Some Noodling About Notebooks

This post is a bit of noodling with no real resolution and comes from a meta-experiment of writing a blog post outline rather than reading Hacker News during my pomodoro breaks.

Stationary Rabbit Hole

Lately I’ve been falling into a stationary content rabbit hole and have been collecting pens and pencils. In the past I’ve fallen into workflow based rabbit holes (Zettelkasten method, Roam, bullet journals, etc.) but this time it’s mainly focused on hardware, which has less downside to my productivity but more quickly falls into my susceptibility for buying stuff that I think will make me happier.

Here’s a collection of content as an example:

No Change To My Log Workflow

First, the good news: I’m still using Obsidian as my daily log and primary personal knowledge management tool. I have a daily note document that I keep open on one of my displays. Within that document is a Workflowy-style bulleted list of updates and notes throughout the day. I have a keyboard shortcut to insert the current timestamp and I end up with something that looks like the following:

- 09:17 Finished Safety meeting, am going to work on XYZ product now
- 09:45 Pomodoro break, cleaning up [[Project XYZ]] notes
- 10:30 Had idea for [[New Feature Idea]]
- 13:15 Have meeting on [[Topic]] in an hour, going to prep
    - Nested bullets on things to make sure I hit in the meeting
- 15:10 Found an interesting bug #inbox
    - Bullet points of details about the bug
    - Item is tagged #inbox so that I come back to it later to ticket up in
      detail
    - Necessary information only, no prose or deep detail in my daily log
- 21:10 Some additional notes

You’ll notice that it’s diet interstitial journal and also links to other documents using the [[]] wikilink format. Obsidian will automatically generate a file for me if I click on a wikilink that doesn’t exist, or I ignore creating the file altogether and if I create the document later it will become linked.

My Obsidian vault is sync’d between all of my devices and is searchable by tags and plain text search, two things that my bullet journal never was.

Getting Back to Focused Thinking Time

A few weeks ago I listened to an episode of the Cortex podcast where they were talking about managing notifications and keeping focused. I decided to give that a try and turned off most of my notifications (more on that in a future post) and I started setting aside time to think about stuff before doing it, such a wild concept!

I blocked out time on my calendar for thinking about “Brazil Software Team Q3 Plan” for example and I would literally turn away from my normal desk, monitors, computer, phones, etc. and have only my notebook on my side desk. Just me, my notebook, and my headphones for an hour facing a blank wall.

With all my notifications turned off and no way of getting distracted by a Slack message or other notes, I had really good success putting the quality time into thinking. If I attempt to set aside time to do that with my computer, I get distracted by something else in my notes or have an idea for something to check on, or code to test.

The system ended up being a main work notebook and another page to the side where I’d dump idle thoughts or ideas that came into my head. If I was working on a set of tickets and I had an idea for a new internal tool, I’d write that idea on the side sheet and tell myself I’d come back to it later. No more pressure to think it through now or be worried about forgetting it. Then I’d focus back on the set of tickets I had set aside time to work on.

I’m pretty sure I stole that idea from meditation?

Now I think I just need to bridge the gap between that medium that helps me focus on deep thinking time - the notebook - and the retrieval of notes. My work notebook has ended up filled with 30% deep work notes and 70% random notes and meeting notes. I carry the same notebook around with me to each meeting and whenever I’m not at my desk so it has a lot of ideas, sketches, part numbers, phone call notes, meeting notes, etc.

It would be nice if I could have similar notes together so that I can compound on the thinking. Having to flip around to find something is a bit obnoxious and my previous mentality of “if it’s not searchable it shouldn’t be considered a true store of knowledge” is ringing again.

Composition Notebook

I’ve been running the Mini Composition Notebook Idea for the last couple months as well. My work notebook has a bunch of useful information in it that I don’t want to be stolen or lost, so when I’m not at the office I keep a little composition notebook with me. The book cost $1 and is a great place to dump those fleeting thoughts and ideas when I’m out and about or watching TV.

If it gets lost, who cares, it’s not large enough to do deep thinking in and it’s mostly random scribbles. The contents get looked at once a week or so and if they warrant getting flushed out more, I add it to my daily note with a tag to dig in deeper later.

The problem is, it’s not sexy and cool. The stationary content I’ve been consuming is showing me all these other great schemes and things that I could be doing instead. One of them even looks interesting…

Notebooks By Topic

In a given day I work within at least four different domains - I’ll be writing code, have a handful of senior leadership meetings, have a meeting with a direct about a project, and take an escalated service call from a client - for example. That means that my one work notebook gets jumbled up with a lot of topics all in one. For now I’ve just been going page-by-page in bullet journal fashion. But I think this is wrong, I should be doing sections or notebooks for each topic.

But, it would be an insane stack of notebooks that I’d have to cary around if I were to just purchase multiples of my favorite Midori or Leuchtturm notebooks and I would likely rarely have the correct one with me.

So, I’ve been looking at things like the Travelers notebooks in either a full size or passport size. These allow you to have multiple smaller notebooks within one fold so I could have a notebook per section or area.

It’s likely that I’ll be tempted by the passport size first; I could continue with my big work notebook for misc stuff in the short term but have a passport sized notebook for random notes and ad-hoc stuff within a couple topics. This would allow me to test-run the concept of sections without killing off my main notebook right away.

EDC Fatigue Again?

In December I purchased everyone in my family a good EDC pouch (or at least a put-this-in-your-car pouch) with a couple items. I ended up building mine out quite well and carrying it with me every day. It had:

• Rite in the Rain No 371FX-M Notebook
• Fisher Space Pen
• Leatherman Signal
• Whistle
• A collection of IDs that I use less frequently than my phone wallet (safety training, govt IDs, WeWork, etc.)
• Olight Arkfield Pro
• Ledger Hardware Wallet
• A couple gift cards

I still keep it in my backpack but the biggest reason I don’t carry it in my front pocket anymore is: I used the notebook too frequently. The whole collection was in a nice Viperade pouch and was super compact but I kept needing to take notes. So I’d pull the notebook and the space pen out and start taking notes - but I didn’t want to go through the hassle of putting the notebook back in the pouch so I’d just toss it in my pocket.

Just like that I had undone the whole point of why I liked the kit, it was one atomic unit that I put on the counter when I got home and put in my pocket as I left. As Paul Harrell would say it was easy for me to train “program compliance” so I kept carrying things with me. Now that I had three things in my pocket it became unwieldy quickly.

So, I’ve tossed the pouch in my backpack and am only carrying a mini composition notebook, my Majohn A1 Press Retractable Fountain Pen, and a rOtring 800 drafting pencil. They sit in a neat pile on the counter and it’s easy to keep that program compliance up.

I’m worried that if I add a larger small notebook to my pocket it will undo the ease of carrying it around but I think it may still be worth a try.

Next Steps

I’m going to either test a Travelers passport notebook or I’ll try abusing another composition notebook to make it two-subject.