The Pocket Notebooks of 20 Famous Men

http://artofmanliness.com/2010/09/13/the-pocket-notebooks-of-20-famous-men/

by jedwhite • 15 years ago

54 15 15 years ago

artofmanliness.com

JakeSc• 15 years ago

Do you folks carry around pocket notebooks? Or has this practice become most popularly digital?

evangineer• 15 years ago

I generally carry around notebooks even though I have Evernote on my android device.

Uhhrrr• 15 years ago

I've tried taking notes on my phone, but it takes a few seconds to get the app open. Who wants that? Also, sketching on a phone (or a pad) is for the birds.

jlees• 15 years ago

I've always got between one and four notebooks with me.

sixtofour• 15 years ago

Always, notebook and pen. Write, draw, rip out a page and give it to someone, deflect a bullet.

angusgr• 15 years ago

I carry a spiral-bound notebook a lot. I don't trust it as permanent storage though. I try to regularly tear pages out and either copy them somewhere permanent (usually digital) or throw them away.

tricky2• 15 years ago

Yes. I keep what has evolved into some sort of log book of my days. I did it because I always write things-to-do and reminders on post-it notes. I used to throw them away, but realized I had no idea what I did with my days. Now I tape them (post-it's lose their sticky after a while) in the notebook along with handwritten notes. I occasionally scan the pages and put them on dropbox so I can easily flip through old notebooks if I need to find something.

Square ruled notebooks happen to be the only way I can keep my Seinfeld calendars going, too.

giardini• 15 years ago

I use an 8 1/2" x 11" sheet folded twice. This fits perfectly in a back pocket and gives me 4 pages to make notes on. I usually reserve two pages for the categories of "personal to-do" and "business to-do".

As items are completed they are crossed off. Once notes get too crowded or most items have been checked off or crossed out (completed), I unfold the sheet, copy incomplete items to a new folded sheet and put the the old sheet in a file.

PakG1• 15 years ago

Just a point of clarification, you don't use the backside?

dyc• 15 years ago

I have several note-taking applications on my iPhone, but I still prefer writing into my Moleskine that I always carry around in my pocket.

ignifero• 15 years ago

Men are tough nowadays. In fact, we are so manly, we hide Moleskines (tm)(R) in our hipster pockets.

I always keep a half-burnt papyrus with me, like Archimedes.

RevRal• 15 years ago

Mark Twain's tabbed notebook is a really good idea.

tricky2• 15 years ago

I use a binder clip to bind together all the unused pages. You can instantly open it to the right spot every time.

zach• 15 years ago

So does anyone have an optimized path for getting their paper notebooks into a digital format? Is digital paper really the easiest?

I suppose if you're a scrawler, this can be tough but I imagine a lot of HNers have plain but legible printing that could be OCRed and made searchable, which seems like a big win.

niels_olson• 15 years ago

I have my moleskines(α) and wheelbooks(β) from as far back as the late 90s. Wouldn't trade them for the world. That said, I transfer some things into other formats, like my Remember-the-Milk account, scans of particular pages, etc.

α http://www.amazon.com/Moleskine-Square-Notebook-Pocket/dp/88...

β http://www.amazon.com/Book-Memorandum-Green-Log-pack/dp/B000...

The Pocket Notebooks of 20 Famous Men

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