The Simple Pleasure of Taking Notes

I'm not sure of the causal direction, but my mood and productivity both seem to shoot up whenever I take playful notes throughout the day. Here's how I do it:

1. I always have a pen(/pencil) and 3x5" notecard on me.

2. One side of the card is for to-dos (i.e., don't go to bed until you finish these N things), and the other for observations, questions, funny quotes from professors, books I should read, things to write about, etc.

3. When I'm bored or at least once at night, I go through the day's notes and (a) act on the easy ones, and (b) put the idea stuff in a text file for later.

I find that having a simple way to take notes keeps me on the ball and intellectually engaged. It may be a bit weird to whip out a note-card in public, but I've found that tons of stuff I didn't think was worth jotting down ends up being a gold mine later on.

Yeah, I bought some molesinke cahiers for the same purpose. Simple and lightweight, and they take a good beating.

Still, I don't think I'd buy them again. Seconding Yan's sentiment, a notecard (or napkin!) is all you need in moments of inspiration.

I tried to start taking notes, but im pretty chaotic and didn't seem to like it that much. And my handwriting is so horrible that i couldn't read some of them. I take notes from time to time in Knotes on my pc, but rarely and only when i find some idea that i think i might start working on sometime in the future(0.1% of those started, and only half finished). I just checked and i saw that i was supposed to by myself some beer last week :D

I find that a moleskine seems too nice to use up with my chicken-scratch quick notes. I tend to like the feeling of crumpling up a post-it after completing the task on it. I can't cleanly do that with a moleskine. Tearing the page out of those things really makes it less pristine and formal-looking.

I'd love suggestion for something that would fit in a regular jeans or cargo short's pocket. I love moleskins, but the hard cover makes it tough to stuff in your pocket and sit down.