Do you get great ideas, only for your sieve-like brain to leak them to the ether minutes later? It’s no way to live. That’s why we’ve compiled some of the best pocket notebooks to help your ideas cheat temporality.
In this list, you’ll find four of the best bets out there, with each fulfilling a different set of criteria. They range from no-frills utilitarian pads that come in multi-packs, to artisanal pieces of animal skin so luxurious, they’ll make even your worst ideas seem profound.
The one thing they will all do? Make your ideas timeless and fore in your mind by being tangible things in your pockets. In many years—when you are gone, the iCloud has fallen, and your device has long since been re-sold to an emerging market—what will you have left behind for others to find? Perhaps a pocket notebook filled with ancient dreams, or a grocery list. It’s all valuable data to archaeologists.
Play your part in history with one of these great pocket notebooks.
Moleskine ($13)
MoleskineChances are, you already know this one. Hell, they even sell them at coffee shops at marked-up price points. But there’s a reason they’re so ubiquitous: they really are good.
Moleskines come in several options: this pocket Moleskine sports the color of darkness—black—implying the promise of an infinite vacuum of space, just begging to be filled with the entropy of your ideas. But it also comes in khaki beige, orchid purple, or underwater blue.
This version also features dotted leaves on the inside, which provide some guidelines for writing in a non-diagonal fashion, or reference points for drawing, or for doodling fake constellations that you name after your dog. But, if you hate dots, then there are versions with conventional lines. This pocket-sized notebook is 3.5″ by 5.5″, so you would have to be very small indeed for it to not fit on your person somewhere. The price tag will net you a single notebook, though it comes with 192 pages (96 leaves).
And, of course, all Moleskine notebooks are made out of 100 percent, genuine mole skines (i.e., vegan-approved cardboard and oilcloth). These—and the other pocket notebooks presented here—feature a soft cover, which is more accommodating against our soft, human bodies.
Field Notes ($10)
If you’re a counterculture type who doesn’t want to use a Moleskine because other people use a Moleskine, that’s fine. Field Notes provides a different aesthetic.
