I’ve written before about notebooks, though I can’t remember whether I published it or not. I enjoy using a notebook. I enjoy writing with a pen. As a teacher, I tell my students about the cognitive benefits of note-taking with a pen in contrast to typing. My love of scribbling has been lifelong. Even when I now have occasion to type notes (on Evernote, usually) instead of hand-write, I feel it is the same childhood obsession to write which lives on.
Writing through my life, my choice of notebooks has changed. When I worked for BP, it was a non-branded blue cloth-bound notebook; sometimes A4, sometimes A5. I also used an Oxford Black & Red on occasion. I was quite a fan of the spiral binding.
I can’t remember exactly when, but I came across Moleskine notepads. I loved them although on account of the price I also enjoyed the Ryman’s own brand knock-off version. These small black notebooks saw me through the first years of my teaching career.
Again, I can’t remember exactly when but I found the Black by Black & Red notebooks in Tesco. They were on offer at £4 a pop. B5 in size, so a convenient halfway house between A5 and A4. The paper was nice, the cover was soft but hard-wearing and the numbered pages facilitated keeping track of each books contents with a little more ease. I had a habit of topping up my supply of these notebooks whenever I saw them on offer in Tesco. Then there came a point when the price was never that low again. Looking back I reckon somebody had been misplacing them. Ah well, there loss was my gain.
On the verge of running out of my softbound preference, I looked for recommendations online. It was amazing to find that other people not only shared my obsession with note-taking but also with notebooks (yes, I know, unbelievably this isn’t the only blog post you’ll find on notebooks!). Through my research I came across the Leuchturm 1917 notebooks: hardbound, numbered pages, two place markers, contents pages, even perforated pages at the back should I want to remove one for notes (not that I would).
So the Leuchturm is my current notebook of choice. This doesn’t stop me coveting other people’s notebooks. I’ll always have that casual glance to see what brand it is. I also love visiting a Moleskine store to see what shiny things they have available.
To close, one of my favourite things about the Leuchturm brand is their slogan: ‘denken mit der hand’. They expand this saying ‘writing by hand is thinking on paper. Thoughts grow into words, sentences and pictures. Ideas are transformed into projects. Notes inspire insight. We write and understand, learn, see and think with the hand.’ I’m not sure how much of this is pure (genius) marketing or how much of it is actually pretty accurate cogntive science, drawing on the work on dual coding and the extended mind theory. Either way, it pretty neatly sums up why I enjoy writing and probably why I find it so valuable.
Commonplace 