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Design a Moleskine GTD System?
mshea | May 11 2007
I was really fascinated by the Moleskine City notebook and everything they were able to pack into something that is just a bit bigger than a normal Moleskine. It got me thinking.... How would you design a single Moleskine that let one implement the entire GTD system? In order to do this it would need the following: 1. A set of plain pages for an "inbox". 2. A full year weekly calendar big enough for appointments and date reminders. 3. A contacts list for phone numbers and contact information. 4. A place for project lists, waiting for lists, and someday maybes. 5. A place for next action lists and Agendas. Some of these are really best as loose leaf items, like the next action lists and agendas. Currently I use notecards for this. How could loose leaf material best work in a Moleskine? I have this vision of tiny little rings but thats probably impractical. How can a single notebook have multiple pullout parts? I have another vision of three or four Cahier style notebooks all bound together in a normal Moleskine cover. So what thoughts do you folks have for a single GTD Moleskine device similar to the city notebook that would remain practical? 2 Comments
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 I think it is indeed...Submitted by Berko on May 11, 2007 - 1:33pm.
I think it is indeed possible to create a Moleskine-based system. But I don't think it has to be all in one notebook. Here is how I would go about setting this up. I would get the regular sized Moleskine (in whatever paper works for you) and divide pages into no more than four sections. So, your first ~90 pages would have your calendar. Of course, the setup time here is a bit of a pain, but it could be fun in a "you could use some baseball" kind of way. The remainder of the calendar book I would use for reference, notetaking, inbox type stuff. At this point, there are two ways you could go: 1) NA's and projects on Index cards in the gusset pocket or 2) in a separate notebook. If you were to go the separate notebook route, I would make it a pocket so that you could carry it with you easier. Use index cards or post-its in the back to capture on the go. If you go the route of getting one of the regular size notebooks, there might be the concern of running out of pages before the end of the year. I think it would be quite nifty to do a quarterly planner. So, use one of the larger notebooks for each quarter's calendar and notetaking and use index cards with binder clips for NA's and/or projects. I left out the contacts bit just because I can't imagine anyone keeping a paper address book at this point. Your address book should at least be on your computer if not in your cell phone. Even if you don't have it on hand at all times, you should be able to trigger yourself to look up information in the appropriate context. I suppose you could put contacts in the pages following the calendar, but then you'd have to copy them over every notebook change. Too much friction for my good. My $.02 to get the party started. » POSTED IN:
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