The Notebook: A History of Thinking on Paper

by Roland Allen

Ryder draws a distinction between the daily notes that he was making and a conventional journal or diary. ‘One of my English teachers made it a point for us all to keep a long-form journal every day,’ he recalls, ‘but I quickly grew to resent it, because I didn’t have anything to write about unless it was being bullied, and I didn’t want to write about what I had for lunch, so journaling quickly became useless.’ Instead, he found that shorter, less reflective entries, laid out with visual appeal, were easy to maintain and refer to. He listed every day, and gradually developed ways to managing the listed items, using four categories, each with their own bullet symbol. The first one was the simplest: ● for a task to do; then ✘ as Ryder completed it. Nothing more complicated than anyone would do with a shopping list. Ryder had always found it difficult to think ahead, so he introduced a couple of other icons to help him do so: › showed when an incomplete task was moved to the next day’s list, while ‹ tagged a task that had been deferred and placed on another future list for attention the following month. Again, nothing too surprising, but this private system of icons56 ensured that nothing was forgotten, and allowed Ryder to break down complicated tasks or substantial long-term goals into small, manageable chunks. It also let him change his priorities as circumstances demanded.