Amber Kane: Notebooks to spur creative thought

I don't know about you, but I love notebooks. I read the Einstein Factor, and in the book they discusses that many of the smartest people are also the people that write the most. They are people that fill up notebook after notebook with thoughts, ideas, sketches and the like. I found this interesting and inspiring and decided that I wanted to put effort into recording my thoughts, even if the idea doesn't make sense at the time.I call my notebooks my everything books, because I literally write everything in one book. It where my to do list goes, ideas, sometime students grades, sketches, anything that inspires me.

For me I decided to by cheap notebooks, as I found that when I had expensive fancy ones, I was more reluctant to use them. I felt like whatever I put on their pages had to be really beautiful, or really important. The pressure of the notebook was holding me back. Now that I'm only spending 2 dollars on each notebook, I"m filling them up like crazy. And it's really fun to look back through them. So far this is the third notebook that I"ve filled this year.

For my next one, it's still going to be a cheapo, but I think that I may do some stitching and some other fun things to the pages. Where do you record all of your thoughts?

While we're talking about writing I came across this pen when shopping the other day and think that it's pretty cool. It's made by a company called Smash, on one end it's a fine tip marker, and the other end is a glue stick.

These are a few pages of things that I"ve cut out of magazines that inspire me.

This is one page of my to do list, I know that it's hard to read, but it does really help me to be productive and to remember to get things done. Plus it just feels so wonderful to cross things off. I also find it to be an interesting record of my life, to go back through and see what I was working on.

Here are some pretty cool journals, maybe someday I"ll upgrade. But for now I go through them way too fast.