Pocket Notebooks Can Save Your Mind

you can use pocket notebooks in a lot of different ways but I like to use mine as a catch-all to capture all my best ideas I've been using pocket notebooks as catch-alls for about 10 years and it saved my life is that too strong it pocket notebooks have saved my mind and it's not much of a life without a mind so yes pocket notebooks have saved my life hey welcome to park notes I'm Parker settekase I'm a graduate student in philosophy and I'm here to help you study and think more deeply in this video I'm

going to help you what am I going to help you do in this video hang on one sec in this video I'm going to do four things one I'm going to show you how I use pocket notebooks as a catch-all system to collect my thoughts every day two I'll show you what I do with my thoughts after they've been collected what do I where do I disperse them three I'll address objections to analog pocket notebooks and four I'll show you which brands of pocket notebooks I like best and why so make sure you watch the

whole video so you can become an expert in keeping a pocket notebook ah cool it was all here in my pocket notebook see what I did let's jump in back in 2013 I started thinking more deeply I started my quest to become a philosopher and I started having my own ideas as I began reading more philosophy I started having ideas of my own and I would try to hold on to those ideas in my mind throughout the day I tried to reflect on them and ruminate on them to make them like part of who I

am so that I didn't lose that idea but as I started having more and more ideas I realized this system is no good because before I would go to bed all these ideas would come rushing back to the Forefront of my mind fighting each other for space in my brain there were so many nights when I would lay in bed literally for hours trying to get my thoughts clear and trying to remember all the ideas I had throughout the day it was a nightmare but then I discovered pocket notebooks and how I can use them

as a catch-all for all of my ideas throughout the day it all started with the Saddleback notebook I found it on Amazon back when they used to sell on Amazon and the picture showed this exact thing I thought that it came with a notebook and it didn't so I got the leather notebook cover and then for the next week I went out trying to find the perfect notebook to fit in here and I discovered that is a mole skin pocket notebook it was actually this exact one back in 2013 and it is a Star Wars

themed one so I think it's like Tatooine on here it's kind of cool but I like I like the all black ones now the idea behind a pocket notebook as a catch-all system is super super simple you get yourself a notebook it doesn't have to be a like term or a moleskin get yourself any kind of notebook and glue it to yourself This goes with you everywhere you go and when you have a good idea you open up your notebook and you write it in there this is like your working memory your external brain this

is where you put your ideas so you don't lose them so I put all sorts of ideas in here to-do lists that I don't want to forget about good ideas for podcast episodes or blog posts or just ideas that I want to chew on and think through Future Park note videos key Concepts that I want to turn into multiple Channel videos and content philosophical ideas personal notes on who I am and why I think that way life goals if it's an idea that I don't want to lose it's going in my pocket notebook catch-all so

let me give you an example I've been chewing on this idea of an external mind for a long time external minds and pocket notebooks I know that looks bad to you guys but this is a pocket notebook I these are pretty sloppy notes because usually I'm writing a on the go and they don't have to be perfect you just have to be able to interpret them it doesn't matter if the museum curator 200 years from now understands it that's their problem so first things first I will put down the idea I will block that out

this is what this page is about I will put down the date so I know when I had this idea and then I'll give myself enough of the idea here for me to reflect on later does my mind extend into my pocket journals so that's the question why would I even think that well if these represent the past 10 years of my working memory then like if you had these and you could interpret what I was saying and actually read them if they were legible which they're not then you would have like an inside look

into my brain or would you have an inside look into my mind is your mind just your brain are you your thoughts if so then my mind is extended into these notebooks and that has some implications for personal identity it reminds me of John Locke's theory of personal identity which emphasizes psychological continuity or memories what makes you the same you well you remember a past version of you and that version remembers another past and you have these memory chains going all the way back to when you began being a person what does it mean to

be the same person you have a certain amount of psychological continuity over time but a possible counter example to that would maybe be my notebook well John Locke if psychological continuity is a marker of personal identity then am I in these notebooks that's a question I have and that's that's what I'm gonna write down in my pocket notebook so I give myself different markers to help jog my memory in the future so it's as simple as that pocket notebooks function like an external working memory it helps you offload your ideas and come back to them

when you you have time to think about them more now I can sleep at night knowing I've captured my ideas and I can reflect on them whenever I want to once I have my ideas captured in my capture system which is just a pocket notebook I will reflect on them throughout the day when I get a chance and I'll add them to different notebooks that I use for different purposes so if it's a time sensitive task I'm going to put it in my bullet Journal slash time blocking log if I think it's a really good

idea then it goes in my good idea catch-all I'll give it a more detailed explanation here I may look up some different resources and put page numbers and look up Concepts and definitions and detail that a bit more in my good idea catch-all I could also move it into my deep thinking philosophy Journal and take it with me to a coffee shop to ruminate to reflect to chew on this idea with no external resources but just my own mind I recently did a YouTube video about that you can find that somewhere up here and if

it's a good idea for public Philosophy for YouTube for sub stack for anything like that it goes in my public philosophy notebook so I realize that this is highly compartmentalized you don't have to use as many as I do I'm a weirdo but I love compartmentalizing my ideas now I also recognize that a lot of people are going to say this is inefficient digital systems are much faster you can do a word search and find your ideas much more quickly but the difference between an analog system like a notebook and a digital system like my

cell phone is that my cell phone has all these icons that are trying to draw my attention to them instead of my notes now this is a picture of King the Conqueror and I want to be all jacked like this so I I have it as my home screen for motivation again like I said I'm weird so no surprise there this is a pretty light day for me but I still have all these alerts calling out to me check your email check your calendar check your text me me look at me give me attention my

Galaxy Note has a bunch of other things that are calling out to me beckoning me trying to steal my attention and so even though I have this pretty little stylus and I can create all these notes I forget about checking my notes in here because I have so many other things to think about when I look at my phone I don't see a notepad I don't see a notebook I don't see thoughts I see a billion different things but I don't see my idea when I look at my notebook I see my ideas that's all

that this is meant for so going analog helps me stay focused it helps me reflect on my own ideas now some of these will turn into philosophy papers and yeah I'll put those in a digital system but they start out as analog notes in my pocket notebook and they're often shuffled around in my other analog notebooks until they're ready for the Limelight so the concern of inefficiency is not a big one for me because in my mind thinking is not about efficiency it's about owning those ideas it's about working through them chewing on them getting

to the truth understanding what you believe and why you believe it it's worth taking time to go slow with your own thoughts to chew on them to reflect on them to get clear on what you mean to give reasons for what you believe and why you believe it it's okay to take some time it's okay to look this up it's okay to write the same entry multiple times to go back and edit it to add marginalia to cross things off to stay with an idea and really really chew on it so if you're worried about

efficient see then I'm giving you permission to go analog and to give yourself time to think so while the efficiency concern is not that big a deal for me there are other worries one of the worries is when you use a pocket notebook you put your ideas in here and you outmode them out of mind out of sight right you get this false sense of completion that the idea is done I have it captured I have it logged in my catch-all and so I'm done with it but so often your ideas are unfinished they're Half

Baked they need to be chewed on they need to be remembered they need to be recalled and reflected and ruminated on throughout the day and so you could accidentally be putting your ideas in here and forgetting about them and leaving them half done we want to offload our ideas for the time being but we don't want to outmode them we don't want them to be gone forever we don't want to set them aside and Overlook them the best way to avoid that is to thumb through your notebook multiple times throughout the day and get in

the habit of checking it before bed that way you are refreshing your mind you're bringing those ideas back to the Forefront of your mind throughout the day when you have a chance to think about them more so you want to offload but you don't want to out mode now like I said I started with moleskin notebooks but now I've been trying out these like term 1917s I like these squared ones but I'm also going to try out the dotted ones again you don't have to use these ones these are just the ones that I like

if you do want to use the ones that I use check the description and use those links that will help support this channel the like term is going to be just a little bit bigger than the moleskin here I have some unopened ones for you so there's a size comparison the like term has some margins for you to put the date and it also includes page numbers the moleskin doesn't some people like that more than that and it's all personal preference I'm also trying out this Murdy creative pocket notebook here's a mole skin in here

this is a beautiful leather cover with these leather clasps and a Parker Pen locks everything all together it's pretty cool I've also found a bunch of pocket notebooks on Etsy with different brands of paper I don't really like them all that much but my friends and family have bought them for me and I can't say no to a pocket notebook so for my daily carry lately I'm using this like term 1917 A6 it's a squared or grid notebook I really really dig this got two ribbons so you can mark two different places to be thinking

about your thoughts I found this leather cover from Etsy I'm not super thrilled about it so I'm not going to link in the description or anything like that but it does fit this pilot G2 pen which is kind of nice so that's the daily carry but for special occasions when this thing is too big for me I will use a field notes book when I'm performing a wedding or or really anytime I'm wearing a suit and I have a breast pocket I will slip that into there so between the two of these I'm carrying a

pocket notebook with me everywhere I go okay so that's how I use a pocket notebook as a capture system to collect my thoughts wherever I am every single day but now I want to hear from you guys have you ever kept a pocket notebook and if so how does your method differ from mine make sure to leave me a comment so other people can see your advice too also if you have a favorite brand let me know in the comments so I can check those out or if you like the ones I mentioned go ahead

and let me know so I don't have to keep looking and then I need your help do you think my mind is extended into my pocket notebooks why or why not if you guys benefited from this video If you learned something if you enjoyed it make sure to leave me a like and make sure you subscribe so you don't miss any videos on studies habits and tips and tricks and crazy weird philosophical thought experiments all right I'll catch you next time