I’ve decided to step up my note-taking game after listening to a conversation about Ryan Holiday’s notecard system. One reason is that it is a shame how much I forget. If I spend twenty hours reading a book, how come I rarely spend a minute to reflect and remember?
A bigger reason for me is that a semi-decent way to organize and keep your thoughts is a commitment to keep learning and reflecting. I know it has a value - jotting down my thoughts while writing my thesis and flipping back every once in a while has helped me multiple times to make connections I otherwise wouldn’t have. And the rather simple note system I’m using for work are, so far, a useful way to keep track of projects and conversations.
So I was wondering what you guys write in your notebooks, if you keep notes or a journal at all. What do you write down to remember? What’s valuable to you?
I keep a small notebook with me at pretty much all times. I use the bullet journal method with it. I keep notes to myself on things I find interesting, books to check out, music to explore, ideas I come up with at random, more structured brainstorming sessions, whatever I don't trust my brain to actually recall. Sometimes I doodle in it. And of course, shopping lists. Which is what I am literally using it for right now.
Trips! I have a notebook where I derail days when I backpack, go on long adventures and things like that. Multiple to do lists, running log/journal, etc. I'm a secretary in a nonprofit and take a lot of notes there. During work I make notes more of people's demeanor and responses during meetings, at least as much as I notate the content itself. There are two books I make notes in, but that is not the norm.
My parents made me write a daily journal when I was 14 and we went on The Big Trip to Canada. It's still fun to read about that adventure. Why do you do this? Is it to get a better idea of people's views on matters?During work I make notes more of people's demeanor and responses during meetings, at least as much as I notate the content itself.
It's important to me to understand how people emotionally feel about a topic, and how to work with that to move projects forward or better determine where to make compromises.
I make notes of the names of the people I meet. You'd be surprised at how many people you meet in a day. Also, people tend to like that you remember them by name.
Life Pro Tip expanding on this: when at a party or a social occasion where you will be meeting lots of people whom you don't know, but who you really want to like you (like if you are meeting your all your significant other's friends at a party, say) - you can whip out your phone, stealthily, and use the "Notes" feature to write down names and help you remember them from the get-go. I find even just writing the names down helps solidify them in my mind!
Planner in my pack for my month-to-month. Notepad on my phone for week-to-week. Mini-journal in my pocket started for my day-to-day just last week thanks to your posting it in a pubski. This has been super helpful in prioritizing my day. I tried a few times making an "A" and "B" priority list in my phone to no avail. The notepad in my phone has LOTS of on-going thoughts, ideas, and to-do's. Many times I write in my phone, then print them out to go into my physical journal at home [for when I want to vent, ruminate, or explore an idea or event].
Pen feels better to work with for me too, yet typing keeps better pace with my thoughts. On the flipside, doodling is invaluable! Definitely pros and cons for both. The day I find a good way to organize everything into one format/method/book without my going insane is the day I reach nirvana. It's worked before, on paper, and used lots of highlighters. Upkeep was a bitch, but worth it.
I looked into the bullet journal method, myself. I'm an avid note-taker with too many notebooks going at the moment. The bullet journal method reads like a dream and I was really interested in it, in theory. And FWIW the journal itself is a really great sturdy product that stands by itself in terms of "desirable journal that provides most of what I want/need from a notebook." That being said, after reading about it, taking notes on the method, and vowing I was going to implement it...the process doesn't really work in practice for me. Scratch that, I guess it just doesn't. I think the issue I'm having is that I write/note a lot, and I also don't find a physical notebook to be ideal for maintaining calendars/appointments/meetings. My iPhone calendar syncs to both my work and personal calendars, it updates automatically whenever anyone changes an appointment, and in general serves as a much better actual reminder system of events I need to know about/go to prepare for, as opposed to what I can get out of any physical or paper notebook in terms of calendar/time management ability. I also feel that the Bullet Journal method is largely task oriented, but I use my notebooks to do more creative tasks like brainstorming, for less creative tasks like making lists and checking them twice, for writing down theories and thoughts as much as concrete "tasks," "events," and "notes," which the Bullet Journal centers its method around. The method says you can use it for any notebooking purpose, including sketchbooks -- I don't really truly believe that. I don't believe someone keeping a sketchbook is going to benefit from the Bullet Journal method! It also says this method can lend well to diary-ing, however in the entire tutorial of the method they talk about diary entries not once... I am sure the method works really well for a lot of people and I wish I was one of them. I've been chasing the ideal storage/approach/method to keeping more organized journals/notebooks for a long time now. The biggest thing I have learned is to keep any calendar arranging totally separate from the journal. I also often find an index much fussier and more time-consuming to maintain than any possible benefit I might reap from keeping it. With a physical notebook in which you yourself have written the notes, don't you often have a "feel" for where it is in the journal, or what it's right next to? I typically can find the notes that I'm looking for quickly by thumbing through a notebook, even a full one -- an index might save me time, but it'd take all the time of regular maintenance in order to do so. Added to the time it takes to read the index and figure out if that's really the page you're looking for -- that feels like more work to me. Not less. Note - but Dala, seeing you later in the thread reference modules and, essentially, it sounds like variations on the Bullet method that others have built and shared on the website -- maybe I should try poking around at those and see if they offer anything I might be able to use to my advantage. Thanks for bring this up!
That's the great thing about it, use the bits you need and leave what doesn't work for you. I use the index sparingly, to make note of things that I might need to reference later but might be difficult to find. I usually do this at the end of the month before I store the book away. The future log and calendar are just there in case I need to write down a date and don't have my phone handy, because I, like you, use my phone's calendar because sometimes I need push notifications. If those thing are truly useless to you, leave them out. It took me several iterations to find the ideal setup for myself, I started out with all the things and dropped what I didn't use, went to a small book for ease of carry, now I am never without my little external hard drive. Check out the Little Coffee Fox site for a more artistic take on bullet journaling. If you don't see something that suits your needs, make it up!
My dream is to be able to create my ideal notebook myself (since I was making a ton of books around this time last year and so on). However....it takes a LOT of thinking about what you want to use the book for! I honestly have 4-5 notebooks "on-going" at the moment, but they are all dedicated to different purposes. Maybe I don't have a single notebook "Ideal"... :)
I've tried a lot of different systems myself. At work I use a combination of daily checklist that I created for myself and the monthly momentum planner worksheet from productive flourishing. https://www.productiveflourishing.com/free-planners/ with blank notebook paper for meeting notes. Work stuff stays in my office, so I keep that totally separate. I have a sketchbook and a small notebook that I use to keep notes about video games that I am playing. So no, sometimes "one notebook for every purpose" is not realistic. The little bullet journal is just my everyday carry thing, sometimes things that go into it get transferred elsewhere once I have access to the correct system.
That's the site I used to get started. I'm on my phone otherwise I'd have posted the link for you. Sorry. Play with the modules and see what you use and what you don't, make up modules as needed, there are all kinds of ideas for trackers and such out there. There's a site called Little Coffee Fox that does more of an art bullet journal but has a lot of good ideas for modules and uses. I can link tonight if you like. I love the art journals but am not that good of an artist. Maybe someday!
My current setup is very basic, I use the index, future log, month calendar and then just use the rest of the book for logging. I use small pocket notebooks so each one lasts about a month and can fit into the back pocket of a pair of jeans or into any bag I take. I like the idea of some of the other things but tend not to use them as much. Although I really should do a habit tracker.
Yep. Page 1 is my index, 2-3 is my future log, 4-5 is April 2018. After that it's all logging pages. it's helpful to throw a key somewhere when you're first starting out until you get used to the symbols and stuff. If you notice that you are writing down a lot of books you can make a dedicated book list page and note where it is in your index, or just make an entry for books on your index and then note the pages that deal with that subject. You can put your dedicated lists at the beginning or end of your notebook, or start them wherever and start a new one wherever needed. Since I use such a tiny book I typically don't make special lists. Also I use goodreads to track my reading anyway, I just note books in my journal when I hear something but can't access goodreads at that time. The system is set so that you just use whatever space you need for each day and don't set daily pages out in advance, but that doesn't mean you can't if that suits you better, for example if you need to make more notes in advance for a day than just a few words, but then if you need more space than you have allowed for a day how will you work around that?
Sick. Bookmarked some bullet journals for my next planner online. Thanks for sharing your setup. In your last question, best practice for me would be winging it day by day while checking the front of the book each morning to see if I'd need to plan for extra pages.
I have giant 2-foot by 3-foot PostIt Notes on the door of my closet. I keep my To Do List there. This includes activities (replace headlights in RV, make a SketchUp of the whole house) as well as conceptual ideas, (Blockchain for my medical data... how would that work?) This way I see it every night before I go to bed, and every morning as I am getting dressed... the two times of day when my brain is most amenable to thinking about Stuff. I don't keep notes elsewhere, for one simple reason: Writing something down actually allows your brain to stop thinking about it. The brain-science geeks have been studying the importance of lists, to efficient brain function. Your brain wants to remember things for you, really badly, and so it will stress out when you try to keep more than 5 things in your head at once. This is why they say the simple act of making a list, can help you clear your head, and get the brain working efficiently again, instead of spinning, constantly juggling things, and worrying that it is going to forget something you wanted it to remember. So my giant Post-Its are my list. And I keep the rest in my head, to keep my head active on the two or three topics I am currently working on. I find this to be HUGELY effective. Because, when I write things down in books/notes/Evernote/GoogleKeep/etc, I close the cover, and my brain relaxes - "Whew! OK... he's not going to forget that now, so I don't have to think about it any more!" - and I am no longer actively processing the idea and coming up with solutions. Close the book, the idea goes away. Write the ideas on a huge list on the wall, in big, black Sharpie, then my brain sees it and keeps it active. Works for me...
I have dubbed my notetaking experiment 'Project Exobrain' for a reason! Once someone explained to me that the purpose of a task manager is relieve your brain of having to continuously, ineffectively, faultily remember a dozen tasks, I was sold. The post-it idea is interesting... there's a professional poker player who wrote his 10 biggest, life-fulfilling goals on a paper when he was in college and stuck it to his bathroom mirror. He found the daily reminder of the bigger picture a huge motivator, and crossed off the 10th item in only ten years or something like that. It sounds kinda cheesy, but I can see how it can be useful to some. It wouldn't work for me. Usually, it takes me at least until I've had my breakfast before I feel awake. And if I had reminders when I'm going to sleep, I wouldn't be able to sleep because my brain loves overthinking things more than sleep.
I have my work notes, but reading this makes me think I should really take up a personal journal. Occasionally I find that there's past memories and experiences where the specifics get kinda washed-out if I don't actively revisit them. I make a mental note to recall really nice experiences, and sometimes certain moods and moments get translated into artistic interpretations, but maybe I should keep a more prescribed record. I especially think I want to do this when I visit Japan in a few months.
I recently dug up my Evernote account, where I promptly realized that I had kept a diary for the first 18 months of college. There is a lot of menial stuff but I absolutely love reading it back. Life doesn't need to be special for a journal to matter, although it does help. :)
It’s not a zero-sum game. If I don’t write it down, I know I won’t remember most of the ideas. And if I do remember it, I will probably not remember it well enough to find it again. So either I remember 5% of the things I genuinely find interesting, or I can look it up later with just a few quotes or with the author. Additionally, it makes it much easier to reflect. And it’s properly cloud-synced so I’m not worried about it going anywhere.