The gentlemen over at the Cortex Podcast have designed and printed an amazing journal called the Theme System. This notebook is designed to record a theme to help influence your personal and professional life and work as a guiding principal throughout the year.
Myke Hurley and CGP Grey produce the podcast Cortex, which typically provides independent creator advice with some tech talk thrown in. I have listened for years and they have been talking about their yearly themes now for the last four years. Themes have served them both very well in place of yearly resolutions to help guide their decision making. Grey makes studied youtube videos and his latest work is on this very topic.
I started using this notebook on Jan 1 and it is an amazing tool to help keep me on track. I picked the theme of Purpose. I want to incorporate more purpose into everything that I do. Such as:
Diet - I want to focus on what I eat with more purpose rather than just what I enjoy. This has been my largest barrier in dieting and by adding a larger theme to what I eat, I have lost a lot of weight in the past month.
Blog - I haven’t had a focused purpose in my writing or a steady timeline, but by defining the purpose of my blog (Stationery Reviews and Design) I have had more ideas to write about and enjoy keeping up with my writing here!
Phone use - To help avoid using my phone like a Skinner’s Box, I have only unlocked it to do specific tasks. I don’t look at screen time as a negative, but rather as a bite into my daily time resource. I still enjoy scrolling, but I block time and watch the time.
Design and Construction
The notebook is broken into four sections.
Theme Pages
Daily Record
Tracking System
Index
1. Theme
While the first section takes the most amount of thought, it only takes up one page. This is where you decide your overall theme. For more info on picking your own theme, check out the guidance from Myke and Grey here. The important concept of a theme is that it is not just a resolution, it is more than a single black and white goal. It is more like a personal check to keep in mind when making choices.
2. Daily Record
The second section is divided into the daily record pages. While there is a loose layout, it is left open for your own design. This took some getting use to, but now I have ‘blocked’ the areas I want to write about. The one change to this section I would offer Myke is that the top block should be the largest. If I am writing about something in depth, I want it to be the most important thing and therefore should be the first thing I read when looking back.
I keep track of each thing I want to focus on and how I applied my theme through out the day. I write this in past tense because I record my thoughts at the end of the day an a manner of reflection.
3. Tracking Pages
Near the end of the book there are 32 pages of daily activity tracking markers. This is designed to quickly decide if you have worked towards each daily activity or not. I will admit that while I did try to keep up with this, I quickly fell behind and did not find this useful. However over at From the Pen Cup, Mary has shown us a great visual use for this section.
There is space for 10 concepts to track and the circles can be filled in a multitude of ways to show the activity (empty, half filled in, full fill, color coded, etc.)
4. Index
Finally, the last two pages help keep the whole system organized. The critique here is that there are no page numbers in the book. To set up the index would mean that the whole book would need page numbers.
As the book is set up to be used chronologically with a date box at the top of each page, it seems that the date should be used in place of page numbers.
Quality
The book is a collaboration with the two designers at Studio Neat, Tom and Dan, who build with an incredibly high degree of quality. The Mark 1 pen shown in my pictures is pen they recently released. Check out more of their amazing products here.
The Totebook and Mark 1 from Studio Neat (Image property of Studio Neat)
The cover is a soft, faux leather and while it is great looking, it nicks easily and will pick up marks if carried around in a bag. I highly recommend using this as a desk or nightstand journal to keep the finish, unless you don’t mind the weathered look.
The paper is of the highest quality and with the inks I tested did not bleed through or ghost too badly. The paper is smooth and cream colored without being too yellow. I really like the look and feel of this book!
Location
The notebooks are for sale at CortexMerch.com for $20 but you will need to hurry as the first two batches have sold out very quickly!
Edit: It looks like the books have sold out again but they are constantly restocking so get on their mailing list.
Let me know if you have any questions and thanks for visiting!
Mike
