When I wrote my last Scribbles post, I'd just settled on using the Mini Guildford Filofax. I ended that post with:

> It’s quite possible I’ll be back to the Moleskine within a day or two, or that I’ll try to stretch my jeans pocket to cram in my Pocket Filofax. I have a worrying amount of fun trying them, though, and that’s the important thing.

I was writing that entry in the Filofax at the time, and by time I'd written it, I was feeling cramped on such small paper. It doesn't help that the Mini paper has slightly wider lines than the larger Pocket paper. By the time I was typing that post up, I'd pretty much decided that the Mini was too small. I tried my old Pocket Lyndhurst again. It was good, with a lot more space for my notes, but a bit of a stretch on the pocket. Although they call that size "Pocket", it's only really for quite big pockets.

I did these 'scribbles' posts for a couple of days, then nothing. I didn't stop typing them up - I just didn't write any in the first place. Now that I am scribbling again, I'm doing it in a different place. I'm experimenting with using my Mini Filofax again. It's a bit of a trade-off, as these things so often are. The area of paper to write on is quite a bit smaller than in a Moleskine, so I'm using a lot more pages. On the other hand, though, the paper is better, and I can have separate sections for other things. I'm not keeping a real GTD system at the moment, but it's still useful to have some lists, like a wish list and a shopping list.

It's quite possible I'll be back to the Moleskine within a day or two, or that I'll try to stretch my jeans pocket to cram in my Pocket Filofax. I have a worrying amount of fun trying them, though, and that's the important thing.

I recently switched back to using my Pocket Lyndhurst Filofax. Notebooks were going ok, but for the question of where my 'GTD-style' lists went. I tried putting them on the computer, but I never got around to even putting them there in the first place. I came up with a couple of different ideas for mixing them in with my usual daily notes, or putting them in the back of the same notebook, but neither felt right. It would either take too long to find a list when I needed to quickly check something, or it would take too long to copy the lists over every time I started a new book.

Latest Update: Just updating the URL for the 3D dragon from Grand Illusions.

Projects

General Sites

Most of these sites have a selection of models to make, often with PDF files to download and print...

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.

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.

I've been doing well with my Pocket Filofax. I usually swap 'systems' around quite regularly, and no paper system has really lasted a long time with me yet. My little Pocket Lyndhurst has done nearly five months now, and I'm still enjoying using it. The small size of the paper is a bit of a problem, but anything much bigger is just too much to carry everywhere.

Anyway, GeorgieR has done a bit better. He's posted a picture of his Pocket Filofax, with some pages dating back eighteen years. There's a real charm to the worn page edges, and it's nice to see these things age well.

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.

There were posts all over the place a week or so ago about paper made from sheep poo, and I resisted. I only showed such restraint because the information was pretty limited, and the company making it wanted around £1 per sheet for the product. A bit pricey for paper that is, after all, shit.

Anyway, here's a how to on making paper from elephant poo. If you can get hold of an elephant, or at least borrow one for long enough to catch a poo or two (better get a bucket), give it a shot.

Via Boing Boing, but you didn't imagine anyone else would be posting about that sort of thing, did you?

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.