this is a story about notebooks this is not a story about organization or productivity or efficiency i love notebooks i’ve always been obsessed with them since I was a very young kid it was sometime in the late ‘ 90s i don’t know exactly how old I was somewhere between five and eight I’d say my grandpa sold crop insurance and my mom worked for him so he needed to meet this farmer and we went took us with him met him at some restaurant this farmer had this planner notebook thing it’s one of those old kind had like the calculator built into the cover flap and pin holder and note and business card holder and little velcro flap to hold it all together it was beautiful it was one of the coolest things little Skylar had ever seen i know that this makes me sound like the lamest kid but remember late ‘9s no internet access basic cable if that rural northeast Alabama okay there’s not a lot to see at that time and place i don’t know what I did or said exactly but it made enough of an impression on this guy that the next time my grandpa had to meet him he had bought a smaller version of the same planner to give to me and I kept that thing for years that’s one of the earliest memories I have of sparking my love of notebooks that persists on to today all the way now you can find me on the notebook aisle of Staples or Michaels or Walmart wherever lusting over the notebooks what are you doing but I’m going to tell you a secret most of the notebooks I’ve gotten over the years are still empty you see I was obsessed with notebooks but not obsessed with using them i was almost afraid to use them a blank notebook was intimidating you know figuring out what should I put in it what color pen should I use how should I lay it out and then I would start it and I would get in and I decided I wanted to do it differently or do it about something else and then I’d have to start a new one give up on that one and I’ve had dozens of abandoned notebooks like that i would try to plan the notebook out and figure out what was going to be in it ahead of time now think of the absurdity of that needing to figure out what you’re going to put in a notebook before you even start using it if I knew what was going to be in it I wouldn’t need the notebook in the first place now I don’t know what the catalyst was exactly i don’t remember but a couple years ago I was done with this cycle i was decided I was going to keep this in my pocket at first just when I was around the house working on projects and then I put it in my backpack when I’d be out and about and eventually I just started keeping it in my back pocket all the time and I found that by some magic having the option to document ideas somehow led to me having ideas more than at any point before it was a cumulative effect they could build on each other getting them out let them flow more freely by not putting pressure on what each little book in here had to be it could be anything it didn’t need cohesion it just needed to be a tote bag of raw ideas that I could rumage through when and if I needed them this isn’t some daily journal that I put pressure on myself to write in every day it’s just paper if I have an idea I write it down any quote from or notes on something I read or heard I write it down philosophical thoughts sketches of random objects measurements for a project I’m working on poems lyrics like I said anything is game no pressure some days I’ll fill five to 10 pages writing essays worth of stuff then I might go weeks and not put anything in it that’s fine not having any obligation or goals eases my mind to let this be whatever I need it to be i’m not using this notebook for productivity or efficiency i’m not even using it to reduce screen time i’m just using it for fun if you don’t think that a battered little leather notebook filled with crazy scribbles isn’t cooler and more fun than an iPhone note I don’t know what to tell you you’re on the wrong channel but I have been there i’ve I was an Evernote subscriber for years and you know what i couldn’t tell you a single thing I made a note of and all those years I would have a thought throw it into the black box and it would be gone forever tucked away safely in the cloud i said I’m not using this for productivity or less screen time i will tell you though how it has improved my creative life this may be more of a personal problem than a problem with any given medium i struggle with object permanence i if I don’t see something I forget that I have it and then I just don’t use it it’s why I like shelves more than drawers a phone app is a junk drawer everything’s thrown in you have to dig through you really don’t want to go looking through it and you just can’t see it unless you are looking where a notebook is open shelving everything is just displayed there easy to see what you have some people may think that’s cluttered but I like that maximalist approach and aesthetic now on a phone if you look at it at all you’re only seeing the first few words of a note you go down this long list and if you’re organized you have folders for different note types and then you get no cross-pollination of ideas you open a file scan it see if it is or isn’t what you want go back scroll some more open another it all just feels like some task not not a very joyful experience compare that to notebooks i can flip through and see something whenever I’m bored or looking for an idea i see all these things just fully displayed it’s the seeds I’ve got growing the spark that I didn’t remember but I I see something else and I think “Oh yeah i can and I’m off i’m maybe making this or writing that maybe I see something seemingly unrelated a few pages later but it hits at the right time and the right mindset that it come it creates this whole other idea that you wouldn’t have had if you hadn’t seen those two things next to each other also the pacing is different a phone or computer is paradoxically too fast and too slow it’s too fast because you can type faster than you can think so instead of letting the thoughts flow at a natural pace it’s trying to pump them out faster than they’re formed but it’s also too slow now how can this be backspace select delete copy paste before you’ve even figured out what that idea is you’re already trying to edit it when you’re typing on a phone or a computer then you just lose the thread that initial spark dims and the pure magic of the idea is gone writing with your own hand allows a much more natural pace it slows you down to let it come as it wants but it doesn’t let you go back and think if the last sentence was exactly as it ought to be once everything’s down then you can go back later and start developing and editing and that’s fine it’s a good process but you need to get it out first i look at this little notebook and I feel something this may be ridiculous to you but there’s a visceral connection to these simple physical things we carry with us every day the daily use means it’s always getting marked and showing its wear it gets dirty and dogeared it’s real there’s a simple pleasure in leafing through the pages again it’s just more fun i mean tell me what’s the better mental image madly scratching down in a little leatherbound notebook trying to get your thoughts down before they’re lost or tapping on this little glass box like every other person hooked on the digital drug thumbs flicking your thoughts into the void i think this is an invaluable resource to have on hand being able to open it see one of your own ideas and then start doing something with it but more importantly for me this is an invaluable joy this along with other everyday objects that we carry with us and use we imbue I think a level of meaning and soul into them let me know what you think thank you for coming by i’m Skyler this is Remella Works and I’ll see you soon [Music]