Getting Started with Notebooks

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A fair number of posts on here have dealt with notebooks, and I have been known to get into the weeds with this stuff. Indeed, the first iteration of this piece was an idea about extolling the virtues of Life's Noble pads (just about the best paper I've ever used). But what of people who don't use notebooks at all?

You've got a desktop or a laptop computer, or both. You maybe have a tablet, you almost certainly have a smartphone in your pocket. Pretty much all the information in the world is at your fingertips, and if you want to make a note of something, you tap it into your phone and it syncs instantly to every device you have. It's all so shiny and convenient. Who needs a notebook?

No one does, is the answer. Pretty much no one in the modern world needs a notebook. And yet everyone who doesn't have one is missing out.

You're not in conversation with your laptop or your phone (you may be in the midst of an extremely heated exchange with your printer, but that's another issue). Those of us who use notebooks are in a permanent conversation with our past, future and present selves. As a mental health strategy alone, using a notebook is enormously beneficial.

Let's start with the basic nearly-science (it's science that I nearly understand); the interface between brain and computer is one step - you have an idea and you type it out. When you write longhand, there's an extra process; your brain has to convert your thoughts into squiggly code on a page and it needs to take some care (however bad your handwriting is) to make it at least legible to future-you. More of your brain is activated writing longhand than typing on a keyboard. In simple mental-longevity terms, the more of a workout your brain gets, the fitter and healthier it becomes. And there are a whole host of studies showing that memory retention benefits from writing by hand (if you're looking for citations, you've come to the wrong place).

Writing longhand is like taking your brain for a walk. It's not going to turn you into the intellectual equivalent of an Olympic athlete, but going for a walk is much more beneficial than eating crisps on the sofa. Writing with a pen puts your brain in motion, and motion is lotion.

Far more than the basics, though, writing in a notebook is opening a dialogue with yourself. It doesn't need to be interesting or profound, it just needs to be a scratchy record of what you're thinking right now. If I'm stuck on a story, I will often start a blank page and write "I am stuck because..." and then let my pen wander through my thoughts, without filter, knowing that, given enough time, something useful will spill out. I do the same if I'm angry or depressed or anxious. There is something about the action of writing (which cannot, try as we might, be replicated on the phone or computer) which takes you out of yourself. It allows you to take a step back out of your body and look at that person in the chair a little more objectively.

With pen and paper, you are moving forward. You can cross something out, but you can't just erase and go back. In improvising terms, you're accepting and building, it's all "Yes and..." However poorly you begin, you have to go somewhere, you have to progress across the page and, in so doing, you unlock thoughts and ideas and revelations and new ways of looking at things. Even if I crossed out this paragraph, it would still be there, I'm always showing my working.

And whatever nonsense you write today is going to be interesting a month or a year or a decade from now. That might not seem likely as you write it, but trust me, when you look through old notebooks, even shopping or task lists or trivial reminders, it evokes a place and time. Ink traps memory. Old notebooks bring back memories of a person you used to be, for good or ill. They're waypoints on your journey through life, postcards to your future self - this is what I am thinking right now, or doing right now, or worrying about or working through right now. Do you remember this? Did it work out?

It doesn't matter what you do for a living, how busy you think you are, how much you love technology, a notebook is a tool for life and your participation with it will, I guarantee, have myriad benefits.

So how do you start? Well, you could just grab an A4 pad and a biro and get writing. That will work. For me, I have always found that having an object that is pleasing, that I enjoy using, is beneficial. But it doesn't have to break the bank and you don't have to become a stationery nerd to participate.

If I was to advise on a starting point, I would go relatively cheap, but just pricey enough to get something worthwhile and to make it something you really feel like you should get some use out of.

If you want to try out proper ink, then a Lamy Safari is as reliable and easy a fountain pen as anyone could hope for, and it's going to set you back about £25 with a set of cartridges. I would pair that with a Leuchtturm 1917 A5 notebook for £20. The paper in these things is great, the pages are numbered and there's a blank index at the beginning to allow you to organise things if you want to.

If you'd prefer a ballpoint, then the absolute king of those is the refillable Leuchtturm Drehgriffel. I was not a fan of ballpoints until I discovered these recently, now I use mine every day. One will set you back £20, which seems like a lot for a ballpoint pen (and you can certainly get cheaper ballpoints) but it's an investment you won't regret. The Drehgriffel loves the Leuchtturm 1917 pads, but it is an absolute dream when paired with an eco-friendly Dingbats notebook.

So whichever way you go, that's about £40-45 for a pad and pen combo that will last weeks, if not months (the pad, that is, the pens will last years). It might seem like a lot, but it's a hell of a lot cheaper than therapy.

When you open the notebook, leave a few pages at the beginning, in case you later decide to index entries, then write the date at the top of a blank page and then just start writing ANYTHING. It doesn't have to be interesting, it doesn't have to be neat, just make marks on the paper. No one else need ever read it, you may never read it back yourself, but you are starting to distill who you are right now onto that page. You're making a time capsule; this person at this moment, trapped in ink, like an insect in amber. You don't need to do it every day, you don't need to build a habit. But you've put a new tool into the box and it's there for whenever it's useful.

Pro subscribers who are after a deeper (and longer) dive on the subject of notebooks might enjoy Bits of the Mind's String.