Keeping Physical Notes, Documents & Calendars

For years I've tried getting into digital note taking but couldn't. I was essentially raised in an environment that kept physical notes, calendards and other scribbles for the most important things of day to day life.

Calendar

For the past 15 years or so I have always had a physical calendar on my wall next to my computer. It's A4 size and for the past few years I've used the Calendarpedia colour templates as my preffered choice. I simply print it out (usually at the end of December) and then stick it to the wall for an entire year.

I like having that yearly view of each month/week/day. Having only a week or month view seems a bit tunnel visioned for me since I note down pretty much everything from vacations, concerts, birthdays and new Magic The Gathering set releases. If it's important it goes on the calendar. My girlfriend and I also have a separate calendar hanging on our fridge which has helped like a lot in terms of knowing when things are coming and when one of us has errands to run or whatever. We also get to draw on it which makes it more personal.

I've been marking days off with a green highlighter (vacations and public holidays). Because I'm weird I also do a black checkmark on The days where I did some form of exercise (walk, hike, bike, workout etc) while also marking days where I played Magic. The exercise one has actually helped me stay on track since I look at it and see "Oh I need to exercise today to add the check mark, better do that".

In no way shape or form can I image my life without these physical calendars anymore. They are the life blood of mine and our organisation.

Notes

There were a few note taking systems that I've used over the past years, but none of them actually stuck. For work currently I'm using Obsidian. Nothing special, just a file or multiple based on topics, arranged in folders by project and I just write whatever I think is important about that project (questions I have for my tech lead, issues that I found that need resolving, todos that I still need to get to etc.)

For every day notes I have a small notebook where I write out what is essentially a todo list for a day. I write out the date and then bullet points for things I have to do, want to do or could do.

(Insert image of notebook page, blur out sensitive information)

This system also sometimes keeps random notes and important things that need to be stored for the immediate future. I used to pride myself in being able to keep all of the information/events/todos in my head, but things got forgotten or lost and I needed to start writing things down. The notebooks themselves aren't of any special brand or anything, the one I'm currently using is from Flying Tiger and they last me about a year. Next one is from Japan :3

On the topic of notes one of my most important note taking habit is writing a journal. Not a strictly daily one, but one where I write my thoughts, ideas and mostly a way to handle mental health better. No specific system here, just writing down the date and free writing about whatever is on my mind. I've been reading a lot of phylosophy lately and I also use this journal to grapple with the ideas and concepts that I'm reading about. It's also important for me to not lose the ability to write by hand. I also write in my native language to also keep that skill. My day to day work is typing and writing in English, so maintaing the ability to write by hand in my native tongue is, to me, important. I encourage anyone who isn't a native English speaker to also write in their native language. It's a skill that is getting lost more and more these days. So let's be hipsters and keep the art of writing by hand alive.