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I used to have a similar hangup, I liked getting expensive notebooks and very rarely used them because I was worried I was “wasting” the page by writing banal s
by fwlr 4y ago
I used to have a similar hangup, I liked getting expensive notebooks and very rarely used them because I was worried I was “wasting” the page by writing banal stuff on it. I ended up fixing it by complete accident. I ran across yet another nice notebook* and to save on shipping I bought three of them. Later on I happened to be in an office supplies shop with a friend and she saw some pens on the shelf that she remembered as being the best pens she’d ever used*. They didn’t have single pens but the box of 12 wasn’t that expensive so I thought sure, why not, and bought a box. When I got home my notebooks had been delivered. So I was standing there with a whole box of nice pens in one hand and a whole stack of nice notebooks in the other hand, both of which I had bought excess of on a whim, and something just clicked in my brain like “these aren’t scarce resources, these are plentiful”, and I’ve never had an issue since.
I don’t think it’s a bad idea to buy cheap notebooks (or cheap pens), do what works for you. But if you want to use nice notebooks and find yourself struggling to do it, you could try buying a bunch to teach yourself they’re not so precious and rare.
*: The notebooks are Code and Quill, the pens are Uniball Vision Elite, I still use both to this day. I have a stack of 10 finished notebooks and I’ve lost or given away God knows how many pens, but I’ve never run out of either.
- iLoveOncall 4y agoThe scarce resource is the money you need to buy the nice ones, not the notebooks themselves. I don't think people are afraid of wasting good paper, they're afraid of wasting paper that they paid a lot for.
- bayindirh 4y agoThis doesn't work like that in fountain pen users' universe. The good notebooks change the behavior of the pen and the ink a lot, and you want to write things you want to save on these notebooks. When written, and finished, a notebook written with your favorite inks and fountain pens become an art piece for yourself, and you want to write something you want to return to. If it was about money, I'd be using a nice rollerball with a nice refill and run of the mill or recycled paper. It's akin to liking vinyls, you want it for the experience, and spend time with it. I have the same experience with the author. I use my fancy notebooks for diaries and software projects (like lab notebooks). Daily notes go to cheap notebooks with decent papers, and written with the best behaving, easily replaceable inks with easily replaceable pens. When these notebooks end, they're scanned, converted to PDFs, and then shredded for recycling.
- egypturnash 4y agoMaybe in your universe, not in mine. I use nice notebooks and nice fountain pens for the most banal shit. I can afford to go through a few $30 journals per year even if they're filled up with nothing but my daily to-do lists. Whatever works though.
- bayindirh 4y agoI don't know what $30 gets there, but I don't mind to use a Rhodia block or notebook for most banal things. Also, while they don't leave the desk much, most of my nicest fountain pens are also in rotation. However, my hand-bound leather notebooks are reserved for design and journal work only, and written with archival inks most of the time.
- iLoveOncall 4y agoMy father actually collects fountain pen, he got published many times in fountain pen related magazines and he is no doubt in the top 100 collectors in the world, and top 1-5 for specific brands. He never has expressed anything about the quality of paper. Actually, he takes his notes on whatever is available, which often means the back of an envelope lying around and otherwise printer paper. I have never seen him use a notebook actually, let alone an expensive one.
- dunefox 4y agoNote taking isn't writing.
- bayindirh 4y agoYou're very lucky. I wish I had a chance to chat with your father. I also collect fountain pens, but not with that laser focus. He probably has a favorite ink to use with his fountain pens, since inks change both a pen's behavior and their interaction changes from paper to paper. There's a list of popular, run of the mill inks which work very well with lower quality paper. I also use these inks with my daily driver pens and notebooks, since they're easy to maintain, looks nice, and works with almost any notebook out there. However I had some notebooks which were not writable unless you use a gel, ballpoint or some rollerballs. Fountain pen ink just stayed as little droplets and never dried on them.
- fwlr 4y agoOf course… but I consciously knew that fact - that nice notebooks are practically infinite and it’s just the money to obtain them that’s scarce - for many years while still having a hangup. Knowing that fact never helped me, it wasn’t until circumstances conspired to prove it to my subconscious for the specific case of nice notebooks that I actually began to act like I believed it. Up until that point, writing in nice notebooks always required a conscious effort to overcome the subconscious fear that nice notebooks themselves were scarce. I think our brains just aren’t very careful or rigorous about what they attach that “scarcity” label to, they will happily attach that label to the product itself instead of the money you paid for it. Consciously presenting our subconscious with disconfirming observations can be an effective tool to update our subconscious labeling.
- qup 4y agoI am one of the people who can't use nice notebooks (or nice lumber) and always saves the best for last. It has nothing to do with what I paid, everything to do with how I perceive the quality of the consumable material. I can, and do, use my best quality tools without any qualms. It's using up "precious" (quality) materials. (It's silly, does not serve me well, and I'm working on it)
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]