I've always kept paper notebooks to scrible ideas and doodle diagrams. But in my new notebook this year, I started numbering the pages. And this has turned out to be amazingly effective for me. My paper notebook is now one of my favourite pieces of technology.

Here's what I do :

When I started the notebook I numbered the first 30 pages in the book. More would have been boring, but 30 took about one minute and a half.

When I get close to the end of the numbered pages, I write numbers for the next 10 pages.

On page 1 I started using the book to write notes. But by page 7 or 8 I realized I needed a contents page / index. So I turned to page 30 - a nice round number - and made an index for the first pages in the book.

Each line of the index page is numbered and has a two or three word summary of the contents of the corresponding page. On my first index I managed to get up to page 46. I've since created a second index on page 60.

Every new topic or change of topic I start a new page.

When I interrupt thoughts on one topic to write about something different, I write it on the next available page, and then, when I resume the first topic, I start it after the interjection. At the end of the first part I write something like "continued on page 37" to make the link to the continuation, and on the continuation I write "from 34".

Actually "continued on page" is now just a little arrow "->", and "from" is now "<-"

When I find I've written 3 or 4 pages that seem related, I create a special subject index page which groups them together. For example, ideas about the desktop wiki software I'm (sort of thinking of) writing are scattered through the book, but on the DesktopWiki page, there are links to them all.

Basically I'm using the notebook *like* my wiki (www.nooranch.com/synaesmed.../wiki.cgi)

As I say, this is working really well for me. Anyone got any suggestions and or ideas to improve this? Or want to give their experiences with stuff like this?