Archive for September, 2007
September 28th
Some friends of ours at Notebookism emailed us recently with a great quote that one of their readers had found… Writing on his blog on September 21, author Jonathan Carroll mused:
“I walked into the paper store for no reason other than to have a look to see if they had anything new. Almost everyone I know who likes to write or read rarely misses a chance to visit paper stores and poke around for nothing in particular. It’s probably something genetic– some sort of paper and ink obsession gene that carries on from generation to generation. I needed nothing but still walked out of the store with a new black Rhodia notebook and a rollerball pen. 5 euros. Still one of the greatest bargains around– a pen and a blank notebook for less than the price of lunch. Buying them is buying pieces of optimism. You don’t know what you’re going to use them for yet but you hope it will be something worthwhile and even if not, you can almost be sure that while using them, you’ll be happy.”
September 27th
Every year my date book starts out clean and fresh and ends up as a messy, intimate record of my life that year.
I have post-it notes, phone numbers, doodles, quotes, course descriptons, fortune cookie fortunes, love notes, hockey & baseball schedules and other junk scotch-taped all over my planner or stuffed in the cover pockets.
Years later when I thumb through an old book they add color commentary for the year. Sometimes they spark a wonderful memory; other times I wonder who the people were or why they were so important to me then.
The NY Post recently featured an article subtitled “Finding art (and joy) in scraps of memory.” The article focused on the people and reasons behind starting web sites to collect and show old grocery lists (Grocerylists.com), book inscriptions (Bookinscriptions.com) and bits and pieces of life’s flotsam and jetsam (Foundmagazine.com).
Bill Keaggy, the founder of Grocerylists.com, was leaving a grocery store one day when he found a yellow post-it note stuck on a shopping cart. The list was nothing special, but he found himself fixating on the person it belonged to.
“It was so ordinary–that’s why it was so great,” he said. “I like the little things in life that people don’t pay attention to. But it’s details like these that make up the minutes of our lives.”
He was particularly struck by the honesty of grocery lists. They aren’t meant to be seen by anyone else, even though the contents of grocery carts end up on a conveyor belt in plain view of everyone.
“One of my favories was one that had obviously been written by a wife to her husband,” he said. “She wrote, ‘Coke, bread, milk. If you buy more rice I’ll punch you.’ And I thought that was so great. There’s a life behind each list.”
September 26th
Back in France, Quo Vadis sister company Clairefontaine has been celebrating the recent winner of this year’s Trophée Clairefontaine, an international sailing competition that they’ve sponsored since 1990. The competition brings together 8 established sailing champions, each of whom have very different backgrounds and expertise (“specialists from solo transatlantic races rub shoulders with helmsmen from match-racing circuits,” according to the Trophée’s website). It then provides them all with the same equipment: a specially designed monotype catamaran that’s 7.65 meters (25 feet) in length and is used exclusively in the Trophée Clairefontaine.
Contrary to the majority of sailing competitions, the Trophée Clairefontaine takes place in a nautical stadium—at the Trinité-sur-Mer—right in front of spectators. Access to the stadium is open to all and free of charge. This year’s race took place on the 1st and 2nd of September, and its winner was Michel Desjoyeaux, one of the world’s most successful solo sailors (he was the first person to sail around the world alone in under 100 days). Desjoyeux and his crewmates, Christophe Espagnon and Xavier Revil, edged to victory in the final three legs of the race after a long duel with Swiss sailor Luc Dubois. It’s his fourth victory so far: he also triumphed in the races of 2001, 2003 and 2004.
September 25th
I look for it every fall–the Harvest Moon. The moon becomes a luminous yellow-orange and seems to fill the sky.
The full moon tomorrow is this year’s official Harvest Moon. The Harvest Moon is the full moon that falls closest to the autumnal equinox, which occured at 5:51 a.m., Eastern time, on September 23rd.
I’m not sure of the origin of the name. Most sources say farmers and farm workers would take advantage of the light from the shining moon to work later into the night to complete the harvest.
But I also wonder if the beautiful moon was a call to feast, celebrate and enjoy all the fruits of the land before the start of winter.
September 24th
Yesterday’s NYT Book Review featured an interesting piece by Dominique Browning about the history of childhood. Writing about Howard Chudacoff’s new book, Children At Play, Browning comments: “You would think that child’s play is a spontaneous and natural affair. Quite the opposite. It has long been shaped by a convergence of many forces—from styles of clothing to the design of houses to social revolutions—and by simple demographics like the proportion of children to adults at any given time.”
Recently, it seems, there’s been a slew of parental hand-wringing about how overscheduled and unimaginitive our children’s lives have become (sports lessons, piano lessons, supplemental tutoring). We also worry about the effects of too much television and technology. Books like Conn and Hall Iggulden’s Dangerous Book for Boys have climbed the best-seller lists by offering tips and strategies for rugged, outdoor play, from how to build a treehouse to how to skip stones (activities that pale in comparison, a friend of mine insists, to the sorts of things HE did when he was a child). After years of overscheduling, the pendulum may be swinging back in the opposite direction.
Personally, I can’t help but think that that correction is a good thing—though it’s difficult to eat our cake and have it, too, when it comes to making sure our kids do well in an increasingly competitive school environment. But I also agree with Browning’s conclusion that we need to lighten up and stop worrying so much. “Kids are wily creatures,” she points out. “They figure out how and where and when to play no matter what kind of control we exert.”
September 21st
Karen’s post yesterday about planners for lefties reminded me of some tips I read about time-management skills for “righties”—right-brainers, that is (though the right brain controls the left hand). “Typical right-brainers all share the following characteristics: ‘Out of sight, out of mind’ is their middle name; they don’t have a very good sense of time; they tend to be very creative and be great with the big picture, but details tend to evade them,” explains time-management expert Karin VR Stewart.
Most time-management tools, says Karin, are made with the more logical, sequential left-brainers in mind: blackberries, alphabetized filing cabinets, and the like. She offers the following advice to her rightie clients:
* Use a paper calendar instead of an electronic calendar, so that you can visually see how your time will be occupied. For a right-brainer, the classic view on an electronic calendar listing all appointments in a row for the day is very confusing. The visual is the same whether two appointments are at 9 am and 10 am, or 9 am and 4 pm, so it looks like they are the same.
* Your active papers (i.e. the things you’re working on right now, or will handle soon) need to be stored visually. Use containers such as trays or magazine holders to store your active papers on your desk, rather than tucking them away in a drawer. Because of your “out of sight, out of mind” tendency, things in drawers disappear. That’s why the papers accumulate on your desk: you want to make sure that they don’t disappear. Keep only your reference file in file drawers.
September 20th
What agendas are best for left-handed writers?
Over the last 20 years I have tried Space 17, Horizon 11 and Space 24 by Exacompta; and Executive and Monthly 4 by Quo Vadis. They all were fine for me but I found it easier to write in desk vs. pocket size.
Before I started using date books with good paper I always had to worry about smearing my fountain pen ink on my page and hand. But now that’s not a problem.
The only type of planners I really don’t like are spiral-bound. They’re just too uncomfortable for me.
What works for you? Any suggestions on how we might improvement our formats for lefties?
September 19th
A couple of months ago, Karen mentioned a little project that she and I’ve started—inspired by an article about the 50th anniversary of Helvetica—to identify all the fonts that are used in Quo Vadis planners. We’re not designers, of course (and it isn’t always easy to track down the right person to ask in an international company), so that isn’t as straightforward as it sounds. But Karen was recently able to determine that the Textagenda uses a font called “fantana” for the numbers and one called “avant garde” for the letters.
According to About.com, the avant garde family of fonts is “drawn with geometric precision” and is a “clean headline and body text font.” It’s among the 10 most popular sans serif fonts, invented in the late 1960s by New York art director Herb Lubalin as a logo for the often controversial magazine, Avant Garde.
I haven’t been able to find much on the internet about fantana, so if you know anything, please drop us a line or let us know in the comments…
September 18th
Several Exacompta agendas are printed on the Clairefontaine paper “Registre Azur,” a subtlety tinted paper scientifically calibrated to be restful on the eyes. The “restful” part is due to a very light mint tint on cream-colored paper - a nod to the accounting ledger heritage of Exacompta stationery products.
Space 24, Horizon 11 and the Visual weekly desk planners are all made with Registre Azur paper.
Exacompta - Exact Accounting - was founded in Paris in 1928 by Charles Nusse, the grandson of the founder of Clairefontaine. It started as a printing and binding works to produce accounting ledgers. In an age when products were made by craftsmen, Exacompta ledgers were known for their exceptional quality.
Exacompta is now one of the largest office supply companies in France. It still makes a few accounting books.
September 17th
I recently came across a very intriguing productivity system at a blog known as Zen Habits. It’s called Haiku Productivity, and the key to it, according to blogger Leo Babauta, is “to limit yourself to an arbitrary but small number of things, forcing yourself to focus on the important stuff and eliminate all else.”
A Haiku, of course, is a traditional Japanese poem whose highly restrictive form compels its writer to focus only on the most meaningful words and images. How does this apply to productivity? The answer is simple: it forces you to put limits on everything you do. “If you think this will allow you to accomplish twice as many tasks, you’re wrong,” explains Babauta. “You’ll accomplish fewer tasks. But you will most likely be more effective, because you will have to choose only the essential tasks—the ones that will give you the most benefit for your limited time.”
What I like best about this system, aside from its simplicity, is the fact that it can easily be altered to suit every personality. Most of us have a pretty good sense of what particular things make us stressed and disorganized throughout a day… and what we need isn’t a collection of individual quick fixes or “life hacks” (though those are certainly fun in limited doses) but a large, systematic lens that helps us see what’s important in life and what isn’t—without being too prescriptive.
