Living with ADHD and OCD means periodically I develop (and get overly-excited over) a new, elaborate organization system that I somehow, foolishly, believe will last forever.
However, this week I've got a tremendous new system that I think may last forever!
The Tremendous Development!
You can now write and preserve data in a physical, human-readable format that's immune to hard drive failures! And it's like, right there in front of you so you're less likely to forget about it!
But the best part is...
These Don't Suck!
Remember these 99 cent bois from grade school?
Garbage.
But TankieTanuki, those are the cheapest ones, which means they're the notebooks of The People!
No. Full stop. Don't even.
You're an adult. Your thoughts are worth preserving. These aren't diamond-encrusted—it's like paying twice as much for the boots that last ten times as long. These were not expensive: The A6 ones were about $3.00 each and the A5 were $5.50.
Do you think Stalin's commissars were recording state grain quotas on those shitty McJournals where the spiral falls out the fourth time you open it and the ink bleeds through three pages at a time?
No.
Stalin would have shot your ass for doing a shitty job and you'd have deserved it.
Cool Features
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Thick Paper
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Hardback
The book is its own clipboard! Vegan leather (aka plastic lol 
). Bound securely with string 'n' stuff.
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Adorably Smol
A5 for studying. A6 for writing down bit ideas or memos.
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That's right. Those are mother-fucking DOTS on those pages!
You can draw technical shit like tables better because of the vertical guides, but it's less conspicuous than grid/graph paper.
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PAGE NUMBERS!!? You better believe it. Leverage the power of INDEXING!
Also the red A6 one looks like Quotations from Mao Zedong.
I may start getting into fountain pens now. Lord, help me. 
Also the red A6 one looks like Quotations from Mao Zedong.
My copy of the little red book is like on A5
Hard to beat a moleskine and a good gel pen. Something about ADHD and the feeling of writing, it just helps.
The touch. Ze smell
(of paper) 
.Also, no push notifications nor clickbait.
Who makes there / where to buy? I love a good hardback notebook, but so many are so overpriced
The brand is
spoiler
MALEDENThese were sold in packs of 7 each. I paid $36 for the A5s and $20 for the A6s, pre-tax/shipping. If you want the exact product ID from EvilCorp, DM me.
Thx, I'll look into it. You wouldn't know how well a fountain pen works on it would you?
The number of times I've used a fountain pen can be counted on two hands. They work better on these pages than on McJournals, I guess.
What do fountain pens crave? Coarse paper? Dense paper?
I think generally pretty dense and pretty smooth. So it doesn’t bleed through, and enough roughness for some resistance but not enough that you snag it with the nib. I’ve generally found most notebooks bleed through a bit, but whatever pen goes brrrrr
Most people prefer smoother paper but it's up to personal preference.
If you are getting paper not necessarily made for use with fountain pens denser tends to be better but paper actually made for fountain pens tends to deal with all the weird issues with ink absorbance with coatings or the material blend of the paper. As a rule of thumb though the finer and dryer your nib and feed write the less you have to care about all that stuff with absorbance of paper.
I think generally pretty dense and pretty smooth. So it doesn’t bleed through, and enough roughness for some resistance but not enough that you snag it with the nib. I’ve generally found most notebooks bleed through a bit, but whatever pen goes brrrrr
Dot grid paper is the superior note-taking paper. It's all the power of grid paper, without the visual clutter.
I literally have no system. I'm just jotting down tons of stuff. But it's still useful, because:
- just the process of writing it down seems to help clarify and organize a thought
- I look back several pages a few times a day and actually glance at what I wrote down. Then it's like "oh right, I need to do that, that had completely left my mind until I read this"
Maybe the best system is to have no system. If I had a rigid system I would have to think before I wrote on the pad, rather than think with the pad.
IDK. I bought these because I thought I could become good at note taking.
My only possible addition is: if you're really going to go through these notebooks often (or even just, not going to be wearing out the covers every time), consider getting a reusable outer cover and just buying refills that are just the pages and a simple binding
Someone on here recommended it to me, but I fill a moleskine about once every couple years so I haven't tried it out yet.
You can get ones with clasps almost like little 3 ring (6 ring ig?) binders, or just slipcovers. Aliexpress seems to be the spot.
No grid paper on these but all other options are there: https://www.aliexpress.us/item/32865900837.html supposedly really nice quality paper on these but again I haven't tried them yet
slip cover: https://www.aliexpress.us/item/1005007347218116.html
Book refills are a thing?
I don't fill them that fast. I also like the idea of archiving them on a bookshelf eventually.
I would say the refills are robust enough for a bookshelf! they still have a paper dust jacket it looks like, just not as durable as plastic or pleather
But yeah, judging by the number in the OP you've probably got plenty to last a while like me
I've been using the Midori A5 notebooks with grid lining since the dot grids are either unavailable or expensive as fuck depending on where I look. I wish the pages were numbered, although I just manually number them and then I make an Index page at the front. With the plastic cover it comes with a pen/cil loop and I can slip a small plastic ruler inside the back cover. Bought a bunch of replacement erasers for the mechanical pencil I have and I'm not afraid to write and erase stuff.
I use LibreCalc/Excel to test out formats for pages since I can easily make a grid in them and then see how best to use a page's grid space.
These were cheap enough that I can just jot my stream of consciousness without guilt. I think it came out to around 2 cents per page.
Of course there is no replacing spreadshits. I have one A5 notebook for Kerbal Space Program that I use in tandem with LibreCalc to aesthetically compare ship ideas and draw blueprints.
Mine weren't expensive. I just did the math.
Size Price/Book Price/Page A5 $5.46 ¢3.5 A6 $3.03 ¢1.9 That's after-tax. They're sold in packs of seven.
Nice. The Midori A4 I'm using works out to about 8.8 cents. Could probably knock that down to 6-7 if I bulk-ordered them from a stationary website here, but that's a hassle and would probably be like $100+ in bulk at least.
I just wanted to compare those three. If we were being inclusive we'd need B5 in between A4 and Letter.
Stalin would have shot your ass for doing a shitty job and you'd have deserved it.
Haha. We must’ve gotten the same “ADHD BRAIN” update patch - I just did similar! I went with A5 40pg saddle stitch Kraft cover notebooks in a variety of colors, hole punched to fit in 1.25in, 6-ring binders. I went for dot grid for all of my schematic needs! And also someone from Hexbear got me into fountain pens a few months ago… I love them though lol I’ve tried Pilot Kakuno to start, and then Lamy Safari. Safari are really nice. Love all the ink colors too- my currently favorite is purple
My handwriting is so ugly that note keeping is just really unsatisfying :((
Probably just need to get into the habit and it will improve
My problem with using nicer notebooks is I get perfectionist about what I put down and want everything to be organized. Whereas, with those shit ruled spiral notebooks I can go wild and jot random shit down whenever. I have some very nice moleskins that only have like 5-10 pages filled out because something that nice feels like it should savored and worthy of the cost of the notebook. Or maybe I just have an aversion to writing in books.🤷
That's exactly the inhibition I'm only now overcoming. There are a lot of pages and only so many days left!
My recommendation for pens would be the AIHAO x97, its the better version of a Pilot Precise V5. Also if you prefer a marker style pen I suggest the Tombow hard tip brush pen, it's the better fine point Sharpie.
I bought a JINHAO a couple weeks ago. Is that good?
My handwriting is bad with it; I'm not used to the reduced friction. Is there a trick to the technique? I'm much better with the Pilot G-2.
That is a fancy fountain pen, I have no idea if that's a good pen or not.
