Here’s an interesting concept– using a separate notebook for every project you work on. Depending on how you work and what kind of notebooks you like, it could be unwieldy or impractical, but in this case, we seem to be talking about graphic design projects in small Moleskine cahiers or Volants, and the user says “So far it’s working brilliantly.”
I try and have seperate notebooks for the different things I want to use them for. It justifies buying more notebboks!
This works. I’ve also used one large notebook and added tab dividers to separate projects.
-Victoria D.
This probably looks like a nightmare to most GTDers because it multiplies collection tools. As long as each one is reviewed on a regular basis to identify next actions, I suppose it could work, and I’ve been tempted to try it from time to time.
I use multiple notebooks at the same time, but they are divided by function, not project.
I do exactly this for software projects. I also have a separate personal journal, a mini notebook as a song journal, and I use a small ruled Moleskine to track my workouts in the gym.
I do this, because it’s pretty important for me to keep things separate in my academic work – one notebook for each of the different languages I’m learning, for example, one for historiography theory, and another for notes on primary sources. I use A4-size books with about 160 pages, for the most part, and it seems to be working well.
In doing field surveys, we’d group projects and clients together for ease of record keeping. Large projects would get their own field book or dedicated series of field books, the same for a client that typically had a lot of projects and activities, etc.
For office work, I use one notebook for everything and keep copies of important items in a separate file for each project.