The most powerful tool I used daily in 2025 was the pocket notebook.

These phone-sized notebooks kept me from wasting my days staring at a screen while giving me the power to write a better future at any moment.

Today, and next week I'm sharing every pocket notebook system I used in 2025 to hopefully spark some ideas for you to experiment with in 2026.

I'm splitting this newsleter into two parts to save you from a wall of text so be sure to check back in next week to read about the final five methods.

1) The EDC Pocket Notebook

My every-day-carry is a catch-all pocket notebook.

A catch-all notebook is a Swiss-army knife. You never know what life will hurl at you so you prepare by having a flexible tool by your side at all times.

Using a pocket notebook as a daily carry saved me from countless hours of mindless distraction throughout the year. They gave me an alternative to my smartphone, a home for my ideas that didn't try to burn my eyeballs with ads. I filled five of these tiny thought temples throughtout the year.

They're the perfect size to throw in a bag or a purse and even fit in most front shirt pockets. I carried mine with me unprotected in my pant pocket, but eventually I made a leather cover to protect them from wear and tear.

The main purpose of these notebooks is to catch any thought I might want to remember or reflect on later. Good candidates are: quotes, interesting moments, ideas for projects, notes from a conversation or podcast, and defintions for terms.

But the beauty of the catch-all is there are no hard rules, only invitations to fill the page.

The upside is you only need one notebook.

The downside is these notebooks get messy fast.

But messy doesn't mean bad. Leonardo da Vinci famously squeezed sketches and ideas into every inch of his notebook pages because paper was pricey. This had the happy side-effect of him connecting new ideas with old ones by introducing them to each other on the same page.

The problem messy notebooks creates is you can't find anything when you need it. This makes is confusing to know where you should write down thoughts you want to have easy access to in the future, which is why the most of the remaining methods on this list stick to the rules of a single-purpose notebook.

A single-purpose notebook is a tool dedicated to one specific function much like a hammer that is made to hammer nails. Technically, you can use a hammer to jam a door or open a beer bottle, but its purpose is to hammer things.

That's what a single-purpose notebook is like. When you have a specific problem or need, you know exactly which notebook to reach for because you use that notebook for its one purpose. Keeping a single-purpose notebook makes it easy to find information when you need it and helps avoid any confusion about where to write something down.

2) The Weekly Planner

At the start of the year I tried to order my life in a pocket-sized weekly planner.

First, I wrote down a one-word theme for the year. Then, I wrote down my goals for the year and established some metrics to compare my progress with at the end of the year. Finally, I broke down those yearly goals into quarterly goals and made a plan for achieving then. At the start of each week I would plot my schedule on the weekly spread and finish the week with a review.

You're 42% more likely to achieve your goals simply by writing them down and you can increase that number to 76% by creating an action plan that makes sense.

I can say with first-hand experience that these stats hold up. Each quarter I drafted new goals and plans to achieve them and, on average, reached three out of four of the goals I set.

For the first quarter of the year the weekly planner served its purpose helping me keep track of my goals, tasks, and time. But eventually I found both the format and the method too constraining. I needed more room to let my thoughts breathe on the page and the weekly spread suffocated my introspective desires.

If you're the type of person who likes structure and pre-made templates then pocket planners are a great choice. But if you're like me, and like a little more flexibility in your planning system, then the next method might be a better fit.

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3) The Pocket BuJo

In March I bought the book The Bullet Journal Method by Ryder Carrol to do some research. I thought Bullet Journaling, or BuJo for shorthand, was an artsy journaling system that people on Pinterest did to show off their caligraphy skills.

I was wrong. The method described in the book was refreshingly minimalist in its approach. Like the name implies, it is a method of note-taking and task management that uses bullets, dashes, and circles to quickly jot down things you want to capture–no art skills needed.

As a test, I swapped my pocket-planner for a BuJo and haven't looked back since. The main reason I prefer BuJo for life planning is the flexibility of the system. I can use any notebook of any size–blank, dotted, or lined–to order my life.

For most of the year I used an A5 journal as my BuJo, but on days when I didn't feel like lugging around a big notebook I did my Bullet Journaling in a pocket notebook. This added flexibility made it easy for me to stick with the method long-term to really get a feel for how it works.

I've made multiple videos about Bullet Journaling on my YouTube channel so if you want to learn more you can check them out here.

4) The Fitness Journal

Laying by the squat rack in my dimly lit garage is my fitness journal.

Like the name implies, this journal tracks all of my fitness goals. I use it to log workouts, monitor progress, and capture how I feel during training sessions.

I use the front of the journal to write down my one-rep max for each of the major lifts and the goal numbers I want to reach. I also use the fitness journal to track my weight so I can monitor how that's changing over time.

Writing down your goals, tracking progress, and making plans is the best method for seeing results and this journal got me results. Early in the year I increased my deadlift one-rep max by 20%. Later in the year I switched my focus to cutting down weight and lost 20 lbs in a 100 days.

Having a single notebook dedicated to my progress motivated me throughout the year to consistently show up and put wins on the board. Even better, I have detailed documentation of that progress to tell the story of how I made those changes.

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5) The Waste Book

Not every journal needs to be a neatly organized collection of ideas.

In fact, having a journal for throw away ideas can be a game-changer for getting things off your chest. Traditionally these notebooks were called wasted books because that's what they're for: Ideas you need to work out on paper before they get tossed in the trash.

You can think of the waste book as a catch-all for ideas you don't want to look back and reflect on. Actually, these ideas are probably embarrassing to look back on because they're under-developed. They're the raw materials you start with before refining them into ideas worth saving in a journal you do intend to flip through and reread.

Other thoughts I write in my waste book include: venting, napkin math, mindless doodles, video title ideas, phone conversation notes, grocery lists, chore lists, and stream-of-consciousness thought.

Most of those things I don't really care to look back on so I keep them in a waste book. You don't have to throw these notebooks away, but a wastebook keeps your throw away notes in one place while you keep the important ideas where they need to be.

That's it for this week. Check back next week for five more methods.

Take care!

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