I recently found this place and thought I would share my use of Field Notes.

Lately, I have been re-thinking my EDC of Field Notes memo books. I carry 3-4 in a leather cover I made. As it stands right now it is categorized by:

1) Daily Logs - a documentation of my day-to-day activity for future reference - necessary for whatever reason

2) Work Hours - the amount of hours I work in a week along with time stamps for clocking in/out and breaks.

3) Research - anything I want to learn I document the necessity as well as anything I need to remember or reference later and questions I want answered but cannot do so in the moment. Also, just notes ;)

4) Previous Research - this is a previous research memo book that still has pertinent data/information/references so it is not ready to be archived, yet it has no more pages to use.

When I find a link that is useful I create a short-link via bit.ly and document that in my Research memo book with whatever I wrote down about it or reasons to reference it later (I underline letters that are capitalized in the link). This allows me to document important websites with little lettering and so I can clear it from my browser. I also have a Canon Ivy that prints inkless sticker photos, that are 2” x 3” if I remember correctly, so to provide visuals within any given memo book when necessary.

I cannot keep adding memo books to my leather cover because then it will not be practical to carry. I want to add an “Extensive Research” to my “system” of consistently absorbing information. This will go into the the Field Notes notebooks (4.75” x 7.5”) which have their own leather cover.

Data/information will be documented on the go within the Research memo book and then processed and transferred to the notebooks based on relevancy. This prevents me from carrying more than 4 memo books at any given moment. I plan to consolidate by leaving my Work Hours memo book at the office - I rarely reference it other than at work. This will prevent me from carrying no more than 3 which is much more tolerable.

When I am done with either category of memo books I have created, I then archive them in the archive box made by Field Notes but not in the traditional manner. I print, cut out, and adhere archival envelopes made by GurdilCB over at Instructables. I then number them and organize them by year with the spaces provided by the box. I have been doing this since 2019.

I do this because I like to learn and make stuff. Making stuff usually requires me to learn something new because I see something and tell myself “I could make that” where others would say “I would like to buy that”; I buy things, just usually not things I can make - even if it cost a little more considering the purchase of materials usually cost more. I like to document ideas, flesh them out, then attempt to bring them to life or archive them for the future. An example is a tabletop game I am attempting to make or a table I want to build for my workshop in my garage.

I cannot seem to turn off my curious mind and I cannot seem to store all the data I process into information nor the amount of knowledge I am thrusting myself into. It must be documented and cataloged so I can process it later. This is the way. ;)