Breaking the Cycle: How My New Dirt Notebook Changed My Writing

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.

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.

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 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.

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.

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.