

A little known hack to get your notebook organized - tannerc
http://blog.highfivehq.com/posts/a-little-known-hack-from-japan-to-get-your-notebook-organized

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jbarrow
In terms of getting a notebook organized, I prefer the Bullet Journal method
[1], which I've been using for some time now and which has been effective for
me.

[1] [http://bulletjournal.com](http://bulletjournal.com)

~~~
teddyh
That system is rather similar to “The Cycle System”, as recommended by the
book _Time Management for System Administrators_ ¹, (also a series of
lectures²) by Thomas A. Limoncelli, except the Bullet Journal uses months,
where The Cycle System uses days.

1)
[http://everythingsysadmin.com/books.html](http://everythingsysadmin.com/books.html)

2) [http://www.tomontime.com/](http://www.tomontime.com/)

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freehunter
Of course this is a hack and not an organizational method, because hack is
sexy (see: this site) and organizational method is not. It's also a little-
known hack, because people don't like popular things, they like things that
make them feel like they know something the experts don't (see: doctors HATE
this!)

Don't do GTD; Trello is a little known hack for organizing your projects.

~~~
PeterWhittaker
Hacks are sexy?

Man, some of my most functional hacks have been FUG-ly.

Either I've documented them in nauseating detail, carefully explaining why I
did something so rude, so nasty, to save myself posthumous embarrassment and
my heirs embarrassment by association on the off chance posterity should
notice, or I've carefully hid them (Siri, how do I hide this fugly mess?) to
prevent any and all returns.

This one is pretty cool, though. Pretty cool indeed.

~~~
freehunter
The idea of being a hacker and hacking certainly _is_ sexy. That's why we have
hacker news, lifehacker, little known hacks, hack your [summer, brain,
relationship, bible, etc], and so on.

Now, if you actually need to hack something together, that's generally frowned
upon. If I duct tape my bumper back onto my car, people will not be terribly
impressed. If I replace a damaged wall in my house with a tarp, my roommates
will move out.

But oh lord, if I hack my headache by taking a cold shower, if I hack my
plants by draining my air conditioner into the garden, hack my notebook by
labeling it with tags, or if I hack on a multi-billion dollar startup that
gets sold to Facebok due to the massive amount of money, talent, and polish
I've put into it... now _that 's_ a sexy hack.

~~~
PeterWhittaker
While I am given to argument for the sake of argument, especially with friends
whilst consuming beverages hot or cold, I don't write this either to take
issue or to initiate an argument (though I do have a 48IBU bevvie close at
hand and am optimistic enough to believe your worldview and mine overlap
sufficiently)....

I don't think I've ever thought of hacking as sexy. It has for me always been
about a blend of intellectual curiosity and pragmatic delivery: I need to do
<aThing>, how can I reasonably balance timely delivery, goal-appropriate level
of effort, sense of accomplishment, and intellectual curiosity and
fascination?

Or how I can so exaggerate one of those (usually the last) so as to justify
the result as a truly great hack?

A duct taped bumper isn't a hack, it's a fugly kludge, no elegance or
creativity at all. A bumper held in place by super powerful magnets? yeah,
that's a hack. (Not a good one, that sucker's fallin' at a bump, but, dude,
magnets!)

Your examples are all sexy hacks, this is true. But to me sexiness never
entered into the input parameters of the hack, but was only ever an indicator
of the hack's true elegance.

(Perhaps had I incorporated design thinking into my approach long before I
would be violently in agreement with you on all points.... Hmm, cogitative
nutrition.)

