Hi! I’m the kind of person who carries a notebook everywhere and even feels anxious if they le

Hi! I’m the kind of person who carries a notebook everywhere and even feels anxious if they leave home without it! I don’t know if this will be helpful for anyone but I thought it would be fun to share my notebook “system” since I’ve been doing this for more than half my life. HOW MY NOTEBOOKS WORK — First of all, I’m completely incapable of keeping separate notebooks for different purposes. If I had a daily planner, a sketchbook, a personal diary and a writing journal I would lose my mind, so my notebooks are everything at once. Meeting notes, shopping lists, stupid doodles, weird dreams. You name it. It’s there. — You might be thinking “so it’s basically a Bullet Journal” and you would be WRONG because I’m also completely incapable of keeping up with that. If I try to follow a tight structure I stop having fun, and it’s very important to me that I have fun with my notebooks. So there you go, no internal logic. When I say “daily planner” I mean “sticky note with a to-do list on a random page” and not “neatly drawn squares for every day of the week”. — “Oh so that lack of structure makes the notebook flow more naturally I’m sure it’s beautiful”. Yes and no! I love seeing flawless sketchbooks that got people accepted into art school and watching immaculate flipthrough videos but I also think there’s beauty in ink smudges and crappy doodles. I don’t want to become a slave to the notebook, I want it to be silly and practical! Here’s what I would consider a beautiful double page: some ideas for a skull jar I wanna make with clay :3A standard double page? Notes for a radio piece and a drawing of a couple pigeons that were hanging out by my window (I swear to God they were smoking).A shitty double page? Whatever the fuck is going on here.These are all from last week btw and I love them. “Wait so did you make a post just to tell us your system is not having a system?” …Kinda? My system is having fun :) But I’m also willing to share some real actual tips. REAL ACTUAL TIPS — Number. Your. Notebooks. Put dates on them. Do something that will help you archive them in the long run because I did NOT do that when I started and I’m still not sure I numbered the first ones correctly when I did it years later. Also, numbering your notebooks is a great way to cross-reference: you can write a note to yourself saying “check notebook 21 for more notes on this subject” while using notebook 26 and you’re good to go! — Find your format. For years I tried different notebook types and sizes that didn’t feel great and the same could be happening to you! I finally found that my perfect format is an A5 with plain pages. I can do with or without spiral; I’m not super picky when it comes to paper thickness. But give me any other size or layout and I will die. — Page markers are your friends. So you wrote down your accountant’s email between two pages of dick doodles and now you can’t find it! Well, that’s bound to happen from time to time. If you don’t have a structure, using page markers will save you lots of trouble. — Maybe add some color and variety? There have been periods of my life where I’ve gone through entire notebooks with a single ballpoint pen and that’s cool! But I also find that having markers, sticky notes and washi tape at hand makes everything more entertaining. Also I’ll glue anything to a notebook. A train ticket. A flower. A cool candy wrap. It’s the kind of stuff you’ll love seeing later. SO IN CONCLUSION I get not having a tight system is not for everyone and people gravitate towards bullet journaling because they need a place to keep organized but this is the way I’ve managed to finish every notebook I’ve started for the last 15 years and it honestly makes me very happy. My notebooks are a second brain. They are useful in the moment and they also become very faithful reflections of my life I can flip through in the future! Neat stuff all around! Also if you struggle with being given stickers and not knowing where to put them because it’s too much pressure? Your notebook’s right there. Thanks for coming to my TED Talk ♡ -- source link

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