joke about it, but this tweet holds so much truth!
kids went shopping for school supplies and I am pleased to report the pure, uncut optimism of a new trapper keeper in a kid’s hands for the upcoming school year “is going to finally change EVERYTHING and keep me organized for once!” is still alive and well
— Matt Haughey (@mathowie) August 14, 2021
Yes, friends, Mead is still making those Trapper Keepers, the basis for so many our searches for perfect organizing systems in adulthood. Be honest, if you could find something that reflected your personality and offered the flexibility a three-ring binder, hole-punched two-pocket folders, a clipboard, and a Velcro closure, wouldn’t you carry it? Or drive it? Or marry it? (Just me?)
Personally, I always liked those back-to-school days, at least the ones in August, a full month before we Western New Yorkers went back. (Here in the Southeast, kids have been back at school a few weeks in 90° heat. Oy.) August was prime aspirational time. It was the back-to-school issue of Seventeen Magazine, with everything wool and plaid and new.
Our schools didn’t provide lists of what was required for class until the first day of school, but that didn’t mean I was willing to wait. I loved this time of year, and dragged Paper Mommy into the void — I mean, into the school sales. And I vehemently insisted on getting everything all-new every year, even these:
(You know you had them. You know that you probably have no recollection of how to bisect an angle and probably couldn’t figure out what to do with either the compass or the protractor right now, short of making a circle and then cringing when the point of the compass went skittering across the table, making that screechy noise.)
But anyway, do as I say, not as I did. Better yet, do as my colleague Amy Slenker posited in her excellent blog post, 7 Easy Ways to Get Organized for Back to School when she noted, “June scissors work in August, right?” Right!
Of course, as adults, we know that motivation can come in all shapes and sizes, and when the idea of sitting at our desks bring misery, a new set of never-before-used file folders and a snazzy new planner can ramp up our enthusiasm. Also right!
Somewhere in between buying all new everything (even though some things never left your cubby between September and June) and using the same-old, same-old, there’s a sweet spot. So today, we’re just going to look at a few things that might make back-to-school for students of all ages just a little more colorfully delightful.
OPT FOR WHAT’S VIBRANT AND VERTICAL
There’s lots of research showing that color can impact mood. Greens are calming, while reds are stimulating. Studies show that blue “encourages intellectual activity, reason, and logical thought.” Yellow is associated with happy moods, self-esteem and playfulness. While fashion designers may occasionally opt for greys and blacks to convey sophistication, unless your student is a goth (are there still goths?) adding a little vibrancy and color can open up some opportunities, motivationally-speaking.
Color grabs our attention, conveys meaning, and clarifies boundaries. It also just makes us happy. For example, what kind of feeling washes over you when you see this picture?
Optimism? Excitement for new beginnings? I took a new 64-box of Crayolas off to college with me in 1985, and I guarantee you I was not the only one!
In addition to the vibrancy of great colors, another boost for students, whether they’re in elementary school or grad school, is the advantage of the vertical hold. We’ve talked a LOT over the years about how vertical solutions aid in organizing, but the key is that when our resources stand attention, we pay attention to them and are less likely to let them get cluttered..
ORGANIZE PAPERS COLORFULLY
College students might appreciate something that keeps papers organized by class, fits squarely in a backpack, but can be displayed easily in a dorm room (their own, or their study-buddy’s) or an empty classroom.
For something both elegant and bright, the Smead Cascading Wall Organizer might be just the ticket.
A revamp of the the classic version, this colorful Gen 2 organizer can hang on the wall or anywhere from a nail, hook (you sent your kid to college with a variety pack of Command Hooks, right?) or even a hanger to reduce clutter on the desktop.
In durable, bright, and easy-to-clean polypropylene, the six colorful (yellow, orange, fuscia, green, blue, and purple) letter-size pockets can be removed to take to class, the library, or an extra-curricular meeting. (Each holds 50 sheets.)
Use the clear front pocket to show the current month’s calendar, a project timeline, or a photo of far-flung friends. There’s a 3-part hanger (use one loop or all three), and an elastic cord closure for putting it all together and stowing it away.
The whole thing is PVC-free and acid-free, and measures 14 1/4″ wide by 24″ high (when fully expanded). Available directly from Smead for $17.99, or you can find it on Amazon for $11.29.
There are two variations on the theme if these brights are too vibrant for you or your student. There’s a pastel version of the Cascading Wall Organizer (well, it’s translucent, but the folders are pastel), also $17.99 at Smead or $13.78 at Amazon:
as well as one with jewel tones for $13.99 (which is Paper Doll’s personal favorite, in case you were wondering).
The Container Store has a similar product, its Multi-Color Cascading 6-Pocket Letter File Wall Organizer Tote.
It measures 13 3/8″ wide by 10 1/2″ high, and when it’s not fully extended, it folds and collapses into a 1 1/2″ thick tote. Two snap closures open to reveal six cascading pockets (red, orange, yellow, green, teal, and dark blue) that hold letter-sized interior file folders (sold separately). You can label the tabbed pockets, and there’s both a handle for carrying the closed tote and a ring for hanging it for display.
If you like the idea of bright colors and poly folders but your older student already has a great desktop file system in place and doesn’t need to be mobile, consider Smead’s SuperTab® Poly File Folders. A box of 1/3-cut (left/middle/right) tabbed, letter-size poly folders come 18 per assorted pack, with three folders, each, in blue, green, orange, pink, purple, and yellow. The durable folders are acid-free and PVC-free for long lasting durability. (And nowadays, I’m a super-fan of poly, because you can wipe it down with a Clorox disinfecting wipe.)
Oversize SuperTabs have a 90% larger labeling area than standard file folders, allowing you to use larger text, larger labels, or more lines of description. Although their tabs are larger than traditional file folders, they’ll nonetheless fit traditional vertical file drawers. These cheery Smead SuperTab® Poly File Folders run $17.06 at Smead or $16.44 at Amazon.
A WARNING ABOUT COLOR-CODING
I should note, I often warn against the potential problem of color-coding files. When a client invests in traditional boxes of assorted colored file folders (or boxes in multiple, different colors), I tend to worry about the Ralph Waldo Emerson’s quote, “Consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds.”
But wait, you might be thinking. Isn’t consistency the key to organizing?
When you color-code your folder system, it makes it easy to organize thematically. Green is biology (or family finances) and blue is literature (or insurance) and red is calculus (or medical records). But what happens when you need to make a new folder but run out of the color you need? For most people, this causes a breakdown in the system. Lacking the right folder, people often just stop filing!
But you see, Emerson’s entire quote is rarely given. It’s actually, “A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines.”
But you are no fool! If lack of the right color is a problem for you or your student, just grab a different color folder and a Post-it! Note. Write a temporary label on the top, and stick it on the inside of the folder so that the label appears just about where a permanent label belongs. (Then go order a box of folders and get on with your day!)
HOMESCHOOL CHEER
If your student is 8 rather than 18, and you’re still doing the home-schooling thing this year (either because you’d planned it or because everyone got sent home a few days into the school year), you might want a colorful, vertical solution for making your home-school “classroom” feeling a little more official.
I like to borrow this trick from teachers who are tight on space in their classrooms or don’t have a base of operations. Scholastic’s File Organizer Pocket Chart lets you create a bright, vertical HQ for your home-schooling student’s worksheets, problem sets, instruction sheets, and other handouts.
Just as teacher would do in the classroom, you can use the ten sturdy pockets to hold letter-size file folders. The pocket chart is lightweight but made of durable nylon, and measures 14″ wide by 46 1/2″ high. There are three reinforced grommets at the top for hanging the chart on the wall or the back of a door. The pocket chart runs $15 on Amazon.
ACCENTUATE THE POSITIVE WITH A POP OF COLOR
Colorful highlighting is a great way to make important points stand out. But have you or your student ever highlighted the wrong thing? It’s a bummer!
But did you know there are ERASABLE HIGHLIGHTERS? (I know! I can tell that you’re squealing, too!)
Crayola’s Take Note Erasable Highlighters let you highlight (or underline!) in six cheery colors (pink, orange, yellow, teal, blue, and purple). You can color-code your highlighting by class or use different colors for different types of information (yellow for the test, purple for a book report, etc.). And a set of six is only $5.99!
BACKPACKS THAT WILL MAKE YOUR TINY HUMAN SMILE
It’s hard to believe, but when Paper Doll was in school, back when dinosaurs roamed the earth, kids carried book bags rather than backpacks until late middle-school or high school, and even then, backpacks weren’t much of a fashion statement. They also weren’t much of a delight to wear or carry, as they lacked many dividers, pockets, or ways to keep things from falling to the bottom and papers were always getting smushed.
Nowadays, there’s a smorgasbord of backpack options, but I think the most child-pleasing ones are from Bixbee. They make their backpacks (and lunch boxes, duffels, luggage, and sleeping bags) with an eye to the special ergonomic needs of tiny humans so they can carry and organize all of their “stuff” without getting weighed down.
The bright and hardy backpacks are designed for the little tykes’ unique measurements and aesthetic tastes. The medium/large backpacks weigh only two pounds and use “contoured, air-mesh, adjustable shoulder straps with a sliding sternum strap” to distribute the horizontal load. Each backpack has an interior padded pocket to carry and protect a laptop or tablet from drops or bumps.
But I just think their stuff is cute, and if your backpack is cute, you’re less likely to leave it behind on the bus or the playground. Right? (Well, I hope I’m right.)
For example, the Firebird Flyer, with the fire-red rising phoenix on wings, comes in two sizes (one for pre-schoolers, one for the 5-7-year-olds). The smaller one is water-resistant, made of durable 600-denier polyester, and has a variety of features, including:
- Padded topside carrying handle
- Top flap zippered pocket offers quick access to small supplies
- Front flap pocket holds small supplies or snack
- 2 side pockets holds small water bottle
- Contoured & padded adjustable shoulder straps
- Padded back panel
- Easy-to-grab beehive zip pulls
- Detailed with reflective material for better visibility in low light
- D-rings for clipping on their favorite accessories
The interior has an ID card holder under main flap, and the main compartment is large enough for a sweater (so hopefully it won’t be left behind on the playground), and two interior slip pockets for small school supplies. The pre-schooler size is $31.99; the larger one is $49.99. For more about Bixbee’s wide array of backpacks, they’ve got a few videos, starting with this one:
Colorful, vertical (and yet, with their innovative design, also horizontal), and totally cute.
This post wasn’t designed to be a complete resource on back-to-school items. Next week, we’ll look at some back-to-school essentials for managing time and tasks at all age levels.
And if you want a throwback to the 1980s while still getting a sense of some college dorm advice that’s apropos today, check out this post from the vault, Paper Doll & Real Simple Organize Dorm Rooms: SUPER-EXTENDED Edition.
Disclosure: Some of the links above are affiliate links, and I may get a small remuneration (at no additional cost to you) if you make a purchase after clicking through to the resulting pages. The opinions, as always, are my own. (Seriously, who else would claim them?) For more information regarding how Best Results Organizing handles affiliate links, please see the affiliate section of the site’s Privacy Policy.
Paper Doll Post:
Noteworthy Notebooks (Part 9): Epilogue and Updates
NOTEBOOK WRAPUP
Over the last eight installments of Noteworthy Notebooks (did I really preview this back in May as a short series?) we’ve looked at landscape notebooks, erasable notebooks, modular notebooks (disc-bound, magnetic, and via other ingenious methods), digitized and digitizable smart notebooks, durable notebooks made of stone paper, and waterproof notebooks.
But this is an organizing blog, not a notebook appreciate blog, and so today is our final installment. I’d like to leave you with some final thoughts to bear in mind as you choose a notebook to gather and organize your creative thoughts and inbound information.
Commitment is key. Just as with choosing a planner for keeping your tasks and appointments, a notebook is only as good as your commitment to using it. If you try to keep a half-dozen notebooks simultaneously, all around your home or office (without designating separate purposes for each), you’ll never know where your notes on the important meeting is, you’ll never find the right shopping list, and by the time you figure out which notebook had the perfect draft of the letter you wanted to write, the need will have passed.
There are two main reasons we’ve discussed for failure to stay committed to a notebook system. Either the notebook itself doesn’t work for you, or you are hesitant for reasons having to do more with yourself than the notebook.
Identify and solve your problems
In the first circumstance, something is wrong, and the notebooks you’ve tried so far just don’t fit your needs. Sometimes, the problem is obvious. But often, we tolerate a problem so long, we don’t even consider whether there’s a solution. (See: Organize Away Frustration: The Only Good Kind of “Intolerance.”) So, start by recognizing that there is a problem, and then look for a solution.
I wanna take my scorebook to the @smokiesbaseball game tonight, but there’s a 50% chance of rain. Probably not worth the risk.
— Bullycon (@Bullycon) July 17, 2021
(That tweet just went up on Saturday, so I haven’t yet found a waterproof baseball scorekeeping book for my friend @bullycon. But I’ll keep looking, and in the meantime, I recommended he try one of the Rainwriter waterproof clipboards I mentioned last week. If I don’t find something just right, I might propose to Rite In the Rain that they develop a series of waterproof sports scorekeeping notebooks. Feel free to share this post and tag @riteintherain.)
A week after writing about @RiteInTheRain waterproof notebooks, @bullycon happened to mention not taking his scorebook to the @smokiesbaseball game due to predicted rain. Let's encourage @riteintherain to develop a line of outdoor… Share on XBack to looking for a solution. For example, if you feel squished and lack space between your body and your keyboard, or you spend a lot of time writing on airplane tray tables, a standard portrait-orientation notebook won’t work, but a landscape-orientation notebook might be just the ticket.
If you’re left handed, writing across the ridge of a spiral-, wire-, or disc-bound book may be uncomfortable and frustrating, but a notebook bound at the top (whether or not it’s landscape in orientation) can eliminate that annoyance. (The same goes for righties who are tired of that ridge on their wrists from writing on left-side pages of notebooks that don’t have a lay-flat design.)
Maybe your frustration isn’t due to the writing experience, but the need to re-organize your notes. While a ring binder lets you change the order of your pages, a traditional notebook is bound such that your page order is set. With the variety of options we’ve covered, from discs to magnets to hooks, there are ways that you can organize, and re-organize, the order of the pages and sections in your notebooks so that you can focus on what’s important.
If you love the experience of a paper notebook, but hate what it does to the environment, this series presented a wide variety of popular (and dark-horse) erasable notebooks that let you capture your thoughts, send them to the cloud (sometimes even turning your handwriting into typewriting!) and then erase what you’ve written so that you can use the pages over again. There are even digital notebooks that “feel” like writing on paper, but digitize your content so that the trees in the forest are safe.
And speaking of trees, whether you’d like to be out among the trees and traipsing around in the rain and other elements, or just want to preserve the rainforests, there are waterproof, super-strong notebooks made of stone and other materials that can protect your writing and the world in which you’re doing it.
Address Perfectionist Procrastination…One Way or the Other
Over the course of this series, we discussed perfectionist procrastination at length. For the same reason people save the “good” china for an important event…and then find excuses never to use it, people don’t feel that their thoughts and scribbles are up to the task of being written in a “fancy” (read: beautiful or expensive) notebook. Piffle!
OK, except it’s not piffle. If you truly feel anxious about writing your thoughts in a notebook that’s too fancy, too sumptuously gorgeous, or too expensive, as if you need to earn the write to set your thoughts down on paper, then a stranger on the internet may not be able to persuade you that YOU AND YOUR IDEAS HAVE WORTH.
As Paper Doll, I grant you my permission to fill the fanciest notebooks you can find with sparkly vampire fanfiction, drafts of angry letters to a long-ago ex-boyfriend at whom you’re still angry (or, angry anew), and even tic-tac-toe boards. There’s no such thing as plates that are “too good” for serving a meal, and there are no notebooks that are too fancy for you to use.
However, if you keep buying fancy notebooks and are still not using them, please stop… You’re teaching yourself to continue feeling unworthy. Until you can really use your pretty notebooks, stick with whatever format notebook will keep you organized, even if they’re just composition notebooks or legal pads; just stay away from writing on random loose papers. (Remember, I’ve been telling you as far back as 2007: no floozies!)
I hope, though, that you’ll develop confidence in the value of your thoughts and your right to write in any notebook you want, no matter how pretty, how fancy, or how pricey. And maybe, when you’re ready, one of those erasable notebooks from Rocketbook or Wipebook, or maybe the lesser-known options, will help you bridge the gap.
Consider Letting Others Delight in Alternative Notebooks
Over and over during this series, I was struck by two things in the comments after each post. First, people were self-identifying: either they loved a notebook style and were eager to explore and shop, or they couldn’t see themselves needing or trying something so different. But second, as the series went on, more and more commenters mentioned that a particular notebook would make an ideal gift: for a spouse, a child, a colleague, or a team member.
So, if you thought a notebook in this series was spiffy, but you’re not ready to change systems, consider buying it as a gift for someone whom you know is a better fit. You’ll be a hero for finding something so neat, and you’ll have a front-row seat for evaluating how much you actually do (or don’t) like it.
UPDATES AND STUFF THAT DIDN’T FIT ELSEWHERE
Before we leave the topic of notebooks entirely, I have a few final options to share.
What if your desires are complex? What if you want a notebook that is both landscape orientation and disc-bound so that you can customize it?
Levenger Circa Landscape Sliver Notebook
The Circa Landscape Sliver Notebook has a faux-leather cover, available in black or blue, and comes in two sizes: Junior (7″ wide x 8 5/8″ high) and Letter (9 3/4″ wide x 11 3/8″ high).
The 3/4″ black discs that hold the notebook together at the top mean the notebook can accommodate 120 sheets of paper. Because it uses discs (as we discussed in Noteworthy Notebooks (Part 4): Modular, Customizable, Disc-Based Notebooks), the notebook has a lay-flat style, and the cover flips to the back, out of the way, while you’re writing, taking up less desk/surface space.
The Landscape Sliver comes with 60 sheets of horizontally-aligned, 100-gsm annotation-style ruled paper. (As a reminder, “annotation” is another name for Cornell Notetaking-system, with a section at the left for highlighting key essentials in your notes.)
In addition to getting Landscape Annotation Refill pages (available in 100- and 300-sheet packs), Levenger makes landscape-orientation refills in five other styles:
Grid Refill – 100 sheets, Letter-size only; these sheets use a 1/4″ grid format, useful for graphing, calculating, and drawing, as well as for writing and list-making.
Annotation Grid Refill – 100 sheets, Letter-size only; like the standard grid refill, these sheets use a 1/4″ grid format, but also have a left-size section for annotations.
Storyboard Refill – 100 sheets, Letter-size only; like the storyboard pages for portrait-layout, these have three boxes for diagrams, drawings, and key points, with an additional 15 lines below for notes or dialogue.
Week’s End Planner Refill – 100 sheets, in both Junior and Letter; these planner refills are only for Saturday and Sunday. (As far as I could find, there are no Circa weekday planning pages in landscape format.) The pages are undated, with four appointment slots (6 a.m., Noon, 9 p.m., and a blank slot) for each weekend day. There are designated sections for activities and events, notes, and shopping, and a to-do list.
Landscape Color Gradient Annotation Ruled Refill – 100 sheets, in both Junior and Letter; these ruled rainbow sheets with an annotation section seem a little at odds with the formal stylings of Levenger’s Circa, but hey, it’s all about what sparks you to commit!
The Circa Landscape Sliver Notebook comes gift-boxed; at $49 for the Junior and $59 for the Letter version, it’s definitely a gift for yourself.
Unlike most of the Levenger items I reviewed back in Part 4, which all had portrait orientation, there are no Arc or Eleven Disc landscape versions available that are alternatives or compatible at lower prices. Be assured, however, that Paper Doll is always on the lookout, and if I find other landscape, disc-based notebooks, I’ll be sure to let you know.
Dot Grid Notebooks — Welcome to Dark Mode
Several of the posts in this series focused on customizing a notebook to meet your specifications, while others accented finding a format or characteristic (like landscape orientations, stone paper, and waterproof notebooks). This line of options is more like the latter.
Most notebooks have white or light paper onto which you write or draw with darker-than-the-paper ink, pencil, or marker. UK-based Dot Grid makes a variety of notebooks, journals, pads, and papers. While some have white or ivory pages, that’s not what I want to show you. Just as our phone, tablets, and computers have added dark mode to view our apps, making reading and writing easier on our eyes at night, Dot Grid has done this with notebooks with an entire line of notebooks that use black paper! There are too many products to discuss all of them, but some of the intriguing highlights include:
Dot Grid A5 Hard Cover – Measuring 5-7/8″ wide x 8-1/4″ high, this black hardcover notebook uses a left-side, double Wire-O binding, so when open, the notebook can lay flat, and the cover can be flipped to the back. The A5 has 130 pages of premium 120-gsm black paper.
The dot-grid is set at 4.25mm with silver ink. Use white, silver, or color gel ink pens to make your writing come alive. (I suspect neon ink would particularly stand out.)
These black notebooks aren’t just for goths (though I imagine goths would find them appealing). They have an intriguing visual style and are suitable for bullet journaling, planning and goal-setting, graphing, and computer/web user-interface design. It costs £25 (British pounds).
In addition to the hardcover version, Dot Grid makes a series of 350-gsm water-resistant covers in multiple sizes. In honor of Bruce Wayne, they’ve nicknamed this the Batmo-book. (Shhh, don’t tell anyone who hasn’t made the connection between the millionaire and the caped super-hero.)
Dot Grid A3 Notebook – Perfect for designers looking to sketch or wireframe a website, this A3 (11.69″ x 16.93″) ultra-large notebook has 80 pages of premium-quality 120-gsm black paper, with the 4.25mm dot matrix in silver ink. Bound at the top with Wire-O binding, this notebook has a lay-flat style, but instead of the hard cover of the A5 above, it has 350-gsm water-resistant cover. It’s £30.
Dot Grid A4 Notebook – Measuring 8.27″ wide x 11.69″ high, the A4 has 160 pages and is bound on the left side, but otherwise has the same features as the A3. It’s £25.
Dot Grid A5 Notebook – Measuring 6.5″ wide x 8.27″ high, this version is otherwise identical to the A4. It sells for £20.
Dot Grid A6 Notebook – A tinier version of the A3, this Wire-O, top-bound notebook measures 3.13″ wide x 6.02″ high and has 80 pages. Perfect for notes-on-the-go, it’s £10.
Dot Grid also makes wire-stitched, 40-page blank notepads with black, silk artboard covers in A4, A5, and A6 sizing (priced at £12, £9, and £6, respectively) for those who want to free-write or draw on black pages and prefer a lighter-weight option.
Dot Grid makes no landscape notebooks, but does have an A3 landscape, dot-grid deskpad with 50 pages of tear-off sheets, ideal for designers. The back is made of sturdy, recyclable greyboard, almost identical to chipboard. It’s £28.
A similar A4, landscape Mobile Device Wireframing Pad might be the perfect gift for your friends who create mobile apps. (£13)
And finally, there’s an A4, undated weekly planner page, with 52 tear-off sheets. The dayparts are outlined in silver ink. It sells for £13.
So, if you (or someone you know) would like to write or draw in Batman mode and you’re willing to shell out for shipping from the UK, Dot Grid has some great options.
Waterproof Sketchpads: The Search Continues | Thrunotes
Last week, in Noteworthy Notebooks (Part 8): Waterproof Notebooks, I told you that other than a children’s size version, I’d been unable to find any waterproof sketchbooks. The search continues, but I was able to find ThruNotes, a UK-based series of colorful, weather-proof, tear-proof, recyclable notebooks for the rough-and-tumble, outdoorsy set, particularly hikers, all for £7.99/each.
Thrunotes Waterproof Sketchpad for the artistically-inclined hiker (ironically, the only one without a cheery, colorful cover), has all of the same features of the other three dotted and lined versions (Thru, Explore, and Blaze). The spine is triple-stitched to enhance strength, and the corners are rounded to improve the notebook’s durability when you’re out in the elements. And for those who care about such things, the notebooks use compostable vegan inks.
As with the other Thrunotes products, the layout is pre-marked with spaces for page numbers, dates, mile-markers, distance, and highlights, and there are metric and imperial rulers integrated into the back cover.
The only issue? Thrunotes describes this notebook as “Small enough to fit in your shirt pocket;
Large enough to draw all you need.” Well, Thru is right about the first part! There are only 32 interior pages – understandable when you need something lightweight on the trail, and that makes it only 0.8 ounces.
But it’s only 3.54″ wide x 7.48″ high; even when you consider that you can sketch across the surface of two (facing) pages, it appears to be no larger than the child-sized Huckleberry waterproof sketchbook we looked at last time! Still, it is a waterproof sketching option. Maybe focus on sketching insects and birds instead of panoramic vistas?
See the video below for more details on how to use the various notebooks from Thrunotes.
To all of the readers who have stuck with this unexpectedly giant-sized Noteworthy Notebook series, thank you! If you missed a post, or are ready to pick your favorite (for yourself or for gift-giving), you can catch up at the links below. Now that you’ve seen them all, please tell me in the comments, which notebook meets your needs? Or, if these still some magical feature you’re seeking, please share, and you might find you problem solved in a future Paper Doll post!
Noteworthy Notebooks (Part 1): Re-Surveying the Landscape
Noteworthy Notebooks (Part 2): The Big Names in Erasable Notebooks
Noteworthy Notebooks (Part 3): More Erasable & Reusable Notebooks
Noteworthy Notebooks (Part 4): Modular, Customizable, Disc-Based Notebooks
Noteworthy Notebooks (Part 5): Customize with Magnets, Hooks, and Apps
Noteworthy Notebooks (Part 6): Get Smart (Notebooks)
Noteworthy Notebooks (Part 7): Stone Cold and Super-Strong
Noteworthy Notebooks (Part 8): Waterproof Notebooks
Follow Me