Different notebook sizes for different ideas

My workflow of taking notes, brainstorming, sketching, scribbling has settled to three different notebook/sketchbook sizes for different types of ideas.

Pocket notebook for everyday pondering

My main notebook is a Moleskine Classic Pocket. A couple of years ago I wrote about how I use it and that is still accurate. I always keep it with me either in my winter jacket’s pocket or in my backpack and whenever I sit down at a pub or a restaurant or just need a moment to clear my head, I pull it out and write.

It’s a great tool for flesh out blog post drafts, journal about major milestones in life or clear my head when things get rough. Its small size makes it easy to keep always with me but mainly works for purely text-based note taking due to its smaller size.

It has a pocket at the end which is lovely for keeping index cards for ad-hoc notes, business cards, stickers and other things that can come handy when on the road.

A5 size notebook for ideation

The second notebook I keep with me always is A5 sized notebook. I use it for more functional brainstorming and planning. I rarely write about my thoughts on these notebooks nowadays.

What I do write and draw are plans for events I organise, software I build, courses I plan and so on. A5 is a perfect size for that: it’s small enough to be practical to carry around and fit on a small coffee table but provides enough space to spread ideas around on different layouts and a full spread offers enough space usually to sketch one thing and keep it all on view at once.

Actually, I have multiple of these notebooks: one for personal notes and one for work notes. While working as a developer, I regularly spend a lot of time away from computer with my physical notes as I think through writing so I can figure out what code to write.

A4 sketch book for big ideas

Last fall, I received an A4 sized sketch book as a gift. Before that, I hadn’t really used notebooks of that size as I found them a bit inconvenient but as I appreciated the gift, I wanted to give it a go.

And I’ve been blown away by how increasing the canvas has given space for different types of sketching.

A4 works really well both in portrait and landscape depending on what I’m thinking through. For software stuff, I may draw landscape architecture drawings or design UIs but when I plan a workshop content and material, I turn the page to portrait orientation and have a lot of space to work through my thoughts and ideas.

Relationship between paper and digital

I treat my paper notebooks mostly as “fleeting ideas”. It’s a starting point rather than a long-term, searchable library. That’s what my digital notes — stored in Markdown files (rather than locked down in a 3rd party proprietary format) — are for. I don’t however transform everything from notebooks to digital.

I transfer, or rather transform, the most important ideas to the digital realm. I often then add a reference to where I originally wrote about it so I can find the initial thinking process if I want to understand where it came from. To be able to do that, I have a big box of previous notebooks.

When I finish a notebook, I create a digital note where I jot down the index of that particular notebook. Page numbers and page titles. Nothing else. That way, if I remember I’ve written about something in paper, I can search the index digitally and then go and find the right notebook.