Pens Pencils Plus

Working from home has afforded me the chance to get better organized in how I use paper. So I’ve been trying some things that may be super-obvious but which I’ve never really implemented before.

I’ve usually always maintained one single notebook or pad at a time for work. In there would go all my meeting notes, as well as the tracking of ongoing projects and daily tasks lists. The exception would be when I had to do any long-form writing, when I would reach for a separate pad.

As my ongoing projects piled on an on late last year, I finally realized that this was all less than ideal. I would lose things between all the meeting notes, daily tasks, and project deliverables. So I finally made a change.

Here’s what’s working from me right now:

1. One A4 or A5 pad for meeting notes
2. Index cards to jot down daily tasks
3. A Rhodia dotBook divided up into sections for the ongoing long-term projects.

At day’s close, I take any unfinished tasks in the index card to a fresh one. This is in no way revolutionary. But index cards—GAME CHANGER. Just using the index cards has made a huge difference for me!

And of course—coffee!

INDEX CARDS? GAME CHANGER!

The story of how I started using index cards is further proof of this crazy stationery habit. We were fortunate to spend a few days on the North Carolina coast late this summer. In one of my hurried jaunts into a local supermarket I found several packs of Top Flight index cards. I grabbed a couple of 3×5 and 4×6 sizes in lined and blank, and was shocked at how relatively well they took fountain pens.

They were super-cheap—like 70 or 99 cents a pack. (Never mind the prices on Amazon; you should be able to find them much cheaper at your local U.S. supermarket). So of course I had to run back and grab the rest of their stock.

Actually I left two or three for the next stationery nerd to find.

Index cards help you get that rush of accomplishment each day; I like to emphatically cross out items as I do them. Then at the end of the day you can chuck it or recycle. Nothing to store.

Nothing revolutionary. It just works for me.

What works for the way you work?