IMO goal based note-taking & productivity systems can end up being where the attention is focused instead of the goal. The more complex the system, the more focus is put into it. The focus feels productive but the reality is that the goal has been abandoned or delayed until the excitement of the system dies down.
I've struggled a lot with this. For me I think it comes down to not being intentional enough about why I'm doing the goal in the first place so I get distracted by shiny new systems that in theory will solve all my problems. With this in mind, I try to keep things as simple as possible and strip back as many layers between the goal and the thing that helps me keep on track to complete that goal.
In relation to notes specifically ( this is for tracking life stuff - DIY/projects/day trips/thoughts etc...), I use a reminders/todo app and one A7 notebook with a mini-pen that live in my pocket. The notebook/pen is the cheapest that i can buy with a spiral.
During the week, I work through the todo list in the notebook, and write my thoughts/things to research more fully. At the end of the week, I remove the completed todos from the app, add new ones from the notebook. I tear up the pages from that week, then write up new todos to the notebook for next week.
Whenever I get a new notebook, I immediately scribble on the front page before I have a chance to stop myself. There. It's tainted and imperfect. And then I've given myself permission to make messy notes, and jot down just whatever, rather than treating it like some museum-grade archive.
my good notes have their origins in thoughts I had while in the shower or while driving or watching a movie or a conversation with someone close to me. Ideas evade me when I'm at my desk in front of my notebook with my awesome pen. This was a huge problem I never noticed that my notebook is never there for me when i need it the most.
the second problem, because its my original thought, I'm naturally attached and biased to my precious thought in that moment. The same thought could feel dumb or obvious or wrong next week. But right then it feels like I've stumbled upon something so insightful. So I need to write it down to revisit.
I've now distributed manila folders with 5-10 blank college ruled sheets of paper across different rooms in my home. I'm never too far from a blank piece of paper.
in the moment, I write it down on a sheet. Fold it and put it in my pocket. Its with me the entire day to review, add on or scratch off. It ends either in the bin or the binder at my desk. As the binder gets thick, i trash or consolidate to keep it thin. The really insightful ideas as far too few for a $2 binder.
Works way better than any other form of capturing insights. As i look through, my binder has so many backs of mailer's i've received and scribbled on. cant figure why.
> As i look through, my binder has so many backs of mailer's i've received and scribbled on. cant figure why.
Is your mailbox a short walk from where you normally work? Walks have been credited for the assist in idea generation from Aristotle to Nietzsche (and beyond).
I personally just keep a little pocket notebook and a couple pens on my person at all times. That replaces the need for the distributed folders of your system. Every week I go through and add them to either my paper notebook or my digital notes.
I don’t really trash the “bad” ideas either since my notebook is bound. I try to be neither precious with the good ideas nor embarrassed of the bad. I treat them all as just a record of thoughts.
I always have my phone with me so I can take a note in that. But when I'm meeting with someone I prefer taking notes in a little notebook I carry, I don't want the other person to feel like I'm...on my phone while speaking to them.
For what it’s worth, I don’t mind as long as you take me with you - tell me what you’re doing and let me see your screen. The problem is not the phone, the problem is people essentially going away mid-conversation.
I’ve always had an aversion to people that make neat notes. Anecdotally my experience in high school was that people that made clean notes and spent a lot of time on them always sucked at actual academics- like doing well on tests and intuitive understanding.
My college notes were OCD-grade tidy and organized, and I did alright. I get what you mean, though. I've seen plenty of examples of people who obsess over making pretty notes that don't convey much information.
Designing something good for me means going through at least 11 seriously bad approaches before half understanding the problem and having a half-working solution. Trying to use a notebook to aid a learning or research process at all has always meant wasting a lot of time "perfecting" those bad approaches. And ending up with lots of notes that document nothing but a painful struggle to make sense. Looking back through the notes that I did take, in notebooks that I have been gifted over the years, is almost unbearable. The approaches I tried before arriving at the right one were fundamentally wrong, there is no fixing them, and it's painfully obvious when looking back. Aside from the emotional problems I perceive there, it's obvious to me that there is no engineering value in keeping those notes at all.
The current best design always lives in my head, and by the time it exists, the solution and understanding is so clear and detailed that I can't be arsed to write it down.
I do think there is value in taking notes for others, though.
What works a little bit for me is having a lose stack of papers at work. The topmost paper serves to put a coffee mug on top, that will take the coffee stains so the table stays clean. From time to time I actually scribble something on a sheet, and since the sheets are all loose it's very easy to discard any sheet after it's served its (diminishingly small) purpose as a thinking aid.
Idk that sounds like psychological issues, one must first tidy up the their mind before trying to find external ways like multiple types of notebooks for clean,semi dirty,scribbles and dirty notes. How about discarding messy thoughts or thinking them through until they become well organized and only then put to the good notebook. Notebooks are notebooks no need to complicate things. Its ok if its separated into themes like a notebook for general thoughts and a journal. Though in my note-taking experience of 19 years its ussually noy that important. I would just add extra ripped pages to my journal as notes on notes.
This reminds of when I was in school and we had 3 categories of notebooks.
1. A "rough" notebook to jot down notes
2. A "classwork" notebook to present those notes properly to the teacher and get them corrected and
3. A "homework" notebook to finish homework assignments that used to be given
It's quite a discipline to jot things down in the rough work book and then write out a "neat" version in the class work book.
I stopped doing it once I finished school and realized I didn't really need to do it anymore once I understood what I was writing out. But maybe it’s a habit worth returning to.
I have finally solved this for me. My system consists of two notebooks:
1. Small A6 pocket notebook which I always have on me because it fits in any pocket. Write down anything and everything in it. Bundled with a pen, leather cover,and tiny e-ink ebook reader
2. Big A4 notebook which I usually use at my desk. I used to have an A5 but since it’s not portable anyway, I might as well go with an A4
I really like this setup. There’s also a digital side to it, which consists of Obsidian for creating notes, Quartz for converting obsidian-generated .md files into static websites, and a simple self-hosted web server which gets new files via git.
What kind of notes do you take? It's always been kind of difficult, as someone who takes maybe a page of notes a week, to imagine what people fill entire books of notes full, outside of university etc.?
I had a friend who would write notes on everything. Every time he learned something, he would write it down in his own words. This sounds good, but he ended up basically internalizing and studying his own misunderstandings, as he never referred back to the source material and instead studied off of his notes.
So I'm very curious how you take notes, if you're willing to share?
Sure. For me writing is an aide to thinking and remembering. When I have a thought, a task or anything I don’t want to lose, I just pull up my pocketbook and write it down. For my bigger notebook, I use it to jumpstart any task or project that needs several steps. I feel it helpful to write thoughts down, like it forces me to actually think thoughts through and end a sentence with a dot. I also sometimes sketch, make tiny drawings or tables to see ideas visually. Basically anything that gets thoughts out of my head and into some semi-permanent medium. Also for each day I usually write down its date and throughout the day write down what I want to do, what I did, and how I feel. I think it helps with emotional regulation. I believe in the act of externalising thoughts as a way to improve and remember them. I noticed this while listening to writers, as many of them are very eloquent and outspoken. No wonder - they are not improvising, these are the thoughts they thought through before. So I think if there’s something you care about that you would like to think more deeply or clearly about, it only makes sense to write it down. The physical movement of your muscles while you write also force you to be more deliberate and to remember better. If you’d like to start, I can recommend just getting a small notebook that fits in your pocket and a nice pen/fountain pen/mechanical pencil to go with it and just get into the habit of pulling it out as much as possible to just write down whatever concerns you at the moment. It keeps you off social media and doomscrolling too!
This problem is so old and so common that people like Erasmus have commented on it. "Waste books" written by intellectuals throughout the ages still exist, one of the finest is Lichtenberg's. I keep a little notebook and even my main notebook has scattered pages labeled "fragments" that accomplish something similar.
I'm kind of on the opposite side of the problem here where all my notes end up as unstructured puddles of thought vomit. in classes people asked a few times for me to show them my notes - they couldn't even figure out what topic the notes were on haha
on a mobile the next best thing was replacing my obsidian's app icon (no endorsement - I don't like obsidian) with the widget that pulls up today's "daily note", whether I want it or not. on pc I have an autohotkey command that does the same for notepad.exe
I keep buying the pretty notebooks and collecting them. I hate writing on them because they are too beautiful. I've finally started using random company merch notebooks (that are not pretty) while I also carry around a pretty one for the pretty thoughts (which I rarely use because nothing ends up deserving it)
I used to keep an engineering notebook open on my desk just for this purpose. The left side was scratchpad, the right side was a more structured notetaking system of things to remember. When the left side got full, I'd start stealing some area on the right. When the right got full, my things to remember were probably out of date so I'd flip to the next side.
I've been trying binders instead of notebooks (especially the mini-binders from folks like Maruman). Binders allow you to easily remove and add pages (and tabs, dividers, etc). This gives you the satisfaction of making something aesthetically pleasing, while also knowing you can move a 'messy' page somewhere else.
Great idea about ring binders. They also solve another problem that I've always had with paper notebooks: When a glue/stitch-bound paper notebook gets full, I have to start a new one. But there will always be some pages with unresolved issues, open to-dos or important knowledge that I want to carry around with me. Carrying two notebooks doesn't work, insufficient pocket space. Copying things is a chore, so I won't reliably do it. But just keeping some binder pages when refilling and putting the rest into some archive binder on a shelf sounds perfect.
Oh wow, that is impressive and gorgeous. I love that I can get a bespoke horsehair leather brush for my binder. Not sure I would be allowed to write in it without a matching Japanese whiskey.
This looks quite expensive for note taking. I have a midori travellers notebook (wow they got expensive now!) and bought myself a stapler that you can rotate (so together like 50€ and I still thought it was quite expensive at the time). I make my own refills out of whatever paper I want.
There are a hundred different issues that are more important to me than the usability of my notebook in a court proceeding. And even so, that proceeding might easily be one against you, so why would you want to produce reliable evidence against yourself?
I did the same 2 years ago. Used to make every notebook about a certain topic/theme and with a certain structure/style. It held my notes back so much...
The solution was just to write anything in any way I wanted to in that moment
I used to be much more precious about notebooks myself. I may have also found tricks or games to play to on myself to force myself to use them without fear of mucking them up with bad sketches or poorly organized ideas.
Eventually I got over it now and just use them as places to scribble ideas and don't care if it's ugly. I find that over the years I just started caring more about getting the thing I wanted to accomplish done than making sure I had a pristine record of the thoughts that led up to it. Maybe it's an age thing.
I have a similar idea in the note taking app I've written for myself over a couple years. I have a new daily page everyday with a simple but powerful tagging system. Adding automation soon that will be kick ass, but for now the mcp server plus Claude Code is pretty dang powerful. It's basically a clone of logseq with my own features. It's got templates and saved views and powerful filtering. It's been super useful for me personally. I need to update the README though. https://github.com/steezeburger/brainspread/
Every daily log is the same as the dirt notebook. It reduces friction when going to create a note because you don't have to think about where to file the note _before_ it's even written. I tag things and can sort them later, if I want, or not. Or can schedule things to loop back into my life (move to the current daily) if I choose. It's the exact same concept as their dirt notebook.
It's not a new concept. Bullet journal, logseq, zettelkasten, org-mode, etc are all inspiration
A nice thing about being left handed is there a few things I can't get precious about. Fountain pens are never going to feature in my life as I'll just smudge everything. Similarly, I'll never end up collecting gaming mice as most of them are not usable for lefties.
Learn to write backwards. That talent is far more accessible to lefties, for whom artistic expression and fine motor skills are both on the same side of the brain.
Or write in one of the Semitic or Western Asian languages, which are right-to-left. You’ll never smudge and you’ll be able to enjoy fountain pens.
You could try getting an EF nib and pair it with a fast drying ink ( https://mountainofink.com/blog/fast-dry-inks for examples)?
Also, some manufacturers (for example Lamy) make special nibs for left-handed people.
One of the nice things about notebooks (handwritten) is the juxtaposition of data, which makes it a joy to browse through and rediscover old thoughts and ideas.
The only note taking app I’ve found to be fun to browse is Google Keep. I love the layout, I love how things are “out of place”
On a side note, I’ve found Muji notebooks to hit that sweet spot where the paper is nice enough to write down something you want to keep and refer back to, and cheap enough that you can waste pages writing down spur of the moment thoughts and things.
Hand writing notes will always be my go-to, most 'productivity apps' assume you know what's important before you've thought it through - they ask you to organise your notes immediately as you write them. Sometimes you need the messy version first, and the structure only makes sense in hindsight.
I’ve been doing this for a decade. I call it the anti project: it’s whatever I feel like writing on that day. It’s not intended to write a novel (I’ve done that) or make a movie (done that too), or solve any useful problem. The purpose is no purpose besides to get away from the screens and spill some ink.
This is the lazy, pointless-TV-watching of writing. And I’d recommend it, but if I tried to explain why that would defeat the purpose of having no purpose.
Unless you were at a couple of obscure film festivals in the early 2010s, definitely not!
We were hobbyists making features and shorts on a shoestring budget with no expectations of “making it.” It was a blast. It’s also an all-consuming hobby that you can’t keep up forever.
I gave up trying to organize notes at all. I’ll try to keep the same notebook with me, but if I don’t happen to have it handy, I’d rather just write in whatever I’ve got lying around. Now there are many half-filled notebooks all over, and I stopped worrying about filling up one before opening the next. I don’t refer to them either, taking the notes helps me pay more attention, even if I will never read them.
I tend to have many notebooks going at any one time, each with their own slightly different uses. But my trick for keeping things 'dirty' for my main notebook is that I burn it when I'm finished with it. I'll copy out anything I need to maintain to other, more permanent, places, but in the end it will be gone. Why not be messy, it will be ash soon enough!
I have a travellers journal and one of the inserts in that is my messy, unstructured brain dump of thoughts.
The other two are for daily planning and the more structured long term things. Seems to work for me but if I hasn't found something that works, I'd totally be down for a dirt notebook.
I like this distinction “dirt notebook”. As someone who was never naturally good at taking notes, I’ve only later in life made it a consistent habit. That being said I’m realizing all of my notebooks of “dirt” notebooks. There’s no rhyme or reason to it. No consistent format. Just pure stream of consciousness trying to capture whatever was in my head at the moment, or whatever I’m trying to remember from a meeting or call or whatever.
I still find myself coming back to a simple notebook now and then. There's something reassuring about using something that isn't connected to a huge cloud platform.
Another solution for this is a notebook with removable pages, you can scribble all you want and if you decide later you don’t need that page in this notebook you can take it out (toss it, store it, or reorganize to a different notebook) and add fresh paper as needed.
It’s also handy to be able to reorder pages if you’re bouncing between purposes, and gives you the option to have a mix of papers if sometimes you want lined and other times dot grid or blank.
Yep im the same way. Tried lots of types, settled on the fabriano dot grid glued pages. Most of my pages are just this dirt style, but its also nice to sometimes rip out a page and these do so cleanly. Sometimes they fall apart... Thats okay, once i had a whole banker box full of notebooks the appeal of saving them all wore off. Now when theyre done theyre done.
The point of TFA seems to me: "do what works for you". If keeping your netbook tidy is at the expense of using it, than maybe that means that doesn't work for you. If keeping your netbook tidy pushes you to write more (or doesn't hinder your ability to write on it) then go for it!
I already know I'm going to annoy some people by saying this, but I've gone through both messy and neat phases of life. Every messy phase was almost entirely forgettable and inexperienced noise. Eventually, I'd find stability in my life and become neat again.
I'm not saying messiness is inherently shameful, but it is absolutely worth looking at the bigger picture to find answers. I probably prolonged the messy phases by avoiding self-analysis. I now realize that it was insecurity and avoidance behavior.
Of course, neatness can also be a coping strategy. I'm intrigued by the author's premise.
> I'm somewhat enamored with the concept of shitty / messy notebooks, like this or this.
It sounds like they want to explore messiness as an aesthetic, not genuinely experience it. I've already said enough to imply what I think about that. I think deliberately chasing aesthetics might be more detached from reality than what I had going on.
I think you're completely missing the point. The "messy" notebook isn't supposed to have any aesthetic value or qualities, it's just a tool for the user to record stuff in the moment. It also has nothing to do having a messy phase in life. It literally is just there for you to write stuff down whenever you need or want to.
I do have a primary notebook, and by default, it is indeed a “Dirt Notebook.” It is my own way, and I’m sure things will continue to evolve. I use that single/primary notebook for everything, everyday use. I have settled on a standard A7 notebook making it easy for me to buy just that.[1]
My writing style is ‘harnessed’ by a simplified Bullet Journal method,[2] complete with diagrams, writing on the sides, sometimes vertical, and everything else in between. However, the interesting thing is, my notes are still one of those that gets shared by other people in the same meeting. I tend to draw out everyone’s speech and ideas into visuals that make me understand better.
I also start writing from the last page of the notebook too, to maintain a running list of TODO/TASK items.
When a page is parsed or transferred or no longer valid, I mark that page as ‘archived.’ This is usually done weekly or whenever I feel like it with the same simple fountain pen or a colored marker if I find it nearby. This way, I know which page I never need to look back at and which ones need to be re-checked later.
Individual pages sometimes contain TODO/TASK too. This is where the Bullet Journal method comes in to finish it off.
For contents that are useful for future references, such as resources of knowledge or ideas or a journal entry, I transfer them to my digital notes, the physical journal, and the commonplace book. [3]
These might seem complex, but after a while, they have become muscle memory for me. If you want to start off today, constrain yourself with something "un-dirty" like the Cornell Note Taking System[4] to build up a habit.
I’m including links to some of my personal blog’s articles (not very popular around here), but it makes sense with the above notes I just wrote.
Edit/Addendum: I think it is only fair to confess that I am inspired by the note-taking style of Leonardo da Vinci depicted and dramatized in movies, and TVs. I’m just a low-level copier and thief of the methods of such a great person.
People don't do digital notebooks and have automation archive, index, and categorize their old thoughts? And, now, with large language models, automation can even infer latent consequences from what you scribbled. Digitally, of course. Unless you plan on having optical character recognition processing in the pipeline.
One reason I switched to the cheapest notebooks and cheapest (reasonable) pens is a feeling that I was attempting to live a simulacrum of productivity bathed in nostalgia for an era I never lived in, and which probably never existed.
There's a vision I am still somewhat attracted to of illuminating notes into a handcrafted moleskin (or whatever) journal and in doing so, creating an artifact that has value across all dimensions. This intention, whether it sits on the surface of my subconscious or just below it, detracts from the thing of value: what's being written.
What really changed my perspective was attempting to write seriously. The first draft of a long form work is the bare minimum to begin writing. Writing does not really begin until it exists. When I tried to adopt this into the notes I made in my professional life what I found is that, in general, I didn't really need much of the notes anyway.
> I can't seem to keep my notes messy. Eventually, I start structuring the notes, doing cleaner handwriting, adding a cover or some stickers
Is this a so-called humble brag? FYI my notebooks are messy, unorganized and dirty (from lying unprotected in my backpack). I rarely use it because I always lose the pen after each scribble.
I don't see it as a brag. I think they're saying that the specialness of the notebook starts becoming an obligation and a burden, and then the notebook loses its original purpose, because "messy" notes and "neat" notes are for different things.
I used to have the same problem I would buy fancy moleskins or really nice Japanese grid notebooks, and I always felt like I had to model what I was trying to get out of my head to the medium rather than just focusing on getting it out of my head.
Not too long ago I accidentally bought a huge package of wide ruled spiral notebooks. I hate wide ruled and prefer college ruled. So they sat collecting dust for a long time before I finally looked at the pile and figured I'm just gonna start using these and treating them exactly like you do - a drainage ditch. So far so good, the pile is half gone. Definitely helps to go with the no fucks given approach.
IMO goal based note-taking & productivity systems can end up being where the attention is focused instead of the goal. The more complex the system, the more focus is put into it. The focus feels productive but the reality is that the goal has been abandoned or delayed until the excitement of the system dies down.
I've struggled a lot with this. For me I think it comes down to not being intentional enough about why I'm doing the goal in the first place so I get distracted by shiny new systems that in theory will solve all my problems. With this in mind, I try to keep things as simple as possible and strip back as many layers between the goal and the thing that helps me keep on track to complete that goal.
In relation to notes specifically ( this is for tracking life stuff - DIY/projects/day trips/thoughts etc...), I use a reminders/todo app and one A7 notebook with a mini-pen that live in my pocket. The notebook/pen is the cheapest that i can buy with a spiral.
During the week, I work through the todo list in the notebook, and write my thoughts/things to research more fully. At the end of the week, I remove the completed todos from the app, add new ones from the notebook. I tear up the pages from that week, then write up new todos to the notebook for next week.
notion did this for me at work, in hindsight, probably spent too much time 'organizing.'
now i just use excalidraw as my todo / thought board
Whenever I get a new notebook, I immediately scribble on the front page before I have a chance to stop myself. There. It's tainted and imperfect. And then I've given myself permission to make messy notes, and jot down just whatever, rather than treating it like some museum-grade archive.
my good notes have their origins in thoughts I had while in the shower or while driving or watching a movie or a conversation with someone close to me. Ideas evade me when I'm at my desk in front of my notebook with my awesome pen. This was a huge problem I never noticed that my notebook is never there for me when i need it the most.
the second problem, because its my original thought, I'm naturally attached and biased to my precious thought in that moment. The same thought could feel dumb or obvious or wrong next week. But right then it feels like I've stumbled upon something so insightful. So I need to write it down to revisit.
I've now distributed manila folders with 5-10 blank college ruled sheets of paper across different rooms in my home. I'm never too far from a blank piece of paper.
in the moment, I write it down on a sheet. Fold it and put it in my pocket. Its with me the entire day to review, add on or scratch off. It ends either in the bin or the binder at my desk. As the binder gets thick, i trash or consolidate to keep it thin. The really insightful ideas as far too few for a $2 binder.
Works way better than any other form of capturing insights. As i look through, my binder has so many backs of mailer's i've received and scribbled on. cant figure why.
> As i look through, my binder has so many backs of mailer's i've received and scribbled on. cant figure why.
Is your mailbox a short walk from where you normally work? Walks have been credited for the assist in idea generation from Aristotle to Nietzsche (and beyond).
I personally just keep a little pocket notebook and a couple pens on my person at all times. That replaces the need for the distributed folders of your system. Every week I go through and add them to either my paper notebook or my digital notes.
I don’t really trash the “bad” ideas either since my notebook is bound. I try to be neither precious with the good ideas nor embarrassed of the bad. I treat them all as just a record of thoughts.
I always have my phone with me so I can take a note in that. But when I'm meeting with someone I prefer taking notes in a little notebook I carry, I don't want the other person to feel like I'm...on my phone while speaking to them.
For what it’s worth, I don’t mind as long as you take me with you - tell me what you’re doing and let me see your screen. The problem is not the phone, the problem is people essentially going away mid-conversation.
I’ve always had an aversion to people that make neat notes. Anecdotally my experience in high school was that people that made clean notes and spent a lot of time on them always sucked at actual academics- like doing well on tests and intuitive understanding.
My college notes were OCD-grade tidy and organized, and I did alright. I get what you mean, though. I've seen plenty of examples of people who obsess over making pretty notes that don't convey much information.
And then when it’s done you just rip out that first page?
Nah. It’s there for posterity: my name, the date when I opened it, and a crummy drawing of a dog holding a picket sign or something.
Designing something good for me means going through at least 11 seriously bad approaches before half understanding the problem and having a half-working solution. Trying to use a notebook to aid a learning or research process at all has always meant wasting a lot of time "perfecting" those bad approaches. And ending up with lots of notes that document nothing but a painful struggle to make sense. Looking back through the notes that I did take, in notebooks that I have been gifted over the years, is almost unbearable. The approaches I tried before arriving at the right one were fundamentally wrong, there is no fixing them, and it's painfully obvious when looking back. Aside from the emotional problems I perceive there, it's obvious to me that there is no engineering value in keeping those notes at all.
The current best design always lives in my head, and by the time it exists, the solution and understanding is so clear and detailed that I can't be arsed to write it down.
I do think there is value in taking notes for others, though.
What works a little bit for me is having a lose stack of papers at work. The topmost paper serves to put a coffee mug on top, that will take the coffee stains so the table stays clean. From time to time I actually scribble something on a sheet, and since the sheets are all loose it's very easy to discard any sheet after it's served its (diminishingly small) purpose as a thinking aid.
Idk that sounds like psychological issues, one must first tidy up the their mind before trying to find external ways like multiple types of notebooks for clean,semi dirty,scribbles and dirty notes. How about discarding messy thoughts or thinking them through until they become well organized and only then put to the good notebook. Notebooks are notebooks no need to complicate things. Its ok if its separated into themes like a notebook for general thoughts and a journal. Though in my note-taking experience of 19 years its ussually noy that important. I would just add extra ripped pages to my journal as notes on notes.
This reminds of when I was in school and we had 3 categories of notebooks.
1. A "rough" notebook to jot down notes 2. A "classwork" notebook to present those notes properly to the teacher and get them corrected and 3. A "homework" notebook to finish homework assignments that used to be given
It's quite a discipline to jot things down in the rough work book and then write out a "neat" version in the class work book.
I stopped doing it once I finished school and realized I didn't really need to do it anymore once I understood what I was writing out. But maybe it’s a habit worth returning to.
I have finally solved this for me. My system consists of two notebooks:
1. Small A6 pocket notebook which I always have on me because it fits in any pocket. Write down anything and everything in it. Bundled with a pen, leather cover,and tiny e-ink ebook reader
2. Big A4 notebook which I usually use at my desk. I used to have an A5 but since it’s not portable anyway, I might as well go with an A4
I really like this setup. There’s also a digital side to it, which consists of Obsidian for creating notes, Quartz for converting obsidian-generated .md files into static websites, and a simple self-hosted web server which gets new files via git.
What kind of notes do you take? It's always been kind of difficult, as someone who takes maybe a page of notes a week, to imagine what people fill entire books of notes full, outside of university etc.?
I had a friend who would write notes on everything. Every time he learned something, he would write it down in his own words. This sounds good, but he ended up basically internalizing and studying his own misunderstandings, as he never referred back to the source material and instead studied off of his notes.
So I'm very curious how you take notes, if you're willing to share?
Sure. For me writing is an aide to thinking and remembering. When I have a thought, a task or anything I don’t want to lose, I just pull up my pocketbook and write it down. For my bigger notebook, I use it to jumpstart any task or project that needs several steps. I feel it helpful to write thoughts down, like it forces me to actually think thoughts through and end a sentence with a dot. I also sometimes sketch, make tiny drawings or tables to see ideas visually. Basically anything that gets thoughts out of my head and into some semi-permanent medium. Also for each day I usually write down its date and throughout the day write down what I want to do, what I did, and how I feel. I think it helps with emotional regulation. I believe in the act of externalising thoughts as a way to improve and remember them. I noticed this while listening to writers, as many of them are very eloquent and outspoken. No wonder - they are not improvising, these are the thoughts they thought through before. So I think if there’s something you care about that you would like to think more deeply or clearly about, it only makes sense to write it down. The physical movement of your muscles while you write also force you to be more deliberate and to remember better. If you’d like to start, I can recommend just getting a small notebook that fits in your pocket and a nice pen/fountain pen/mechanical pencil to go with it and just get into the habit of pulling it out as much as possible to just write down whatever concerns you at the moment. It keeps you off social media and doomscrolling too!
This problem is so old and so common that people like Erasmus have commented on it. "Waste books" written by intellectuals throughout the ages still exist, one of the finest is Lichtenberg's. I keep a little notebook and even my main notebook has scattered pages labeled "fragments" that accomplish something similar.
I'm kind of on the opposite side of the problem here where all my notes end up as unstructured puddles of thought vomit. in classes people asked a few times for me to show them my notes - they couldn't even figure out what topic the notes were on haha
on a mobile the next best thing was replacing my obsidian's app icon (no endorsement - I don't like obsidian) with the widget that pulls up today's "daily note", whether I want it or not. on pc I have an autohotkey command that does the same for notepad.exe
I keep buying the pretty notebooks and collecting them. I hate writing on them because they are too beautiful. I've finally started using random company merch notebooks (that are not pretty) while I also carry around a pretty one for the pretty thoughts (which I rarely use because nothing ends up deserving it)
I used to keep an engineering notebook open on my desk just for this purpose. The left side was scratchpad, the right side was a more structured notetaking system of things to remember. When the left side got full, I'd start stealing some area on the right. When the right got full, my things to remember were probably out of date so I'd flip to the next side.
i do the same thing, i have a notebook stream of thought writing, notepad for scibbles, and a notebook for journaling (the one i dont like to dirty).
funny how someone else had the same exact problem and we came up with similar solutions independently.
I've been trying binders instead of notebooks (especially the mini-binders from folks like Maruman). Binders allow you to easily remove and add pages (and tabs, dividers, etc). This gives you the satisfaction of making something aesthetically pleasing, while also knowing you can move a 'messy' page somewhere else.
Great idea about ring binders. They also solve another problem that I've always had with paper notebooks: When a glue/stitch-bound paper notebook gets full, I have to start a new one. But there will always be some pages with unresolved issues, open to-dos or important knowledge that I want to carry around with me. Carrying two notebooks doesn't work, insufficient pocket space. Copying things is a chore, so I won't reliably do it. But just keeping some binder pages when refilling and putting the rest into some archive binder on a shelf sounds perfect.
Thanks!
Ok. Let me try to spoil you. You are looking for this https://plotterusa.com
And here is a review from Fatih Arslan at https://arslan.io/2025/02/24/plotter-notebook-system/
Oh wow, that is impressive and gorgeous. I love that I can get a bespoke horsehair leather brush for my binder. Not sure I would be allowed to write in it without a matching Japanese whiskey.
Their largest one, which is smaller than a standard piece of paper, starts at $200 and goes up to $270.
For a notebook. With what might be proprietary refills.
What.
It's just A6-sized. You can get a soft A6 binder including refills for a tenth that price.
Looks like a standard 6 ring binder and standard paper sizes. You can probably buy the refills from anywhere.
This looks quite expensive for note taking. I have a midori travellers notebook (wow they got expensive now!) and bought myself a stapler that you can rotate (so together like 50€ and I still thought it was quite expensive at the time). I make my own refills out of whatever paper I want.
The japanese page says "© Designphil Inc." at the bottom. Designphil also owns Traveler's Company which makes traveler's notebooks, another interesting system, and MD product.
this is not a new system... my father had it 20 years ago, sold for dirt cheap by the local stationary shop (not leather of course).
Conventional wisdom is to use a bound notebook, as a court will discount reliability if pages can be removed without leaving a trace.
Why would I care about a court?
There are a hundred different issues that are more important to me than the usability of my notebook in a court proceeding. And even so, that proceeding might easily be one against you, so why would you want to produce reliable evidence against yourself?
I did the same 2 years ago. Used to make every notebook about a certain topic/theme and with a certain structure/style. It held my notes back so much... The solution was just to write anything in any way I wanted to in that moment
I used to be much more precious about notebooks myself. I may have also found tricks or games to play to on myself to force myself to use them without fear of mucking them up with bad sketches or poorly organized ideas.
Eventually I got over it now and just use them as places to scribble ideas and don't care if it's ugly. I find that over the years I just started caring more about getting the thing I wanted to accomplish done than making sure I had a pristine record of the thoughts that led up to it. Maybe it's an age thing.
I have a similar idea in the note taking app I've written for myself over a couple years. I have a new daily page everyday with a simple but powerful tagging system. Adding automation soon that will be kick ass, but for now the mcp server plus Claude Code is pretty dang powerful. It's basically a clone of logseq with my own features. It's got templates and saved views and powerful filtering. It's been super useful for me personally. I need to update the README though. https://github.com/steezeburger/brainspread/
How in the world is this similar?
Every daily log is the same as the dirt notebook. It reduces friction when going to create a note because you don't have to think about where to file the note _before_ it's even written. I tag things and can sort them later, if I want, or not. Or can schedule things to loop back into my life (move to the current daily) if I choose. It's the exact same concept as their dirt notebook.
It's not a new concept. Bullet journal, logseq, zettelkasten, org-mode, etc are all inspiration
A nice thing about being left handed is there a few things I can't get precious about. Fountain pens are never going to feature in my life as I'll just smudge everything. Similarly, I'll never end up collecting gaming mice as most of them are not usable for lefties.
Top notebook tip from a fellow lefty - flip the book, start at the back and write on the left hand page.
Learn to write backwards. That talent is far more accessible to lefties, for whom artistic expression and fine motor skills are both on the same side of the brain.
Or write in one of the Semitic or Western Asian languages, which are right-to-left. You’ll never smudge and you’ll be able to enjoy fountain pens.
You could try getting an EF nib and pair it with a fast drying ink ( https://mountainofink.com/blog/fast-dry-inks for examples)? Also, some manufacturers (for example Lamy) make special nibs for left-handed people.
These are not things I need to know :-)
Or you could rotate the writing media a little bit and be a touch less precocious.
One of the nice things about notebooks (handwritten) is the juxtaposition of data, which makes it a joy to browse through and rediscover old thoughts and ideas.
The only note taking app I’ve found to be fun to browse is Google Keep. I love the layout, I love how things are “out of place”
On a side note, I’ve found Muji notebooks to hit that sweet spot where the paper is nice enough to write down something you want to keep and refer back to, and cheap enough that you can waste pages writing down spur of the moment thoughts and things.
Hand writing notes will always be my go-to, most 'productivity apps' assume you know what's important before you've thought it through - they ask you to organise your notes immediately as you write them. Sometimes you need the messy version first, and the structure only makes sense in hindsight.
I’ve been doing this for a decade. I call it the anti project: it’s whatever I feel like writing on that day. It’s not intended to write a novel (I’ve done that) or make a movie (done that too), or solve any useful problem. The purpose is no purpose besides to get away from the screens and spill some ink.
This is the lazy, pointless-TV-watching of writing. And I’d recommend it, but if I tried to explain why that would defeat the purpose of having no purpose.
What movie did you make? Anything we’d know?
Unless you were at a couple of obscure film festivals in the early 2010s, definitely not!
We were hobbyists making features and shorts on a shoestring budget with no expectations of “making it.” It was a blast. It’s also an all-consuming hobby that you can’t keep up forever.
The last short film we did before is still online https://vimeo.com/144277181
I gave up trying to organize notes at all. I’ll try to keep the same notebook with me, but if I don’t happen to have it handy, I’d rather just write in whatever I’ve got lying around. Now there are many half-filled notebooks all over, and I stopped worrying about filling up one before opening the next. I don’t refer to them either, taking the notes helps me pay more attention, even if I will never read them.
All my notebooks are dirt notebooks
I tend to have many notebooks going at any one time, each with their own slightly different uses. But my trick for keeping things 'dirty' for my main notebook is that I burn it when I'm finished with it. I'll copy out anything I need to maintain to other, more permanent, places, but in the end it will be gone. Why not be messy, it will be ash soon enough!
I have a travellers journal and one of the inserts in that is my messy, unstructured brain dump of thoughts.
The other two are for daily planning and the more structured long term things. Seems to work for me but if I hasn't found something that works, I'd totally be down for a dirt notebook.
All my notebooks are either dirt notebooks or ones I won't write in because I don't want to ruin them
I like this distinction “dirt notebook”. As someone who was never naturally good at taking notes, I’ve only later in life made it a consistent habit. That being said I’m realizing all of my notebooks of “dirt” notebooks. There’s no rhyme or reason to it. No consistent format. Just pure stream of consciousness trying to capture whatever was in my head at the moment, or whatever I’m trying to remember from a meeting or call or whatever.
I still find myself coming back to a simple notebook now and then. There's something reassuring about using something that isn't connected to a huge cloud platform.
Another solution for this is a notebook with removable pages, you can scribble all you want and if you decide later you don’t need that page in this notebook you can take it out (toss it, store it, or reorganize to a different notebook) and add fresh paper as needed.
It’s also handy to be able to reorder pages if you’re bouncing between purposes, and gives you the option to have a mix of papers if sometimes you want lined and other times dot grid or blank.
I like these https://www.jetpens.com/Lihit-Lab-Pastello-Twist-Ring-Notebo...
Yep im the same way. Tried lots of types, settled on the fabriano dot grid glued pages. Most of my pages are just this dirt style, but its also nice to sometimes rip out a page and these do so cleanly. Sometimes they fall apart... Thats okay, once i had a whole banker box full of notebooks the appeal of saving them all wore off. Now when theyre done theyre done.
All pages are removable.
I keep mine loose in a box
But a regular notebook has a limited supply of them
I found my drawings on cheap composite notebooks are noticeably more free and more expressive than on high quality paper.
I relate to this. I once bought a beautiful notebook at an airport. Ten years later still haven't written a single thing in it.
Meanwhile I'm most productive with disgusting tear-off scrap pads, made of recycled paper (or like, composted bananas or something).
But why? What's wrong with a tidy notebook?
There's nothing wrong with a tidy notebook.
The point of TFA seems to me: "do what works for you". If keeping your netbook tidy is at the expense of using it, than maybe that means that doesn't work for you. If keeping your netbook tidy pushes you to write more (or doesn't hinder your ability to write on it) then go for it!
They serve different jobs.
The tidy todo notebook or lab notebook is to offload working memory or keep records.
The chaos notebook is for disorder.
There's nothing wrong with having a tidy notebook, but many of us also need messy notebooks.
I was going to comment similar.
I already know I'm going to annoy some people by saying this, but I've gone through both messy and neat phases of life. Every messy phase was almost entirely forgettable and inexperienced noise. Eventually, I'd find stability in my life and become neat again.
I'm not saying messiness is inherently shameful, but it is absolutely worth looking at the bigger picture to find answers. I probably prolonged the messy phases by avoiding self-analysis. I now realize that it was insecurity and avoidance behavior.
Of course, neatness can also be a coping strategy. I'm intrigued by the author's premise.
> I'm somewhat enamored with the concept of shitty / messy notebooks, like this or this.
It sounds like they want to explore messiness as an aesthetic, not genuinely experience it. I've already said enough to imply what I think about that. I think deliberately chasing aesthetics might be more detached from reality than what I had going on.
I think you're completely missing the point. The "messy" notebook isn't supposed to have any aesthetic value or qualities, it's just a tool for the user to record stuff in the moment. It also has nothing to do having a messy phase in life. It literally is just there for you to write stuff down whenever you need or want to.
I do have a primary notebook, and by default, it is indeed a “Dirt Notebook.” It is my own way, and I’m sure things will continue to evolve. I use that single/primary notebook for everything, everyday use. I have settled on a standard A7 notebook making it easy for me to buy just that.[1]
My writing style is ‘harnessed’ by a simplified Bullet Journal method,[2] complete with diagrams, writing on the sides, sometimes vertical, and everything else in between. However, the interesting thing is, my notes are still one of those that gets shared by other people in the same meeting. I tend to draw out everyone’s speech and ideas into visuals that make me understand better.
I also start writing from the last page of the notebook too, to maintain a running list of TODO/TASK items.
When a page is parsed or transferred or no longer valid, I mark that page as ‘archived.’ This is usually done weekly or whenever I feel like it with the same simple fountain pen or a colored marker if I find it nearby. This way, I know which page I never need to look back at and which ones need to be re-checked later.
Individual pages sometimes contain TODO/TASK too. This is where the Bullet Journal method comes in to finish it off.
For contents that are useful for future references, such as resources of knowledge or ideas or a journal entry, I transfer them to my digital notes, the physical journal, and the commonplace book. [3]
These might seem complex, but after a while, they have become muscle memory for me. If you want to start off today, constrain yourself with something "un-dirty" like the Cornell Note Taking System[4] to build up a habit.
I’m including links to some of my personal blog’s articles (not very popular around here), but it makes sense with the above notes I just wrote.
Edit/Addendum: I think it is only fair to confess that I am inspired by the note-taking style of Leonardo da Vinci depicted and dramatized in movies, and TVs. I’m just a low-level copier and thief of the methods of such a great person.
1. https://brajeshwar.com/2025/notes/
2. https://bulletjournal.com
3. https://brajeshwar.com/2024/commonplace-book/
4. https://lsc.cornell.edu/how-to-study/taking-notes/cornell-no...
People don't do digital notebooks and have automation archive, index, and categorize their old thoughts? And, now, with large language models, automation can even infer latent consequences from what you scribbled. Digitally, of course. Unless you plan on having optical character recognition processing in the pipeline.
One reason I switched to the cheapest notebooks and cheapest (reasonable) pens is a feeling that I was attempting to live a simulacrum of productivity bathed in nostalgia for an era I never lived in, and which probably never existed.
There's a vision I am still somewhat attracted to of illuminating notes into a handcrafted moleskin (or whatever) journal and in doing so, creating an artifact that has value across all dimensions. This intention, whether it sits on the surface of my subconscious or just below it, detracts from the thing of value: what's being written.
What really changed my perspective was attempting to write seriously. The first draft of a long form work is the bare minimum to begin writing. Writing does not really begin until it exists. When I tried to adopt this into the notes I made in my professional life what I found is that, in general, I didn't really need much of the notes anyway.
> I can't seem to keep my notes messy. Eventually, I start structuring the notes, doing cleaner handwriting, adding a cover or some stickers
Is this a so-called humble brag? FYI my notebooks are messy, unorganized and dirty (from lying unprotected in my backpack). I rarely use it because I always lose the pen after each scribble.
I don't see it as a brag. I think they're saying that the specialness of the notebook starts becoming an obligation and a burden, and then the notebook loses its original purpose, because "messy" notes and "neat" notes are for different things.
Hilarious coincidence. Just as I clicked on link I had coughed so took a moment to say amazed if i had spit out all the freckles on the page.
I used to have the same problem I would buy fancy moleskins or really nice Japanese grid notebooks, and I always felt like I had to model what I was trying to get out of my head to the medium rather than just focusing on getting it out of my head.
Not too long ago I accidentally bought a huge package of wide ruled spiral notebooks. I hate wide ruled and prefer college ruled. So they sat collecting dust for a long time before I finally looked at the pile and figured I'm just gonna start using these and treating them exactly like you do - a drainage ditch. So far so good, the pile is half gone. Definitely helps to go with the no fucks given approach.
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