Keeping notes, making sense, reflexive practice and doodles
A while back I shared my first experiences with bullet journaling as one of the many ‘brain hacks’ I am trying. Unfortunately have to report it doesn’t work well for me, because forming habits is near to impossible. So ended up with these beautifully crafted pages that then were not filled in or used. Which in turn disturbed the aesthetics. And disturbed aesthetics is very loud. So back to the drawing board…literally.
There are many wonderful colleagues in the Twittersphere who shared their experience with sketch-noting as well as bullet journaling. Well to make a long story short, I took advice from colleagues and inspiration from Pinterest and have now for well over nine months used a mix of sketch-noting, art journal, and bullet journal strategies to arrange notes. In combination with some apps. But today is all about the visceral experience of handcrafting notes. The focus is on aesthetics which entices me to go back and look at the visually presented sense-making process.
The problem with journalling arose out of the issue of lugging around three different journals: one for messy thoughts and notes, one for tidy notes, and one for mind-maps and sketches. Besides the fact, that in pre-COVID work-life, this had a significant impact on the weight of my back-bag all the recommendations in the workload management and journalling world strongly opined one should have only one journal to rule them all. Which kind of made sense, but the messiness truly interfered with my ability to focus on the thinking thoughts I wanted to work with. So, discovering that art journals were a thing, provided me with techniques to address this issue. If I do not like a design, or something went wrong, I use these art journal techniques like layering paper, or creating collages to cover up the noise. Et voilà. So my sticking with a journal has improved. Creating a routine though, remains as elusive as ever.
This journal is almost full now and my next challenge is to try out a monochrome design. Watch this space.
Adventures in Academic Development 