Taking Note of Your Books

I’m a writer downer, I like notebooks and nice pens, it’s the
thing I collect that I always remind myself of when I wonder things like why
people have any interest in Funko pops or buying comic books that they don’t
read. I say “But Rob. Wait. You have an unreasonable interest in dot
grid notebooks and nice pens.” I love them very much. I would hand write this
blog and mail it to you, but you would not be able to read my handwriting.

I’ve been using Moleskine
planners for about three years now, that is what this is going to be about.
I like the weekly ones because it sort of lets you get a quick bird’s eye view
of the near future, and you can have a nice medium level strategy set up every
Sunday.

Conversely, I’ve always wanted a daily planner that works so
I can get more detailed with my scheduling, but for some reason all of the day
planners that I find have times listed as 8AM-5PM or some such, what the hell
is that? I want like 16 hour coverage dude, it’s not like the important things
stop when you’re not at work!

So I get the weekly ones. There are 5 or 6 lines per day to
write stuff down on which is fine for important appointments and that sort of
thing, and the facing page is just a featureless lined page which is very nice
when you want to take notes. But then…

In Staples. In the clearance section for $30. The A4 Moleskine
PRO notebook with 160 numbered pages with a table of contents. There
are some organizational doodads in the front, the body pages are three
irregular sections of lines that are clearly meant for *Overview, *Scheduling,
and *Details.

I use a new page every day and it’s nearly perfect. I write
my overview at the top, what the day’s plan is and what I’m expecting, then start
with the tasks in the details section (taking up about 1/3 to ½ of the space)
and the most beautiful and customizable section is the scheduling column. It’s
a narrow, blank lined area that I write each hour starting with 6 AM and go
alllll the way down the page to 10 PM, with a space between each for the 30
minute mark. Flawlessss. Then, as I go about my biz, I check off tasks and take
notes as the day goes along.

Having taken journals in the past and enjoyed reflecting on
them, I can already tell you that this is going to be a great resource one, two,
ten years from now. If you’re interested in this sort of thing but are too scared,
stop that! Get a couple Zebra .5’s from Wal Mart, “invest” in a nice notebook
and get crazy.

This has not been a paid ad for Moleskine, I just really
like writing in their notebooks.

-Rob