A week spent Wandering
A week ago I bought a Wanderings Traveller's notebook to try out a new system; I was dissatisfied with my current set up and wanted to shake things up. I wrote some first impressions but now that I've used it for a full week I thought I'd talk a bit about some of my findings and how it's worked for me thus far.
Here's what my chunky new friend looks like when closed.
I started using it Friday, and I think I wrote about my initial struggles with figuring out the band situation and how to "load" notebooks into it (if not here, then I did on Mastodon for sure). I figured it out with some searching and LLM conversations and settled on a two notebook solution - my personal {bullet} journal, and a new notebook for work tasks and notes etc. I wanted to put my commonplace notebook in a loop but as it's tiny and thin, it didn't quite fit in so it's currently sitting in the back pocket of my Leuchtturm.
The empty contents of the notebook.
The notebook came put together with three blank page notebook inserts, attached together by the rubber bands above. My current set up is the Leuchtturm held in by the centre elastic band going through the middle of the book, and then I've used that loose band to bind the spines of one of the inserts and the bigger notebook together.
The notebooks back-to-back.
One of my initial problems was when both notebooks were bound together, it was difficult to write in the work notebook. Part of the problem is likely related to the fact that the notebook was brand new and unused, so there was only the cover to lie against the back of my hardcover book. It resulted in a bit of an awkward writing experience and that the notebook wouldn't lie flat.
I went searching for other people's solutions to similar problems and ultimately determined the best option for me was to remote the work notebook from the binding while I was working with it, and put it back in the elastic loop when finished to close the book. That was Wednesday, and I've been working that way since then. What I'm doing is actually laying the work notebook on top of my personal journal, so I can still use both at the same time when I want to write notes in either journal. Just move the work book to the side to jot something personal down, and then put it back. It's just as convenient as putting the notebook on the desk for a hard surface.
I confess, this review is a little bit self-serving because Sylvia has been helping me figure out the system a little bit and I hope that the photos I've put in the post might help guide her advice to me a little bit ;)
But overall this was a great purchase for me. Up until recently I was using a folio to hold my journal and pens, but that folio was starting to lose it's lustre a little so I switched to a bare notebook and small pencil case. I also wasn't enjoying the separate work notebook experience and tried combining my work and personal notes into my bullet journal, but I didn't like that either.
Combined with creating a commonplace journal, it all melded into the solution of trying out the traveller's notebook solution. I'm not sure if this solution is for everyone, but I would wholeheartedly recommend it to someone who uses multiple notebooks for different purposes. From what I gather most of these notebook covers can handle a lot of thickness so you're limited to as many notebooks / bands / inserts as you have.