Introducing... The Notebook

If you've known me for any length of time, you know that I lug around a binder everywhere I go.

Even after getting a smartphone, the binder remained my planner of choice.

I love that thing.

But this Christmas, a mysterious package arrived under the tree... and by "mysterious," I mean "came in an Amazon shipping pouch."

It taunted me until December 25 finally arrived, and I opened the package to reveal....

My Future.

(Too dramatic? Probably too dramatic.)

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I'd heard lots of people talking about this little booklet with the very German name, especially proponents of bullet journaling and the like. Apparently they're wonderful. But I was too in love with my binder system to really find out for myself.

Until a Leuchtturm notebook of my very own found it's way under the Christmas tree.

I spent a couple days looking at it warily from afar.

It didn't have removable and replaceable pages. The feel of the leathery cover under my hands was slightly different than that of my trusty ole binder.

But, to be honest, my binder hadn't been really holding it's own lately.

I mean, I'm a big lover of my binder, but familiar just doesn't cut it. I needed something functional, too- and in this season of life, I wasn't using my binder. Like, at all. And when a system stops working for you, it's time to change it.

So I sent a message to my friend Lisa, who I knew uses a notebook like this to do her planning, and she gave me some tips and sent me pictures of how she uses her Leuchtturm. A few pictures were all I needed to get the new planning system underway.

A Look Inside

Here's what my little notebook looks like so far... (please forgive the poor quality cell phone pictures).

My weekly view-- which I totally stole from Lisa--

And my content calendar--

And I also have a bunch of lists in here (phone numbers, blog ideas, whatever) that look exactly like you'd imagine a list to look. Boring. So I didn't take a picture of those.

So, Why Switch?

Okay, so I've been using a binder system for YEARS. Why switch over? What's the benefit?

The Size.

My notebook is the exact same page size as my binder, which means that the actual pages are exactly the same size. But overall, the notebook is much smaller than my binder. It's thinner, and doesn't have the bulky rings that add heft and take up space. In this season of my life, I'm literally picking up my entire office and carting it back and forth (computer, charger, mouse, planner, clipboards, headset to answer phones... everything), so space really matters.

The Integration.

My work and home life are really interwoven during this season, too. There's not really a good way to separate work tasks and home tasks, because I do a little of everything everywhere. One day might find me working from home and filling the time between phone calls with laundry and blogging... and the next day might have me in my office in the morning, and in the evening calling guides to hand out the next day's schedule from my bedroom. It's all very intertwined.

With this system, I'm not flipping back and forth between sections in my binder-- it's all right there. All of it. Household chores and calls to return for work are all intermingled, and somehow, it works.

The Freedom.

Having an unstructured notebook allows me to fill it up as I need it. Where I would have had to put the guide phone number list in a different section (maybe "notes?"), now I can put it wherever. I don't have to use brainpower to figure out the right section to put things in, and to find stuff quickly, I can use the table of contents at the beginning and just look up the page number. Handy.




So there you have it. I'm using a bullet journal for the time being, and I'm really liking it!

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