Sunday, September 20, 2015

Productivity tips: Midori traveler's notebook (Men's Perspective)

As y'all know, I have been using the 555-dori for awhile now. It has been great, the leather ages well and it does its job. I occasionally fall out of use of it but i do go to it once in awhile. First and foremost, this is not a post about what kind of pretty inserts is inside my midori traveler's notebook or the limited SMRT edition.

One thing I realised after using 555-dori for awhile is that given it's small size, you cannot really write alot inside the book. Now that in my new job, I'm required to keep track of more things now so with the push of my boss who said that I should stop writing on scrap paper, he will reimburse me any notebook i buy, so what other notebook to buy than the bigger grand daddy of all the notebooks that i use: the Midori Traveler's Notebook.

While i like they system, i find that most user of this notebook tend to crave for form over function. The amount of stuff people do to their MTN, the charms, the amount of different coloured pencils, writing pretentious crap inside. Perhaps their schedule should include 30 mins - 1 hr; twice a day colouring their notebook, followed by another 1 hr of therapeutic, relaxing colouring of the secret garden colouring books.

Do not get me wrong here, I do like the looks of this notebook and its form, but i value the function that this form offers, the most crafty thing i do is to make out inserts for the books as these inserts are so god-damn expensive at SGD 5 a ruled book up to SGD 12 for some others and some slots and pockets costing more than SGD 10.

The amount of 555 notebooks i can buy with SGD 5 just makes no sense and value to purchase them on a long term basis. Though I bought a ruled book with the purchase, I still see no absolute sense in bringing out 7 different highlighters and 7 different pens to write and colour and shade areas with. Maybe now you will walk out to your fixie bike and cycle to starbucks to write on your MTN but not me i guess.

I understand the beauty of hand carrying a big old luggage briefcase from a period when trolleys weren't invented, but it is just not for me.

The orange band just gives the right amount of colour splash


Usage of the notebook
Anyhow, in a sentence: i'm someone who has a lot of things to take notes off but wants to spend as little time as possible using the notebook.

Work
I work in the shipping industry in a shipowner/ship manager company, we have a lot of info coming in all the time, trust me when i say, taking care of 19 ships is like running a childcare center for children.

I scribble bits of info in that pertains to what will be important so that i could refer back to them in meetings or during weekends. They include mostly itinerary, technical/operational issues as well as upcoming inspections if i come across them.

Wedding planning
This is seriously alot of stuff to write down as you compare shops and prices. I printed a 6 month weekly planner from Ray Blake (thank you very much sire for your contribution to human productivity). But since i started using it from last week (mid september 2015) i have plenty of pages to freed up and i stirke off the date and use it to compare stuffs and take notes regarding wedding.

Weekly planner
Together with the wedding stuff, it exists inside the weekly planner insert. I keep track of upcoming events, things to do this week that could also be related to work, finances, good quotes etc.

Investments
The blank book has nothing inside and I do not sketch a lot so i use it to put things related to stocks and analyse them in my free time. on the first page, I'll write down a stock ticker symbol, then I'll go home to read its financial reports to get a good feel of it.

Abit of bullet journalling here to help


Not made in Japan from Kobe Leather???


very minimalistic


This notebook is great, it does nothing and alot at the same time. Here's a good; unrelated; helpful; tricky; simple quote: Measure twice, cut once.





1 comment:

  1. Awesome post you have here! A very helpful one. I'd also like to share the productivity app for salespeople. Anyway, Thanks for sharing!

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