Your First Daily Carry

What's a "Daily Carry"?

The Tiny Notebooks system has three types of notebooks: topic notebooks where you take notes on a specific project, idea, or event; days notebooks where you track your work tasks from day-to-day; and daily carry notebooks, which catch thought debris, grocery lists, personal to-do items outside of work, restaurant orders, blog post ideas, and whatever else comes to mind that doesn't "fit" in some other notebook - or it would, but you don't have that notebook with you. You always have one current Daily Carry notebook, which you carry with you, in your pocket, day to day.

Your Daily Carry notebook will definitely show some wear - it's going to get bent up, sat on, frayed, flexed, folded, spindled, and mutilated. That's okay - notebooks are meant to be used.

Pick one of your blank notebooks with a sturdy cover as your first Daily Carry book!

Setting up

Every notebook in the Tiny Notebooks system needs:

a labeled cover
page numbers
a Table of Contents

so whenever you start a notebook, you'll spend a minute or two setting this up. If your notebooks already have page numbers, or page numbers and a blank Table of Contents, you get to save a little time.

Labeling the cover

All notebooks in the Tiny Notebooks system have a full title on the front and an abbreviated title up the spine. If you decide to sort your notebooks into categories, they also get a category label in the upper right corner.

Label your notebook:

On the front, write "Daily Carry" and today's date. (Year-month-day is the least ambiguous way to write a date, but use whatever is comfortable for you.
Along the edge with the staple, write "Daily / " and today's date. Write it with the top of the text along the edge, so it will be easy to read when the notebook is stored in a card file later.
In the upper right corner, write "Daily", to mark the category. (This is optional.)

You'll want to be able to find your notes later, so you should prepare a Table of Contents, if your notebook doesn't already have one:

At the top of the first and second blank pages of your notebook, write "Contents", and underline it.

There is no step 2, but you can write contact info in the front cover of your notebook now in case you lose it and someone finds it.

Page numbers

A Table of Contents is only useful if pages are numbered. Some notebooks have this already, but you'll most likely have to write your own. Fortunately, you bought small, thin notebooks, and numbering only every other page is enough, so it doesn't take long to add page numbers:

Starting with "1", write sequential odd numbers in the lower-right corner of every right-hand page in the notebook.
Treat the inside back cover as a "page" for this purpose.

If you use a pen color you do not usually use for note text, the page number is less likely to accidentally blend in with writing that gets close to it.

It's okay if you mess up. You may skip some page numbers, or you may need page numbers like 17 1/3 and 17 2/3 if you skipped a page while numbering. As long as page numbers go in order and each page can have its own number, it's good enough.

Your first note

Your first Daily Carry notebook is ready to use! Grab a good pen that won't leak, and put it and the notebook in your pocket, purse, handback, fanny pack, or underwear. Your notebook is yours for whatever you'd like to write.

But it's always easier to write in a notebook if there's already something in it, and it's much easier to write in a notebook if there's already something relatively unimportant in it. (This is especially important for a Daily Carry notebook, which you should feel free to use for things like a fast-food order so you don't forget it between the back of the line and the register.) So let's put something in it.

Find the first blank page of your notebook, after both pages of the Table of Contents. This should be page 3. (Page numbers don't count for making a page non-blank, of course.)
Across the top of the page, write "Thought Debris". Optionally, in the top corner closest to the outside edge, write today's date and the current time. (You don't have to time-stamp your notes, but it sometimes helps give context to them.)
Under the "Thought Debris" headline, draw a line extending from the left edge of the page to the right edge. (This separates the title from the rest of the note, and makes it easier to see where new notes start, when skimming your notebook in the future - the headers are easy to spot.)
In the rest of the page, write whatever you are thinking about. "My hands are writing words. HAAAANDS" is not a bad choice if you don't have something else you'd rather scribble down.

That's it! Your notebook is now not empty, so you don't have to worry about finding something important enough to be the first thing in the notebook anymore. It's not important to add this to the Table of Contents right now - you can do that later.

With your first note written, let's talk about adding more notes to your notebooks, generally.

Next: writing notes

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