My current notebook system
Or, more accurately, a system for keeping all the boring stuff out of my notebook
Because I was swamped beyond belief in December and January, I put off my traditional “magic week” ramble through old notebooks until this month. Ordinarily I like to make time between Christmas and New Year’s for rereading the year’s notes and noodlings, marking any fragments I might want to return to later. This practice always evokes mixed feelings. There are happy discoveries (what a brilliant idea! which I totally forgot about!) and disappointments (whoops, there’s a ball I dropped into oblivion), useful revelations and neglected to-do lists.
Those last items: ugh. I try not to let chore lists and administrative reminders invade my creative workspaces, yet there they are all over the notebooks, oversalting poem drafts and rough essays. Every time I begin a new notebook, I tell myself sternly I will not, WILL NOT, use the space for to-do lists. I have other containers for that, containers I quite like. The Todoist app, mainly, especially for anything with a due date. But chores often pop into my head while I’m writing, and then it makes a lot more sense to jot the item down immediately rather than—heaven forbid—pick up my phone to enter it in the app.
But nothing wrecks a creative playground like “call the insurance company” or “fill out new patient paperwork before Friday appointment.” It’s not so much the cognitive shift—I know there’s a lot of research about how it takes about twenty minutes to recover your focus any interruption to deep work, but personally I don’t see how anyone with kids would ever create ANY kind of art if they weren’t able to handle frequent interruptions—no, what disrupts me is the continued presence of the chore on the page, waving its very grabby tentacles in my face.
About a month ago I hit upon a fix for this, and I have to say it’s working very well so far. I bought one of those thin, sticky-backed dry erase boards that fits on the side of the bookcase next to my writing chair. Whenever I suddenly think of a task that needs remembering, I can scribble it on the whiteboard without cluttering my notebook. This gives chore lists the right amount of proximity: I’ll see them when I put my notebook away, and I can easily add them to Todoist later. And then—whoosh! One swipe of the eraser and the reminder is gone forever.
So that’s the current system:
• A paper notebook for noodling (I’m partial to the tooth of a Leuchtturm 1917 dot grid);
• The whiteboard for intrusive pop-up tasks;
• The Todoist app (which integrates beeyootifully with my calendar and email) for time-linked reminders; and
• My beloved Hobonichi Cousin (serving me nicely for at least 8 years in a row now) for a Done List: end-of-day notes on what I got done; what I’ve read, watched, listened to; what we did during our homeschooling time; whether Scott and I walked and what the weather was like; and anything else of note that day. The key to the Done List is in its name: there are no not-yet-done chores to nag me later. It’s just a record of what actually happened. I like the Cousin for this because of the deliciously thin Tomoe River paper, which allows you to capture the entire year in one A5 book about the size of a Leuchtturm.
About the Leuchtturm. That’s the paper notebook I always seem to return to eventually, though I do sometimes like playing with other kinds of paper. I like the size, the paper quality, and the covers. I also have a Supernote digital notebook which I adore, and it plays its own role in my workflow and creative practice. Because one thing I’ve learned about myself is that I am energized by variety. (More on that in Friday’s post.)
Podcast update! This week’s episode focuses on homeschooling when you have babies and toddlers as part of the mix. Julie Bogart and I (eleven kids between us, yikes) share lots of strategies, including plenty of ideas that apply even if you aren’t homeschooling. Like giving toddlers magnets on a cookie sheet—I survived several long-distance road trips that way.