Moleskine, 2007
Saturday the 30 of December, 2006 Filed in:
Organization
I love
Moleskine notebooks. I was first introduced
the them by my business partner, Ken Pettit, a
few years back and have used them ever since.
This Christmas I received a new Moleskine from my
mother (they can be SO thoughtful, can’t they?)
and I turned it into my official 2007 goal
tracker.
A side note — I don’t make New Years Resolutions — I make New Years Goals. Goals are about the desired result or the aspiration, and resolutions are about the decision or the plan. To illustrate this look at the following two lists of synonyms from the thesaurus:
An old teacher of mine, Cyndi Laurin, who teaches on Quality, Leadership, and Organizational Greatness, sums it up quite well:
Goals carry more power and are more flexible whereas resolutions are to stiff and formal. Goals help lead you to the objective and beyond it whereas resolutions offer nothing beyond their stated plan.
Ok, back to the main point — how am I going to use the Moleskine to track my goals? I first needed to organize it into categories, so I referenced this article by Dave Terry and added tabs to the Moleskine.
Then I needed a calendar in a couple of the sections so I customized this compact calendar from David Seah. The first one, pictured on the left below, has been turned into a two-column layout with the months on the outside and the days on the inside. The second calendar on the right has been more heavily modified with an extra column added to each day.
Each section has enough room for an index page and introduction notes. Certain tabs offer a single line per day for the sole purpose of tracking data — like miles ran. Others offer a few lines per day for more detailed note taking.
And for the finishing touch Dickies makes these wonderful pants with a Moleskine pocket — I take this thing with me everywhere.
A side note — I don’t make New Years Resolutions — I make New Years Goals. Goals are about the desired result or the aspiration, and resolutions are about the decision or the plan. To illustrate this look at the following two lists of synonyms from the thesaurus:
goal: objective, aim, end, target, design, intention, intent, plan, purpose; (holy) grail; ambition, aspiration, wish, dream, brass ring, desire, hope
resolution: intention, resolve, decision, intent, aim, plan; commitment, pledge, promise.
An old teacher of mine, Cyndi Laurin, who teaches on Quality, Leadership, and Organizational Greatness, sums it up quite well:
“Consider creating goals as launching pads to something far greater.”
Goals carry more power and are more flexible whereas resolutions are to stiff and formal. Goals help lead you to the objective and beyond it whereas resolutions offer nothing beyond their stated plan.
Ok, back to the main point — how am I going to use the Moleskine to track my goals? I first needed to organize it into categories, so I referenced this article by Dave Terry and added tabs to the Moleskine.
I used
Dave Terry’s idea for adding tabs to the
Moleskine. The top three sections of the
Moleskine notebook have 11 pages each, the
bottom three sections of the Moleskine have
21 pages each.
Then I needed a calendar in a couple of the sections so I customized this compact calendar from David Seah. The first one, pictured on the left below, has been turned into a two-column layout with the months on the outside and the days on the inside. The second calendar on the right has been more heavily modified with an extra column added to each day.
I customized
David Seah’s compact calender for 2007
for use in two different sections of my 2007
Moleskine.
Each section has enough room for an index page and introduction notes. Certain tabs offer a single line per day for the sole purpose of tracking data — like miles ran. Others offer a few lines per day for more detailed note taking.
And for the finishing touch Dickies makes these wonderful pants with a Moleskine pocket — I take this thing with me everywhere.
Dickies with a built in Moleskine pocket.