The one on the left is my Wanderings Passport with three notebook inserts – daily working notebook, LTD development and Orbital Operations development. The one on the right is new, the newestor Field Notes sized cover (UK) (currently unavail in the US, maybe elsewhere?), which contains three Field Notes notebooks, each for a different project. I picked up the pen loop last year, and it’s running with an old Parker I had laying around that I refitted with a G2 gel refill.
You may note that the Wanderings, which I’ve owned for three months, already looks like it’s had the shit beaten out of it.
I just couldn’t make the Wanderings sit right with four inserts, and I touch the three books already in there every day, so swapping them out on the regular wasn’t going to work for me. So I got the newestor, which was reasonably cheap, to run a second project notebook with the ton of Field Notes I have stacked up in the office from having been a subscriber for years. Eventually I may pony up for one of those handmade “fauxdori” on Etsy that can contain six Field Notes booklets. Like this one.
This is Not Ideal. But we’re going to give it a go.
Lost the first 40 minutes of the day to trying to find out if I can hack a better fill for the Tombow Airpress pen I picked up today. The size and shape are perfect for what I need, but the ink is terrible. I dislike ballpoints at the best of times, and the line on this one is grey and scratchy. So, right now, I’m running it with a Pigma Micron, which turns out to fit the pen loop better.
Pen loop on what? An Office Depot Note Card Case (UK) (US+). Remember the Hipster PDA? This is like the Executive Hipster PDA.
If you want to go nuts, there’s the Levenger Pocket Briefcase, which I read about on a stationery blog last night. But this was a tenner as opposed to sixty quid for the Levenger thing and it does exactly the same job, only not in leather.
I want more capture points for thinking and events. Can’t catch the big fish without nets. And I want to be on my phone less, as previously noted. Also, things captured in the phone tend to disappear into the phone, and, as I’ve said before, emailing myself is one of my worst habits, because you wake up in the morning and your inbox is at 109.
I am unlikely to keep an index card box – that way lies Zettelkasten and madness. Anything I put down that I need to save will get trimmed and pasted into the notebook.
I kind of miss having one Moleskine for everything? But the paper is not good now, I was going through up to six of them a year, and those bulky fuckers pile up. This is going to be quicker and easier to manage. And I always have a spare shirt pocket, because I mostly wear work shirts. Americans are really bloody good at workwear: I have Carharrt shirts that don’t have a stitch loose after 12 years, and I get similar out of Dickies and Riggs and the like. They’re comfortable, warm, breathable and really hard-wearing, and have two chest pockets. I most often wear them over popovers that have at least one pocket. Phone always goes in the left pocket. The other one is for earbuds or the Rabbit or whatever else. Used to be a notebook. Now it’s this thing.
(My daughter was sixteen or seventeen when she turned to me, as we walked out to the local restaurant, and said, “I’ve finally solved the secret of the power of the patriarchy. Pockets! You all have fucking pockets!” And that, dear reader, is when she started wearing suit jackets found in charity shops, and why she wore a vintage suit adjusted by a tailor to her university graduation. Yes, my kid has a degree.)
Beaten awake by the cat at 6am, 7am, 8am, 9am and, finally, 930am, when he decided to escalate and ever so gently sink his fangs into the bridge of my nose.
Had to unstring one of the four inserts I had running in the notebook last night, as I reached a point where the spine of the first insert was being curled too hard. I’m actually really pissed off about that, as having four sections was ideal. And I’m still drowning in old Field Notes notebooks even though I regretfully cancelled my subscription a couple of years ago. I had to take out a project-specific notebook insert to get the thing to sit right. Am I going to have to buy a second cover at a Field Notes size for the project-specific books? A man shouldn’t need two notebook covers.
Next up is figuring out an archival box organisation situation for the filled notebook inserts.
You can tell my brain is fried because I’m thinking about this stuff and shopping for a leather cover that’s Field Notes sized. You can also tell from the above that I am going Even More Analogue.
So a while back I installed an HP Envy printer. I finally sourced affordable 4×6 inch matte photo card for it. I have a collage app on my phone that I’ve used to make four-image A4 pages to send to the printer. I convinced the app to go to 4×6, and eventually managed to convince the phone to print to the photo tray rather than the A4. Ran a quick test and it does indeed spit out a print that can be scissored down the middle without trimming and pasted straight into the Passport notebook.
(I admit, I am still kind of hankering after a Roterfaden)
For me, this is a bigger deal than you might think. I’ll be able to combine notes and finds and send them to the printer when I’m thinking about it without having to go for a thermal printer for that task, which does not produce archival print.
I’d been thinking about getting a wireless thermal printer just because I want the transmission from phone to print to be relatively frictionless. I also still kind of miss the Little Printer. But thermal prints fade fast.
All my thinking and probably half my referencing is in analogue. Being able to paste a greater range of material into my notebooks is all to the good.
Before I get started, I want to say that this is my system, and I do not necessarily recommend it to others! Writing is my job, so it would make sense that I’d have a bunch of notebooks. My intention with this letter is to be descriptive not prescriptive.
A lot of it seems to be behind a paywall, but the stuff up top is a big chunk and interesting.
The multiple-books thing is why I went to a fauxdori Passport-size – I have four different notebooks stuffed into one cover, so that I’m not constantly scrabbling through a bag for the notebook I need right at that moment.
And he makes a point I’ve tried to make before:
I think all the time about how we emphasize the importance of keeping notebooks and sketchbooks but we almost never talk about the importance of revisiting them and re-reading them. I have found a weekly review hugely helpful: just once a week, sit down and re-read your notebooks and see if there’s anything you can use.
I found I could use a fourth insert for planning the newsletter. So I decided to trim the bottom off an old Field Notes I had lying around, and used an extra band to bind it in after watching a YouTube video to make sure I was doing it right. The notebook is a little bit bulgy now? But it’s interesting to be able to have all the ongoing stuff under one cover.
I’ve used pocket-size hardback Moleskines for decades. I’m reaching the point where they’re getting hard to store, and, frankly, it feels like the paper is getting worse right as they’re getting more expensive. Also, my habit of breaking projects and ideas out into separate notebooks from the main notebook means that I’m wrangling a pouch stuffed with a dozen Field Notes books in addition to the main zibaldone-style object.
I looked at Midori notebooks, but to me they look overpriced and there are some disappointing reviews about their quality these days. So I went with something else.
This is the Passport sized Wanderings notebook. Wanderings offer what are essentially Midori clones — people call those “fauxdori” – but have thought just a little bit harder about the materials and design.
I’m really happy with the Wanderings Passport.
Here’s how they work. What you get is the leather cover and some bands. You slip the bands around the actual notebooks to bind them into the cover. I have three of these inserts in mine currently, but I’ve read you can bind as many as five in, and I have some extra bands in case I ever want to try that. The innards can be highly customised. And they fit Midori Passport inserts or any number of fauxdori innovations at that size.
These notebooks come without bookmark ribbons, and, having been a Moleskine user for so long, I am used to having a bookmark (that the cats chew when I’m not looking). So I bought some brass bookmark clips (UK) (US+) to locate my places in each of the three books.
In my Moleskines, I would index the most useful items by numbering on the first page. With these, since they’ll all get tossed into a box when completed, I’m writing the index on the front cover. So it’ll be a case of sorting through the box looking for dates and index entries to locate whatever I might be looking for. (I refer to old notebooks often.)
You can buy some delightful, stitched notebooks with good paper from Wanderings. But I found passport-sized stapled ruled notebooks in 100gsm paper super cheap – I note they’ve gone up in price now, but they’re still cheaper than six Wanderings books and here they are.
The Passport size is different to the Moleskine. Shorter and wider. It’s a bit of a struggle to get it into a shirt pocket. But it feels nice in the hand, and it will make me use my bag when I go out rather than stuff every pocket.
I did also buy a leather and brass pen loop for it, but I don’t like the fit. So, for now, this is what it looks like.
This now becomes the “everything” notebook. From usual daybook thoughts and paste-ins (photos, printed material), to project-specific books, to the LTD planning and scheduling. Everything I need is under one roof.
Midoris and other variants locate the bands’ beads on the back. Wanderings get it on the spine, which helps it lay open and stops you from having to write over a bump when you’re working on the right hand side pages.
The leather gets dinged up pretty easily, but, honestly, that’s okay. It’s going to wear and weather. In five years it will look completely different. I’m really interested to see what it looks like in ten years.
Bailing out of my previous system means that I won’t be starting a new notebook on Jan 1 any more. I will probably miss that clicking-over into a new year. But now is the time to take the long view and to quit listening to the clicking and ticking. This is a system for moments, not times.
I know I’m going to miss the size and hard back of Moleskines, but I’m determined to make this work. It feels more functional and sustainable, currently.
Wiping down the office boards, expiring chunks of my RSS feed, bailing out of a few news subscriptions, zeroing some newsletters. Bringing a couple of long-neglected projects front and centre tomorrow. Rigged for winter, more or less. I have a new notebook which allows me to work in three different sections, which means no more Moleskines and no more starting a new notebook on January the first. I will kind of miss the view of the dated and numbered notebooks standing on the shelf, but I’m running out of shelf space, and maybe it’s time to flow through time without signposts and hurdles. Moments matter more than years.
I may have actually found the real stealth-wealth notebook.
ROTERFADEN. Handmade, a couple of hundred quid a pop. My partner, who is of German extraction, would consider this to be the engineering “of my people, therefore done properly.” Peculiarly, it seems you can’t get lined paper fills for the B6 size. Fascinating to look through the site, though.
Just had to buy a new Moleskine to make sure I get through to the end of the year. Looking at Passport size Traveler’s Company notebooks – just a little smaller than Moleskines or Field Notes – and wondering if I could get on with them. I feel the need to simplify. Am currently putting new gel refills in my old “good” pens – I have a set with little perspex domes on top containing tiny meteorite fragments.
