The pursuit of the perfect note-taking tool

Awhile back, I tried a Moleskine notebook, and the problem I have with them, as beautiful and sexy as they are, is that the pages are fixed. I have to be able to remove and rearrange. I recently pulled my "primary" Moleskine out of my bag ("man purse") and realized that 1) I haven't written in it for over six months, and 2) it's full of notes about the systems from my previous job... but only a tenth of the book is full! It's got all this useless information in it, and I find that very distracting. I don't like having information I want buried in between sheets of information I no longer need. Plus the whole "I ran out of room for this idea, but I'd skipped ahead to start another idea, and now I've got chains of arrows and page numbers" thing bugs me.

I've blogged in the past about using 3x5" index cards for note organization. I've used them for years to keep track of data... I tend to keep a box for a game world I'm developing, etc. But those boxes aren't mobile. Recently, using index cards for more mobile applications is becoming popular... the Hipster PDA and so on, and the manufacturers have responded with tools to carry and organize index cards. So I've been carrying and using index cards in various carrying do-hickeys. None of them work for me. 3x5" index cards are too big to conveniently carry in my pocket, which is where I really want my "idea repository," without either damaging them (I hate cards with bent corners) or being too bulky. And I have this problem with the loose-leaf format... I write notes, but they don't always go into the same carrying device, and I misplace them or whatnot. I'm having an organizational nightmare with index cards, which keeps me from using them as often as I want.

Last night, I took my son to McDonald's to play at the Playplace, and sat down to do some brainstorming for the podcast. And I discovered I'd taken my pack of index cards to Gorilla Con and left them in my gaming backpack. I had a handful of Wichita Roleplayers business cards in my bag, and since I'm wanting to redesign those, I thought I'd just use the backs of those.

And that worked well. Instead of filling one card with ideas, I could organize smaller bits of information, lay them out on the table and move them around, etc. The smaller format keeps me from writing too much, using the cards to represent ideas more than record details.

Now here's the thing... I can carry a business card case in my pocket. There are tons of tools to organize business cards, from three-ring-binder insert pages, to dedicated leatherette binders, to Rolodex punches, etc, etc. With business cards, I can do what I couldn't do with index cards... organize them in the pages of a book, where I can see all my notes on a topic in one view.q

What's fun about this is that I can get customized cards... VistaPrint.com runs "secret" specials (sign up for their emails... you'll get about five or ten ads a week, but I just filter them into a folder and go look at the folder when I'm ready to buy something new). The latest special was 250 premium matte-finish cards for FREE, just $5.50 shipping. (Not their usual free cards with the ad on the back.) That's less than buying 250 blank inkjet printer cards at Office Depot. So I can get cards that are blank on one side, and have a nifty design on the other to make them "special." You can even fully customize the art and text... create a to-do checklist form, add your favorite creative saying or a "who, what, when, where, why" kind of creativity reminder. (Just remember that it's something that'll be on the back of every one of your notes!)

Granted, it's more expensive than index cards. But if you wanted blank business cards, you could probably find something cheaper than inkjet printer cards... buy some card stock and get someone affordable to cut them to size for you.

Business cards are too small to completely replace index cards for me... I take Wichita Roleplayers meeting notes that need a little more space, for instance. But for my portable idea repository and being able to organize and lay out little chunks of ideas, I think this would work well.