How I Use My Levenger Circa Notebook

YEARS AGO I STARTED carrying a Levenger Circa notebook, and it's the keystone of my professional record keeping. It's a wonderful product -- great paper, nice leather -- but if I find the aesthetic of Circa most appealing, I find its flexibility most valuable.

In meetings I tend to get a lot of questions about the notebook and how I use it, so I thought I'd quickly profile that here.

First, I carry this one, although in a dark brown leather they no longer produce. I like the larger size and the leather, although they make notebooks with plastic covers that work just as well. In terms of use, I have the notebook divided (I use these rigid plastic tab dividers because they create a nice writing platform) into several sections, with a nice printed label on each tab:

• Getting Things Done: Given that most of my work time is spent on the road, I find it's much easier for me to review my calendar and commitments when in the back of cabs, on airplanes, etc. on paper rather than on my PDA or Laptop. So as the final step of my weekly review I print:
  • From Outlook, a list of next actions due over the next seven days (given that most of the next actions in GTD are undated, these tend to be reminders.)
  • From Outlook, two-page "week at a glance" calendars for the next four weeks.
  • From Outlook, monthly calendars for the next six month.
  • From Outlook, the full set of my next actions (organized by context: Calls, Agendas, Computer, Online, Home, Errands, Projects, Someday / Maybe, etc.)
  • From MindManager, my "flight panel" MindMap, which is basically a graphically-represented review of all the things I'm tracking at a higher level (maybe 20,000 feet) -- there's a post on this to follow.
  Thanks to the wonders of digital technology, I'm able to print this on one of our copy machines that allows me to combine all of this into a single, double-sided document. I then punch this document with a Levenger Circa punch and put it in the notebook in the GTD tab, right up front. That's my reference for the week, and I use the first page (which has the next actions for the next seven days) as a portable inbox where I write things down to enter later in the system on my PC.
• This Week: Notes for my meetings and projects this week, organized alphabetically by project. The great thing about Circa is the pages are easily replaceable -- you just pull them out and then press them back into place. So during my weekly review I pull the project files for work I'll do in the next week (most of which is meetings) and insert my prior notes into the notebook. At the end of the week I pull those notes and put them back in their appropriate files. I also keep a printout of my travel itinerary at the front of this section, along with a short list of key deliverables for this week (my "weekly radar").
• Reference: These are notes that I don't have commitments for this week but to which I might need to refer. Usually stuff from last week, where I think I might get a call this week.
• Other Notes: My place for keeping notes on the fly. This is where I might map out ideas or projects, or capture notes from unplanned meetings or calls.
• Paper: A tab where I keep blank paper.

This photo, taken with my phone, does a poor job of showing how this looks, but you can get the idea.

I've found it very useful ... especially having a paper record of my Getting Things Done world that I can refer to and easily see in an instant. I don't worry much about it getting out of date ... while my support staff updates my calendar on the fly, that syncs to my phone in real time and I check it to confirm any calendar questions. Having the printouts of calendar and next actions is only so I can easily review lists and commitments and strike next actions on-the-fly; my PC (with Outlook) remains my "trusted system" and single source of truth.

 

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Comments

[Mike Levine]

Alan, how the heck do you manage to print all of that onto a single, 2-sided sheet of paper? Are you using 11x17? I tried playing with my print settings in Outlook today w/out luck. Best I could do was Calendar/notes space on side A and Actions on side B.

[Douglas]

please be aware -- your choice of font renders horridly on firefox/PC and very poor on IE7/PC

[Alan Nelson]

A response to Mike: I don't get it all on a single page. I get all those sub-documents to merge into a single document, which is several pages long but which I can print continuously double-sided to save space, using the copy machine.

Douglas: Hmm. Looks find on my FF/PC and IE7/PC. Interesting.

[Jake]

What size rings do you use in your notebook? I just got one with the 3/4 rings and I tell it won't be enough.