the Anal Retentive Moleskine User

the Anal Retentive Moleskine User

After a year or two of trial and error I came up with the following set-ip for my note taking needs. I use a pocket Moleskine notepad and doctor each new one up as follows as soon as I get a new one.

THE INSIDE FRONT COVER: On the inside front cover is a 15 month calendar customized from TimeAndDate.com - because you can't really be an anal retentive note taker if you're not dating things properly. Also inside are several different size post-it notes which always come in handy - 4 or 5 post-its seem to be the limit before making the Moleskine bulge too much.

The upper right hand corner of the first 25 pages are cut to make it easy to distinguish between this section (which is for more important day-to-day info) and rest of the book (which is for more trivial info and other poo).

THE BACK COVER AND POCKET: Because post-it notes on the front cover aren't enough - I keep two different size index cards in the back cover. Five or six seem to be the limit before it bulges too much.

ANAL RETENTIVE NOTES KEY: Pretty much most of my Moleskine is to keep track of books, albums, movies, and websites I want to check out and interesting words and phrases. By coming up with some symbols before certain entries I can refer to them quickly - it helps when I'm in a record store with a few dollars burning a hole in my pocket.

Here's my sketchbook set-up - a Moleskine sketchbook, about a dozen pens (even though I tend keep going back to the same 2), and an image morgue of about 15 pages tucked into the back pocket of the Moleskine.  The image morgue pages serves as references for drawings and idea starting points for cartoons. The pages rotate, but most of the images are things pilfered from stock photo sites, photoblogs, and anywhere else on the net where I stumble upon images. All of this fits in a larger mesh bag that's always in my messenger bag.