10 Great Notebooks Productive People Love. Although I’m going on 10 years as a PDA/Smartphone user (Palm IIIe – Handspring Visor Neo – Treo 180g – Zire 72 – Treo 680 – Blackberry 8310), I love notebooks. A good pen on nice paper makes me much happier than the feel of a stylus on a plastic screen or the clickety-clack of a thumb-board. My personal notebook inventory consists mainly of three kinds of notebooks: A pocket-sized Moleskine : I love the reporter’s notebook or standard lined notebook, though lately I’ve been using the tiny extra-small Volants, whose soft vinyl cover stands up to my back pocket better.Tops Docket Gold letter-sized pads : These are my favorite pads for writing; they are the only letter-sized top-bound legal pads I’ve been able to find with both narrow rules (most legal pads are wide-ruled) and an extra-stiff cardboard backing, perfect for lap-top writing.Hardbound Foray notebooks: Foray is an Office Depot house brand; they make several sizes and colors of hardbound notebooks.
Moleskine : The classic. Productivity Pr0n: 5 Unusually Useful Notepads. Hi. My name is Dustin, and I’m addicted to notepads. I first realized I was addicted when I found myself prowling office supply stores in the wee hours of the afternoon, trying to score a college-ruled composition book. Pretty soon, I couldn’t go anywhere without my works – a battered red Moleskine and a black Sharpie click-pen. And it got worse. The worst part is, I liked it. Let me show you a few of my more exotic finds. 1. Also marketed as the Levenger Circa system, the Rollabind (or just “Rolla”) is an infinitely customizable, assemble-it-yourself notebook made using a Rollabind punch and Rollabind discs. The system can be used to compile planners, address books, journals, or just about anything else you can imagine, using pages of your own design, pre-printed pages akin to those sold for Dayplanners and the like, or templates from the DIY Planner site. 2. Whitelines paper has white lines. 3.
And these notebooks from Behance are nothing if not good design. 4. 5. Journal » Blog Archive » Org-Fu Überpost – Productivity Whitepaper. Summary The purpose of this document is to outline all of the methods, practices, software and hardware (both HiFi and LoFi) I use to Get Things Done. This will provide a general outline of my system including keeping track of actions, projects, calendar items, contacts, etc. Most of my system is based on David Allen’s Getting Things Done methodology with many modifications and fluctuations to suit my needs. I will basically lay this out in the order of my “flow”. From capture to compartment to practice. I will then outline my e-mail processing. Tools Capturing Device – Paper I use a Moleskine Lined Pocket Notebook as my main capturing device. The dash/plus system goes like this. It looks something like this: - Get Dog Food and treats for Roy - Project: Proposal for new Mac purchases + Productivity Whitepaper project - Doctor’s appointment 4/14/06 @ 2:00pm to Calendar + Call Tom Miller re: Dinner - Phil’s Mobile: 612-555-5555 - Deposit Check - Someday: Learn to play golf Physical Inbox 1. 1.
Time Management: The Simplest System, Time Management Article - Inc. Article. All you need to plan your work is an ordinary notebook I've never understood the value of a complicated time-management system. I tried one once -- the kind with a loose-leaf binder with a dozen sections for different types of information. With that system, I had to spend so much time prioritizing my to-do list and deciding where things should go that I could barely focus on running my company! Instead, I stick to a time-management method that's simple but effective. It's ideal if your day -- like mine and so many other entrepreneurs' -- is full of multiple projects and details. All you need is a notebook.
Once I have my notebook in front of me, I put the day's date at the top of a right-hand page. With this system, I don't waste time writing a new list every day. I don't use my notebook to take detailed notes on a project. 1. 2. 3. The notebook system is the best way I know to stay on top of the many details involved in running a business and supervising people. Pen and paper productivity – Tools of the trade - Hack Your Day. Paper: The Workshifter's Secret Weapon. Paper. The analog method. Call it what you will. In this age of digital, using something as 20th century as pen and paper sounds like a very strange thing to do. It doesn’t matter if you use a tablet, a pocket notebook, the other side of some printed paper, or the back of an envelope. Why use paper? I’m definitely not harking back to the days when William Faulkner wrote his manuscripts with a pen on a legal pad.
The goal these days seems to be to go paperless. No matter how hard we try, we’re not always online or have our computers turned onThere are situations — when riding transit, for example — when we can’t just whip out laptop, tablet, or smartphoneSometimes you just can’t be bothered turning on a computer or electronic device There are times when the keyboard is a source of stress when I’m trying work. And as someone told me, when the power goes down pen and paper stay up. Using paper effectively Doing that isn’t as simple as pulling out a notepad and moving a pen across it. Using Paper to Scaffold Your Productive Motion. I’ve read two great posts this week that I’m going to tie together with some other thoughts I’ve been having. Thus, I’m violating the “one post, one topic” blogging wisdom – but bear with me as the whole will be greater than the sum of its parts. I’ve mentioned before that I started writing about productivity because my own productivity system was broken.
At the time, I was having such a hard time getting my life to fit inside one of the different systems that I was frustrated – I went from getting fully invested in the system, to falling off the horse, to getting back on the system…in roughly five to six week cycles, no less. Looking back, I now realize the folly. The point of productivity systems is not to get my life into the system, but to help me live my life through a system. Generating Motion and Scaffolding While reading Dave Seah’s post Reevaluating the Year’s Goals, a weird tangent occurred to me. The insight here is brilliant – I’d like to build on it a bit more. Creating a content system for writing a simple, practical book. Monday’s book planning tip for authors The best way to write and self-publish a short, practical brand-building book is to use a 3-step content system to identify and organize the ideas you’re going to describe in your book’s 99 or 140 ideas, questions, or tips.
The system described below builds on proven ideas shared by successful authors like Jack Canfield, Brian Tracy, Bud Bilanich, and John Fox. It’s also the strategy I used to write my latest book, #Book Title Tweet. Step 1: Commit to 5 ideas a day Start with a worksheet, like the one at left, containing space for the 99 questions or 140 tips, shortcuts, or strategies you want to share with your readers. Pace yourself! Instead, commit to identifying just 5 new ideas to your worksheet. Focus on the ideas, not the presentation! There will be time enough, later, for you to eliminate duplicates and sort the ideas into a logical order. Step 2: Transfer your ideas to your computer Step 3: Sort, or organize, your ideas into a logical sequence.
The Lost Art of Note Taking When Writing a Research Paper. January 17, 2011 By: Matt Birkenhauer in Teaching and Learning When students write essays requiring research, in the age of Wikipedia and other online resources, I worry a little, not so much about the quality of the sources themselves (that has always varied, even in the day of hardcopy sources), but about the quality or outright dearth of note taking that often accompanies the writing of research papers.
When I was a student, I was taught to take notes when researching by summarizing, paraphrasing, and quoting on note cards. Although this process was often tiresome and time-consuming, it did force me to read and, hopefully, process the information that would eventually end up in my essay. I think maybe that phase in writing in which students allot time to actually take notes on their sources—to, in a sense, “process” and internalize their research—is being lost as students increasingly access their sources from online sites and “cut and paste” together the first draft of their essay.