macwright-com-tpk6dj.txt (4006B)
1 Tom MacWright 2 3 [email protected] 4 5 Tom MacWright 6 7 • [1]Writing⇠ 8 • [2]Reading 9 • [3]Photos 10 • [4]Projects 11 • [5]Drawings 12 • [6]Micro 13 • [7]About 14 15 Paper notes 16 17 From 2006 to 2016, I wanted to be the kind of person who carried a paper 18 notebook around. I bought nice notebooks and consistently got halfway through 19 each one before abandoning it and giving up again. 20 21 In 2016, everything changed all at once. Every month since I’ve finished a 22 paper journal. Here’s what I changed and the flaws that I discovered in my 23 previous attempts. 24 25 Time not topics 26 27 Paper notes are append-only: treat them as such. The unlimited flexibility of 28 computer note-taking gave me warped expectations of paper notes, and early in 29 my journey I’d try to maintain notebooks about certain subjects. I tried to 30 keep notes about a certain book in one contiguous section, add a table of 31 contents at the beginning, and stay organized. 32 33 Organizing paper notes like digital notes is a fool’s errand. The only 34 organization strategy that I’ve found that works is this one. 35 36 The only consistent structure is time. Notes go forward in time. You write the 37 date span of notebooks on the cover, and the date of notes on the pages, and 38 keep the notebooks in order. Try to keep all notes from a certain point in time 39 in the same notebook. 40 41 Summarize topics when you finish notebooks, never when you start. Add a list of 42 topics to the front cover (inside or outside), and then after a year, summarize 43 the topics from all notebooks in another notebook. 44 45 Simplicity not heaviness 46 47 Durability, portability, and capacity are part of the same continuum. An 48 80-page notebook will probably need a rigid cover, like the kind on a Moleskine 49 or Leuchtturm notebook. That’s the kind that I tried using for a long time – I 50 was hesitant to sacrifice the fanciness of that for something that was 51 pocketable. I was completely wrong about that: when I finally switched to Field 52 Notes, I understood the other, personally better corner of the space. The small 53 notebooks are delicate, and start breaking down after a month being carried 54 around in a pocket or a backpack, but – at 48 pages long, by the end of that 55 month, you’re about finished using it anyway. 56 57 Note box 58 59 Taking notes is useless without a place to put them when you’re done. 60 Continuing on the theme of Field Notes fandom, I bought their ‘Archival Wooden 61 Box’, a wildly overpriced but perfectly-sized… box… made to hold finished 62 notes. Key to this strategy is that your notebooks are precisely the same size, 63 so that they line up neatly and if you mark a corner of the notebook with its 64 start & end date (as I do), that corner will fall in the same place for each 65 notebook in the stack. This also gives you a place to add structure with dated 66 & labeled dividers, so it’s easier to hunt down a specific notebook later on. 67 68 ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ 69 70 I also take digital notes: [8]Day One as a digital journal, and [9]The Archive 71 for work-related or reference notes. Like with [10]todo lists, I suspect those 72 applications will change and be replaced over time, but thankfully as I’ve 73 started to understand my own habits and preferences, that change has slowed. 74 75 January 2, 2019 [11]Tom MacWright ([12]@tmcw, [13]@[email protected]) 76 77 78 References: 79 80 [1] https://macwright.com/ 81 [2] https://macwright.com/reading/ 82 [3] https://macwright.com/photos/ 83 [4] https://macwright.com/projects/ 84 [5] https://macwright.com/drawings/ 85 [6] https://macwright.com/micro/ 86 [7] https://macwright.com/about/ 87 [8] https://dayoneapp.com/ 88 [9] https://zettelkasten.de/the-archive/ 89 [10] https://macwright.com/2015/09/10/todo 90 [11] https://macwright.com/about/ 91 [12] https://twitter.com/intent/follow?screen_name=tmcw&user_id=1458271 92 [13] https://mastodon.social/@tmcw