- A Letter or A4 sized squared hardcover notebook. I use a "Leuchtturm1917 Master A4 Plus Dotted Hardcover Notebook."
- Black and blue pens in tip size of your preference. I personally like 0.38mm, but some may find that too narrow. I use "Uni Ball Signo 207 Ultra Micro Tip" and bought my own pens for use at home and work.
- A pencil and eraser. I use a 6H pencil, which makes anything I write with it much fainter than the pens I use.
- A ruler. A metal one is nice, and there are many you can find online with stencils built in to draw lots of different and useful shape.
- At the beginning of each day, I write the day's date in black pen. I use the standard ISO format, for example "2019-12-19". I indent that to the 3rd square to provide a small left hand margin for extra symbols.
- One further square in, I draw a single dot in the middle of the square to start my bulleted list for that day. These aren't to-do items yet. They're just a starting point for notes, action items, headings, etc.
- When I need to make a note of something, for example in a meeting, I prefix the bullet point with a letter. In my scheme, C = Client, and P = personal. This is of course extensible to whatever you want.
- When taking the note, I try to remember that this will need to be legible. Write slowly and give some small context.
- Treat that bullet point as a header. If that task or note needs further context or additional steps, I indent further, and add another bullet point.
- By default, most notes are action points, at least for me. They become to-do items in my head automatically. So when they are completed, I draw a check mark in the square.
- If the note, task, action point, etc is deferred, I draw an angled bracket ">" over the bullet point to show it has been pushed to a later date or another list.
- If the bulleted point is no longer relevant to me, either because someone else has taken care of it, or because it's no longer needed, then an "X" is drawn through the bullet point.
- When taking personal notes, I use pencil, but you can just as easily use a different coloured pen. This is just my preference to separate out work from home items. Some people won't be comfortable mixing the two, and that's OK! The point of this whole setup is to be simple and flexible. (Despite how much I'm already writing on the subject!)
As long as you can read your own handwriting, there's no shame in how you write.
