Much like Nan recently, I have had a wobble. Not physically wobbling - I do plenty of that every day. I stopped using my A5 Filofax for a while.

The way I'd been using it had one little hole in my system. I made notes, mixing in ideas, bits of writing, doodles, and tasks, all at random. I just worked forwards through a stack of pages. The idea was to then process those pages, into my GTD system, and archive pages off as they'd been processed.

During one of my daily early-morning pokes around the interweb, I stumbled across these journals from fine art paper manufacturer Hahnemuhle:

[image:2612 size=original]

Now, it might just be my bleary early morning brain here, but those books do look very familiar with the rounded corners, elastic closure and... well, it doesn't say whether this particular book has a pocket in the back, but its friend certainly does.

I'm going to have to get my hands on one or two of these to see how they compare against the legendary notebook it so resembles.

If you fancy doing a comparative test yourself, here's where I found them:

• Hahnemuhle Travel Journal at the SAA Shop
• Hahnemuhle Travel Booklet at the SAA Shop

Latest Update: Linked up a couple more systems under Mixing with Other Ideas. If you like the PigPogPDA idea, it's well worth visiting some of these sites to see what other people have built with some similar ideas.

See Also

• nowMap - my latest simple system - a quick overview of what you're doing now, on a single sheet.

(Click on any pics to see them bigger in Flickr, with any comments and notes.)

Introduction

What Is It?

• A Moleskine hack.
• An extreme Moleskine hack.
• A simplified GTD system (What system? See our GTD Introduction), with relatively little actual organising. May be useful if you fancy Doing GTD Without Doing GTD.
• A complete personal management system for those who's needs aren't too complicated.
• A rather over-the-top system for dealing with just the capturing and processing end of GTD.

Found via a post on FPN by ToThePoint, Renaissance Art sell leather journals, notebooks, covers and cases. They're expensive, but they do look good.

MaryAnne Moll writes at Notebookism about making her own notebooks, by just printing lines on nice paper, then wire binding them.

We've been playing with even simpler stuff - just punching the sheets with a 4-hole punch, then either using clip-shut rings from Staples, or just tying them with four lengths of cloth. The result is pretty rustic, but works ok. We may nip out soon and pick up some leather thongs to tie them with - that way we can claim they're 'leather bound'.

I think Sam's always wanted an excuse to go buy leather thongs.

Mike Rohde has shared pics and details of his designing and sketching kit. He uses Miquelrius notebooks, which are quite popular, and a HiG notebook. I've not heard of HiG before, so I'll have to check them out.

Nice to see, too, that the Faber-Castell E-Motion pencil can perform as well as it looks.

Viki - likes her notebooks. It's ok, Viki, we love them too. And you don't even mention Ciak. Probably best not to get started in that direction. Good reading, though.

>I have them in many different colors and designs and I have a hard time picking which to use next. That’s because I’m a fucking whack-job.

Yeah, but this is the Interweb - everyone is a whack-job.

Latest Update: Added a link to a history of yellow legal pads, and a link to Notebooksim. We may be doing a bit more on notebooks soon - we've got a few more to play with here.

There's lots of different types of paper out there. At the moment, though, our Moleskine obsession is colouring our judgement badly. We'll try to get through it, but until we do, it's mostly about the black books...

On a visit to Newark this afternoon I found myself spending an unusual amount of time in WH Smith drooling over the "fashion stationery" section. This area is usually occupied by cutesy fluff stationery designed for schoolgirls and the odd faux leather or suede book filled with the usual stuff you can pick up by the ream at your local Staples.

With quality concerns over Moleskines, and some people upset to discover that they're made in China, it's a good time for Ciak to be stepping in. Their response looks pretty good. It has the expandable pocket, a bookmark, and elastic closure. It also bundles in a world map and a pen, and the cover is real leather. And for those who don't want their notebooks to be made in China, these are handmade in Florence. There are only two little problems - it's £10.50 (around $20), and it only has 60 pages. I think they'll still have a few takers, though...

• Story at Notebookism
• Available from The Journal Shop in the UK.

We've not tried a Ciak, but people who have seem to like them.