Three Rules of Proper Notebook Management

I stumbled across an interesting website this week: First Today, Then Tomorrow, written by professional writer Randy Murray. I’m still perusing the articles, but I was taken by three articles entitled Three Rules of Proper Notebook Management:

  1. What To Write In Your Notebook
  2. The Best Notebook To Use
  3. What To Do With Filled Notebooks

With so much bullshit written about notebooks, and particularly about a certain brand of notebook that despite what the marketing department may claim were most definitely NOT used by Van Gogh and Ernest Hemingway, these three short articles are a breath of fresh air.

The answers to the questions posed by the articles sum them up perfectly:

  1. Everything.
  2. Whatever is available.
  3. It doesn’t matter.

My favourite piece of advice concerns What To Write In Your Notebook:

A notebook kept for a single purpose will likely go unused. A general notebook, well managed, is a mass of ideas, reminders, and observations.

In the few days since reading that single sentence I’ve written more in my notebook than the preceding few weeks. Good advice.