My GTD Moleskine Hacks
Why do I insist on keeping a notebook? To quote Dwight Schrute, “I keep secrets from my computer.”
Actually there’s just something about a blank page that inspires creativity and thought. For as digital as my life gets I still love paper and pen. This post has nothing to do with social media or the Internet except for the complete lack of either.
Anyone who knows me knows that I am very rarely without my notebook. I have had a planner of one kind or another since Junior High but they never seemed right. You have to fit all your thinking into their structure. Then a few years ago I started reading all these GTD hacks on blogs. So I started my own Moleskine system that I put together based on some of what I read.
It’s important to note that each of the notebooks you see above are different in their set up, they have evolved over time. While every notebook changes a little I have developed some pretty standard component.
Each month I start off with a page that I keep as a monthly table of contents. I fill this in as the month goes. This helps me find things quickly but it also helps me mentally organize my activities as I go.
I then keep a weekly page that I break into 4 parts: Work, Projects, Personal and Misc (these 4 things change the most). These are kind of my big to-do items.
The dated tabs you (can kind of) see below are the monthly tabs and the plain white ones are the weekly tabs.
This is where I really give the illusion of organization. I break out sections like work, blog ideas, meeting notes, big ideas, etc. The topics change from notebook to notebook, depending on what I need. The red tabs are pages that I have a tasks assigned to. The yellow tabs are pages that I need to reference later.
Bellow is an example of of some notes (they’re actually from my IgniteBoise01 presentation).
My current favorite notebooks are the soft cover Moleskine’s. A notebook lasts me about 3 months on average.
I don’t know if this is an analog leftover of my generation. (I actually took typing class on a real type writer). Moleskine’s have become very popular during this whole digital revolution. I know a lot of Gen Y that still use notebooks. Maybe there’s just a part of our brains that need analog.
For me the biggest benefit for having a notebook is the ability to get away for my computer and collect my thoughts.
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