The Surprisingly Powerful One-Page Notebook That’s Always With Me
There’s a sweet little niche in the stationery world for everyday-carry (EDC) notebooks. Field Notes, Moleskine, Rite in the Rain, Leuchtturm1917, Rhodia, good ol’ Spirax, and so many more. [...] I’ve used (and loved) many of those little cuties, but there’s a new contender for paper notes that’s free of the pressure a proper notebook can imply, and it doesn’t cost a thing...
Last year I came across this super interesting article and for some reason I didn’t even bring it on my weeknotes of that week. In any case, the idea floated around in my mind since then, and it wasn’t until today that things kind of clicked and I thought it would be fun to try it out!
I grabbed a piece of paper, and starting writing things on it. I folded the paper in 8 sections and did cut in the middle to turn it into a little book.
Some of the sections I added to mine this time around were:
- A cover
- A to-do list
- A list of media I liked
- A list of the food I ate today
- A random thought
- A random thing
- A how-to-make for the one-page notebook
- A doodle on the last page
A nice thing about this is that it’s completely reversible! So you can have both sides of the sheet at your disposal.
This is how it looks when it’s completely folded up. it’s super compact and fits on any pocket, no big deal, and yet quite useful to have.
And here is how it looks once unfolded and flat, as I mentioned, part of it is upside down, completely fine when folded, although I Ellane reminds in her article that the direction doesn’t matter at all anyway, especially on the original concept where it’s just the folded sheet without any cuts.
As most of it is on cursive and a part of it is upside down. It’s probably better to download the image and rotate it on your image viewer of choice. Of course, here’s a text version of the contents if you want to just read what it says!
View text version
ONE PAGE NOTE BOOK
March 7, 2026
written by Joel
inspired by Ellane
TO-DO LIST
- Return purchases to delivery office
- Mopping the floor
- Prepped songs for church
- Find Hollow Knight Map
- Transfer music to mp3 player
- Reorganize my physical game collection
- Go to BBQ party
- Take out old clothes
MEDIA I LIKED
- Played CrossCode (chapters 6 and 7 done)
- Wolf 359 - Episode 42 (absolute masterpiece)
- Saw a video about a tiny e-reader
- Started watching Orb: On the Movements of the Eart
- Started mange Jujutsu Kaisen Modulo
FOOD I ATE TODAY
- Morning breakfast: eggs with chorizo
- Snack: Cheetos Flaming Hot
- Afternoon lunch: Entomatadas and salad
- Evening Dinner: TBD (probably BBQ)
Random Thought
Even though I still make mistakes, I feel much more comfortable writing in cursive by now.
Feels much more fluid and I even forgot how some block letters are written, LOL
More Random Things
- Found an old speaker themed after the LSU Tigers, plugged my mp3 player and still works!! It shad been unused for like 5 years.
- Got a USB hub for my laptop, it’s great!
How to Make
- fold a paper sheet like so (in 8 parts)
- fold in half and cut (on the short side, cut in the middle and just half, not all the way)
- fold the other way now (on the long side)
- expand and pull (folding it up as it opens)
- done!
This is the last page
(a rough draft of Lea from CrossCode making a smug face, completely ruined by the shading done with a pen)
So, how do you feel about this kind of analogue productivity stuff? I keep jumping on and off, but this one seemed rather fun to me, and I may make use of it on a more regular basis, I just need to not forget about it…
If you decide to make your own, I would love to see it as well! As well as any advice or ideas to implement it, but maybe keeping it simple is the point of it all…
This is day 30 of #100DaysToOffload
