How to Make a Complete Map of Every Thought you Think | Page 7

tear them off, and put them in the tab page, right? And then you put the tab page into your notes, and you can quickly flip to them. Tab page guts- you know what I'm talking about, right?
Good. (One day, I may, or someone may, put pictures in this description. Then those of you who don't get "tab guts" can see what I mean.)
In the inside pockets, you'll store larger things like your tab pages themselves. And when people give you stuff, and of course they didn't triple hole punch it, you'll put it in there until you get home and punch it yourself.
Outside pockets. This is really important.
You're going to identify your notebooks quickly by the outside pockets. You can get away with not doing this, but it's a pain in the butt. Pay the extra money (this is becoming a theme, is it not? trust me, I'm not rich, if you haven't picked up by reading this yet- [HEY, I'm a PROGRAMMER, and it's the year 2003] but pay the extra money nonetheless) and get the pockets.
Here's what I do with them:
For archive notebooks, I put the letters that are archived. For example, "A-M" and "N-Z".
My common-access notebook (a big fat one) doesn't have covers. I think that's because I got it for free at a college giveaway, and wasn't being picky. No matter, it is jet black, and none of the others are, so I can easily identify it.
My carry-about notebook has, "default", two pictures of Lions on it. My name is Lion, so I put Lions in there, and people are able to put it together that it's mine. The Lions are smiling, and it communicates something of my nature to people. I think.
But usually the "default" isn't there. I keep a varient of the GTD system running ("Getting Things Done" by David Allen), and so I generally have my day's alerts, options, and chores on the very front. (Not that this is strictly defined in GTD, but I've adapted it a bit.)
And I usually have on the back cover, covering a Lion, a general plan for how my day will go out and bus trips (http://transit.metrokc.gov) for the day. It is very, very useful.
Finally, you want to look at the spine, if you have outside pockets, and make sure it is not obstructed. Frequently there are three "bolts" on the outer spine, and they sometimes pass it through the transparent pocket on the spine. NOOOOOOOO! We don't want that!
That means you can't stick an identifying paper back there! Or if you can, you can only dig it in half an inch. No, that's not for you! You want to be able to put a paper in there that has the name of the binder on it, so you can quickly ID it when a bunch of binders are stacked in a row.
There. I am done dissecting binders. If I omitted something, mail me at [email protected]
Next: 3-hole punch.
Again- you're going to want to print out sheets, and then include them. Or you're going to want to include things that people give you. Very well then, you're going to need to x3 hole punch it. It's a wonderful tool to have, and it will go a long way. I absolutely adore mine.
Lets go through these small items quickly:
* Donut Rings
I don't know what the official name is for these things. They are flat, round, have a hole in the middle, and they reinforce paper.
When you have a lot of papers in your notebook, they will eventually start to rip at the holes. The rip will grow, and grow, and the next thing you know, your paper doesn't stay inside your notebook. The solution is to, when one hole tears, immediately reinforce all three with these donut rings. I don't know if you need to, but to be safe, I put 6 O-rings to a page. Three on the front of the holes, and three on the back.
I've never had a problem since. I've never seen a donut tear.
* stickies
Okay- these are NOT yellow sticky tabs!
What these are, are these little tiny stickers that look like small rectangles. They are about .5" wide, if that. You can stick and unstick and restick them to paper, AND THE PAPER DOES NOT TEAR OR DROP INK AS YOU DO SO.
These are AMAZINGLY useful.
You will use these extensively as you STRATEGIZE over your notebook.
A brief explanation for now:
Strategy is ultra-time-sensitive. It also involves a lot of prioritizing, and the priorities will change- rapidly.
You don't want to mix up your rapid-change stuff with your low-change stuff. That is, you don't want permanent marks on your pages for things that are changing rapidly. So you use these stickies.
On your GSMOC (Grand Subject Map of Contents), you'll have stickies pointing you to major important