Keep Track of Your Life: the Art & Science of Note Taking

Someone wrote to me recently and asked for my help finding the definitive, best in the market place notebook.  I have been in love with notebooks since I was a girl and yet this question stopped me in my tracks.  How could I ever declare one above the other in usefulness?  We all think differently.  We need to record different kinds of information. It really boils down to personal choice and that was my response.  I've since jotted down some ideas on note taking that go beyond the tools themselves.  I hope you find them helpful in case you too are in quest of the perfect notebook.

• ·      There are circumstances beyond our control that will make keeping track of the business of life a bit more difficult than normal.  It might be a happy circumstance like a pregnancy (mommy brain, anyone?), the natural decline in cognitive value as we age (anyone over 40?) or the fuzzy brain of chemotherapy.  Don’t lose track! Keep a notebook with you.  It can be utilitarian like a child’s spiral notebook or be made of the finest leather.  It might also be your electronic tablet. What matters is how much you enjoy holding it, using it and literally seeing it in your world.
• ·      If you get totally caught up in day-to-day demands including the needs and wants of others, your life will unfold in a haphazard way.  It’s much better to chart your course with intention.  And no tool will be more helpful than a calendar system.  A good one allows you not only to keep track of your literal activities but also to see exactly how you expend your energy.  The best version to assist in this way is the month at a glance.  Time and energy are commodities like money or food.  If you squander them, there is no 'take two.’ Whether it's on paper, an app on your smart phone or the calendar on your computer, the key ingredient in your decision to choose one calendar over another is this: which one will you enjoy? I use the Entrepreneur edition of the Day Runner for my personal calendar. 
• ·      The act of writing down information helps solidify its place in our memory.  If you’re a student, you can make use of a multi-subject notebook.  There are many ways to duplicate keeping the information we need stored in an easy to retrieve fashion.  After all, if you take the time to make the note, it stands to reason you may need to reference it later. A business professional for example might not want a multi purpose notebook but rather have several folders that relate to one project.  Why have them scattered in a file cabinet in alphabetical order? Using a box bottom hanging file folder, multiple related manila folders can be filed in one place.
• ·      In today’s world you can keep track of your life with a smart phone or tablet. Research the available programs before you decide on one.  Remember that no program is going to keep you on track.  You have to update the app in order for it to store your input in an easy to retrieve way. You are as always the engine that drives this train not the app, notebook or tablet.  Evernote is popular for general note keeping and Mint.com is great for financial record keeping.  

 It Bears Repeating ~

The key ingredients in making any app, notebook, calendar or binder work are your motivation to have ready access to the material, your willingness to use the tool and the enjoyment factor. I have special notebooks for my yoga retreats, others that I use for planning a workshop or seminar and others still for planning personal projects.  A new book idea for example is usually born in a notebook chosen for that purpose.  It will travel with me wherever I go. Once the idea is solidified in my head I will abandon the notebook and work exclusively on the computer because it's faster to record my thoughts with a keyboard and make corrections and changes.  By the way the notebooks pictured above are from my personal collection.

Let me leave you with a word of warning: devoting different notebooks to specific types of note taking is not the same as having multiple notebooks for the same purpose in use at the same time!  You will create more chaos in your attempt to remove it from your life.  Funny how the ego keeps us attached to ‘same/old, same/old’ even when we swear what we want is change.