Hello and welcome to episode 70 of the Panatic podcast on 5x5. This is a show where we discuss pens, paper and the analog tools that we love so dearly. My name is Mike Hurley and I am joined by 00.7 millimeter Mr. Brad Downey. Alright, I like that. I like the sneaky stealth spy names. We can always figure something out good with a sneaky pen name for me with that. I like it. Thank you, sir. We have another guest this week. We are loaded for bear with guests and I like it that way. It's good to mix it up. It's good to hear from different people and honestly, the guests we have on are pretty much listener requests. The gentleman we have on today who will introduce in a moment. I've gotten tons of emails about, "Hey, did you see this? Did you see this? What is this about? What do you know? What do you know?" And just lots of tweets, lots of emails. So we're really happy to have Ryder Carroll. I guess we'll go with inventor of the bullet journal? Sure. That's the best way to put it. The creator, the creative mind behind bullet journal, which you can find at bulletjournal.com. And we're going to talk to Ryder about how that came to be and some questions I have around the bullet journal. I've been using it since I knew we were going to have Ryder on the show. I've been on hardcore bullet journal. So we'll see how it goes. We want to get talking to Ryder, but first we wanted to do a sponsor real quick, Mike. Yeah, I just wanted to just to get the first sponsor in just now before we jump into the talking with Ryder. So we have a new sponsor for the show this week and then just ShatterStock.com, which is where you'll find over 20 million stock photos, vectors, illustrations, and video clips. You can start searching at ShatterStock to find the perfect image for your website, add publication, or any other creative project. 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[laughter] Probably not the intended thing, but that will work for now. Yeah, we'll work on that. Well, Ryder, we appreciate you taking some time today for us. Thanks a lot for coming on. Thanks for having me. You got it, and so let's set the stage here a little bit. Once you just take a second, tell everyone what you do, you know, what you're all about in your day job, and then kind of how you came to create bullet journal. Sure, so I'm a freelance web designer, kind of art director, and the bullet journal is sort of the result of a kind of lifelong process of trying to get organized, to be honest. I had pretty bad learning disabilities when I was younger, so I had a really hard time kind of keeping focused on notes. Most of my notebooks kind of just deteriorated into being like sketchbooks pretty much, and over time I kind of had to work along those lines to get something that I could quickly reference that would actually organize my thoughts, but work more along the lines of the way I thought, as opposed to the way I was told to think. I know that sounds a little strange, but a lot of the systems that you see in the bullet journal are pretty standard conventions. You know, like I don't think I invented anything necessarily in the bullet journal. I think the strength of the bullet journal is the way that the systems play along with one another, and I develop the system over a long time, and it's still developing today. Even since I brought it out, people have brought up some really good points, places where I can prove on it, and other ideas on conventions that I've been using that are fantastic, and that's really the idea, is that I wanted to create a system that gets out of the way, and supplies sort of a framework for people to take notes and get organized as opposed to some kind of rigid template that you had to stick to. I just felt that for me, those templates were very hard to stick to, and felt unnatural, and sometimes they were unintuitive, and I felt like when I didn't stick to it, I got really disappointed, and I just didn't want to do it anymore. It's kind of just a bummer. It's like, okay, now I missed four days, and now I'm off the system, and so when I was developing the bullet journal system, I tried to find something that was a lot more forgiving, like I wanted to be able to pick it up whenever I had time for it, be able for it to catch up very quickly, and kind of just catch any kind of information that I threw at it. So yeah, the way it kind of came to be is that I had been doing it on my own, had been developing it, and once in a while, a friend or a colleague would note that I'm constantly writing down things in the spoke or drawing, and they'd be like, what are you doing? And for those who were actually interested, I would share it with them, and it seemed to really resonate with some people, and it's really important for my profession to kind of do projects on your own, and learn technologies, and I thought it would be a really interesting challenge to try to formalize a system that had been rather informal, and through that process, you know, actually name the conventions that I was using and try to really explain what it was that I was doing over and over and over again in a way that other people could understand it, and it's actually incredibly challenging to teach anybody a system. So yeah, it was just a big challenge and a way for me to, you know, provide hopefully something useful to a network of people that have been incredibly helpful to me, just like a lot of people give away the things that they've learned for free, and I've benefited greatly from them, so the bullet journal is just kind of a way of saying thanks and, you know, learning some new technologies and, you know. Yeah, that's fantastic, and you touched on a couple of points that struck home with me, which is why I think I like the bullet journal. One, you mentioned the rigidity of other systems. Like, I, just hearing you talk, I do my tasks and my lists and, you know, any other type of capturing. It sounds like I do it a lot like you, like, I need a place to capture and organize these thoughts or ideas or tasks, but really, I don't, I'm kind of outside of any rigid, you know, hard, fast system that I'm just gonna, that's just not going to work for me, you know, I'm going to be frustrated with it in the span of a week that I've gone, you know, outside these lines or missed these, missed these few days, and now I feel like I've missed everything, and I think that's one thing that really struck me, you know, about the bullet journal. So, and the other thing is, well, I lost my train of thought. Should have been writing it down. I know, I should have been writing it down in my bullet journal, but why don't you just, why don't you tell us, tell us just kind of an overview of how the bullet journal works and the, the layout, you don't have to get into like the way nuts and bolts of it, but just like the main components of, of kind of setting up a bullet journal, and just for people who aren't familiar with bullet journal, this isn't writers, this isn't a paper product, this isn't a notebook that writers selling, it's a system of, you know, capturing your tasks or to-do lists or ideas or thoughts and and just kind of getting them down in an organized manner. This isn't a product, if you're not familiar with that, I just wanted to clarify that. Yeah, sure. Why don't you tell us a little bit about just setting it up from the beginning and just kind of the basics. Okay, sure. Yeah, so the first part of this was that I kind of wanted it to work in as many different book styles as possible. A big part of the bullet journal is that you can use a book that you're comfortable with. A lot of different books have their benefits, but I think everybody kind of is particular to their own individual kind of notebook. The way you set up a bullet journal is pretty simple. You open up to the first page and you create an index. The second major component are monthly calendars, which are basically two pages. On the left-hand side, you actually write down all the days of that month. On the right-hand side, you write down all the tasks you want to get completed that month. Then you number all your pages. You refer back to the index and actually write down the page on which that monthly calendar is. And over time, every time you make an entry in the bullet journal, every single page, you want to title that page if it's an individual part of a larger whole. For example, if you have a shopping list, you have shopping, all the things you want to buy, you flip back to the index, write down the page on which the shopping list is. The index is really critical because it allows you to essentially put down anything you want on paper at any time, and then quickly reference exactly where you put that down. It also allows you to quickly pick back up again if you are a person who takes a daily journal, for example. The monthly journal is one component, and then there's also the daily pages. Essentially, you can put the today's date on the top of a page, write down your tasks, events, which have a different kind of bullet, and then notes, which have a different kind of bullet. That's where the system really gets its name from. It's a process that I call rapid logging. Essentially, the idea is that you take the most basic component of a thought or a task and jot it down as quickly as possible. Even if it's an event, even if it's something really emotional, you try to really find the shortest, most concise way of saying something and you get it down. The idea is that it's just speed. It's directly from your mind into your hand onto the paper, and then the index later on will help you kind of sort out where that goes. Now, another very large component is migration, and basically what that means, over the course of a month, you might use three pages, you might use 20 pages, but you'll probably have tasks and events and notes all over the place. So at the end of the month, you create another monthly calendar page. Again, you write down all the numbers and all the numbers and the dates on one side, and then on the other side, you write down the tasks you want to get completed that month. Additionally, you go through the previous month, see all the tasks that you haven't completed yet, and migrate those forward into the new month. That way you don't miss any items. Additionally, and this is really critical, is that you evaluate which tasks are still relevant and cross out the ones that aren't. I find this like one of the most important aspects of the bullet journal is getting rid of noise. I think a lot of people, including myself, are guilty of taking very, very long lists, and you take lists that go on forever, and you end up not getting so much done, and again you run into that kind of disappointment category where like, yeah, these never ending lists. So the bullet journal forces you to move the items forward by hand, and that process creates a friction that I think is really important. It's like, do I really need to move this task forward? Is this something that I want to write down again? Is it that important? And that little process weeds out a lot of noise, in my opinion. So those are some of the main parts of the bullet journal, like speed, being able to really distill information very quickly, and also being able to capture different kinds of information, different kinds of data via the index and page numbers. Yeah, that's fantastic, and it's working really well for me so far, and I want to get into some of my use for it, but real quickly, on getting started with it, I thought you did a couple of great things. I mean, one, I mean, I am, and I know Mike is, and everyone's raving about your website design, about how that works, and how you're able to go. It's stunning, like I think that's part of the reason that it's been so successful, is you go to the page and it's so inviting, and it's one of those things where it's like, I've seen a bunch of people go, like, even if you're not interested, just go to this page and scroll, you know, and I think people like that. It's great, it's excellently well done. Thank you, thank you. Yeah, and so the way I did it is you also did a video to introduce it, and the video is, it's only about a minute and a half long. I think it's less than two minutes, isn't it? I mean, it's a pretty short video. So what I did, I was like, okay, I'm ready to start doing the bullet journal. I went through the video because you go through, is that you in the video? I mean, you just see hands and paper and notebook. As you're doing it, okay. So you're sitting there and you're showing the framework of how to get it started. Like, okay, here's how we set up, you know, the index page and the calendar page, and, you know, starting off the month, and things like that. And so I went through the video and I was like, okay, writer's writing this down on this page. So pause and I'd write down my page. And then I'd hit play and then you'd go to the next page. And I was like, okay, first, second, third, fourth, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday. I was like, okay, pause, play. So I went through that, it was only a minute and a half. That got the framework of it set down for me. And then I went through the website to where, you know, I went through each, you know, separate topic on there on that expanded on the topics. And then also, you know, the gosh, I'm not a web developer, but how the page is sliding from the right-hand side. It'll show you like a physical example of the notebook page. You know, like if you're looking at the bullet page on here, you know, the page slides in, it shows the date and mind-blowingly, writer, every time I look at it, it's got the current date on it, which just boggles my mind. I'm glad you caught that. There's a couple of Easter eggs in there. Yeah. So I noticed that when I started, I was like, hey, I'm pretty sure that's today's date. And then I came back like right now, I'm looking at it. It's a September 3rd on it. So that's really cool. But, you know, but then on, so if we're talking about a specific example, like I'm on the bullets page. So you put in on a notebook page, you know, how the checkboxes work, how the events work, how the notes work, and things like that. So how did you come up with that design to where, you know, let me, it's easy to tell everyone, you know, how to set up this journal. And you can do, you can do more videos, longer videos, or you can do pictures and screenshots. But this, it's not interactive that I can't interact with it. But it's, it's actively showing me how to plan this out in my page. How did this idea come about? Because I think that's one of the things that works the best about helping, you know, someone like me to get set up doing this. I think it, I think a lot of it came from the fact that I require some kind of visual aid when I'm learning something. And sometimes when I explained it to people, it was very hard for them to picture. So as soon as I would take out the notebook and start illustrating it, literally, things would just click. And the website, the one that you see is probably my third or fourth attempt at trying to get that across. You know, sometimes it would have just been pictures, but I felt that the actual animations drew your eye over again, because when you look at the website and some of the feedback I got also is that it can be intimidating with the amount of content that you have. And I kind of just wanted to demonstrate what these big copy blocks were referring to. So as you scroll down the page, sections of the demonstration notebook on the side will actually highlight and those kind of things, just to very, very clearly step by step, spell it out. I think that the system delivered all at once, like in very large copy blocks, could seem very overwhelming. So it's really important to me to try to split it up into small little elements. And that's why the video is so short, because it only covers a few of the items in the website, because I didn't want people to be overwhelmed. I just kind of wanted to give them the most essential pieces that could get them started. If they were interested, then they could delve into the website. But I still felt that they needed some kind of visual reference to see exactly how pieces relate to one another. I think the power of the bullet journal is exactly how data relates to itself and to other parts of the book, and cross-referencing things like that. And I found it verbally very difficult to explain to people. They'd get one idea, they'd get the other idea. And as soon as I was trying to explain how the two would work together, I could just see the question marks popping up in their eyes. So the website tries to deal with that issue. That's how the design evolves. Yeah, and I thought at first, and I'm not going to lie to you, I looked at it and I was like, "Oh, look at all these things. I don't have to do to set this up. All this is going to be really long and intimidating." But going through the video first, setting up the framework of what I'm going to do, then going through the individual points on the website, by the time I was done, reading everything and at least getting my first understanding of it. I was like, "That's it? Okay, I can do this." It's really well done as far as teaching someone to use this system. I thought it worked out well, at least for someone like me who I don't use any system. I mean, this why it appeals to me is I'm just basically a checklist to do that. I just want, "Okay, here's today. Here's what I have to do today, and when that's done, I'm going to mark it off." And some things get lost in the shuffle that way or some things. You don't keep up with things that way. It just gets kind of random. So I thought this would fit me pretty well. And I've got a couple of things. I've only been using it for a couple of weeks now. So I don't have a huge, huge data set to go off of. But I did have some questions. One thing I wanted to point out, and I don't know if this is a fair statement or not, but one thing I'm finding is this is not a calendaring type of system. I mean, there's a calendar aspect, but it's not like a future planning thing outside of, say, the particular month, what you might have going on that month, right? I mean, that's one of the things that I've said if, okay, a week from now, I need to do X. Well, that either needs to go on my main calendar page, right? Or just on my, say, my September date page where I've listed all the dates. I need to put that task there because I can't really get ahead of it in the daily aspect of it, right? The amount of-- Am I saying that right? Yeah, yeah, no, absolutely. In terms of having a very heavy and very active calendar, the bullet journal really doesn't do that. I mean, personally, I need to share my calendar with three to five people, and that's just one thing that an analog system can't-- it doesn't have the bandwidth for that. That being said, though, I will be bringing out another video that does show how to deal with future tasks. There are a couple of different methods that I have designed, and definitely I'm taking feedback and seeing exactly where people are having difficulties planning way ahead of time. But in terms of hourly and daily scheduling, it's definitely not designed for that. It's more of a capturing tool and being able to group ideas and tasks that you may have in the future also, but scheduling them to precise days and times doesn't do that just yet. There are a couple of methods that I'll be bringing in that will help people to do that, but none of them are as fast as I would like them to be yet. That's one thing. I want to make it clear. I don't want that. This isn't a planner or a calendar. It's actually-- I like how it's set up, but then as I'm filling it out, because I'm doing something for today, I was like, "You know what? I really need to do that Thursday a week from now. What do I do?" So that's what I'm sitting here looking at my notebook going, "Hmm, what do I do?" So it could go on-- for now, it could go on the main calendar, so I'll remember to have an event for it or have a note for it or a task for it at a later date. Absolutely, and I'm actually kind of glad you bring that up, because one of the points of the bullet journal that I found that I hadn't really thought of is that it's a system that also allows people to see what they need to focus on also. So for example, with the calendar, if people realize they really need a calendaring thing, it's not like they have to learn a completely new to-do system or whatever, they can be like, "I need a calendar." And then I have the bullet journal for other things. And other people have actually developed their own resources within the bullet journal to deal with individual issues. And I really love seeing that. I love seeing people make it their own and having the book and system evolve with them. Yeah, one of the things that I have to do is on the migration piece, like if you finish a month, you go back to the previous month, look at any tasks that were unfinished. Either strike them out, they're no longer valid, or move them forward to the next month and in the current days, I have to move those from day to day. The way to fit my needs for the types of things that I'm capturing in this system, it's more to-dos and tasks. So if I didn't do that one thing yesterday, in that box didn't get checked, that needs to move forward to today. That's just for me, personally. It might work. People are capturing different things where they can go back the previous month and move things forward or scratch them out. I have to find myself keeping them moving from day to day, or they're just-for the types of things that I need to use this for, they're not going to get done. I'm glad to hear that. It's like you were able to-you saw what tools were offered, and you took the ones that you needed and moved and changed them to adapt to you. That's what I was hoping would happen. There's no way to be able to tell when you're working on it. I don't want people to be beholden to what I have shown them. I'm hoping to supply them with various different methods and to pick and choose what works for them, and then evolve it. I can't wait until somebody shows me something where I'm like, "That's a fantastic idea. I'm going to do that from now on." Yeah, that's awesome. One challenge I'm having is-maybe I didn't set this up right from the beginning. I started it in a notebook I was already using. I don't have a dedicated bullet journal, if you will. I just picked up in the middle of a notebook I was using, which was really just for the same kind of things that I'm now organizing better in a bullet journal, notes, tasks, sketches, whatever. In August, looking at my index, August went from pages two to four. Well, from the end of August to the beginning of September, just like in the past week, I'm working on a bunch of things outside of work and other things, and I've just got pages and pages and pages of notes and sketches in between. So, August ended on the fourth, and September started on page 14th, page 14. So, is that-do you find yourself doing that? I mean, looking at how you set it up, you have large gaps in just like the straight task lists type of thing, right? You allow for space, I guess if you will, in between tasks to have blank pages for sketches, for notes, and for things like that. So, having a 10-page gap in between my months, because I've filled up these other pages with notes and other important things that don't necessarily fall into the bullet journal itself. That's really part of the system, right? Yes. Yeah, I mean, the idea is that because you missed something, it doesn't throw you off, and then that kind of goes back to the difficulty of planning way ahead, because the strength is more about capturing than now, really. It's-so, like, I've literally gone like 10-20 pages before the next month happens. I just like making sure that I know when the month starts, because that's really the most relevant thing in terms of like the chronology. I can see that in August, you know, August started here, and I can go back to the August spread, like the actual calendar, and I can see what events occurred that way, and then I can see all the tasks that I need to do. And then everything from that month to the month that follows is pretty much fair game. It's not really important. If it is important, then I title that page and put it in the index as well, and that could fall within a month, and it doesn't have to be its own separate thing. It's the ability to put down anything whenever you want to, wherever you want to, is exactly what the index is for. And some people might need a much heftier index, like, for example, if they take an incredible amount of notes and use a bunch of subtopics, which are basically breaking down really large pieces of information, like, let's say you're planning a vacation, and, you know, planning a real, like a world trip or something, you're not going to be able to plan it all on one page, and chances are it's going to take you weeks, if not months, to plan it. So essentially, you can use your index to find the different places within your book that you plan that trip, you know, and you can jump around. I'm hoping that answered the question. That totally answers it. It says I need to use my index to capture any of these other things that I need to be aware of in between my task lists. So yeah, I need to do that. The index is critical. Yeah, so I'm starting a business. So I've got all these notes and just just gobs and gobs of things that, you know, I've had to write down. And, you know, that's what that 10 page gap filled up in, like, you know, two or three days between, you know, the end of August and September. You know, I didn't have any tasks or dates for the bullet journal, but I just had pages and pages of notes. So I need to index them better. Those can, those are the perfect thing to go on my index. And it sounds like, so that's good. Yeah. And in terms of gaps, like, I've taught this to a couple of people before, like, I really released it, just to see if it was useful to them. And I noticed that a lot of people kind of hoard pages, you know, they'll feel like, okay, these are going to be my seven pages for this week. And again, hey, if that works, that's great. But again, I found that it was really confining. It's like now I have to squeeze everything into, like, set amount of pages. And because of that, I didn't think the way that I usually do. I'm like, okay, now I only have four pages for this. And then I'm thinking about the system too much. Like, I'm trying to create a system that, like, you're not really thinking about, like, the system should ideally disappear. It should just be, you know, like, you put it down whenever you want. If you work with gaps, that's definitely fine. But it's definitely something that I've moved away from after trying it for a while. Yeah. And I guess that's why there's not a bullet journal journal product because it can't be that fixed, right? I mean, we're all going to use it different ways and to come out with, okay, here's the, you know, here's the paper that you use in the format and here, just print these out or buy this journal, whatever, it's not going to work that way. So now I want to get off the bullet journal real quick and talk about a couple of things I noticed in your video being this is the Panatic podcast. I noticed you were a fan of a particular pin that, that I'm a fan of, at least in your, um, in the videos you were using the Uniball Sino 207, you like, is that a, your, your journaling pin of choice? Yes, currently it is. All right. Yes, excellent choice. I go through a lot of different pens. Sometimes I try to make them, try, sometimes I try to use, like, pens that I don't think about, you know, because I'm, I don't know, I, I like calligraphy a lot and then I, you know, I draw a lot of lettering and everything. Sometimes when I have a really nice pen, I spend more time, like, actually doodling than I should, like, focusing on what I'm drawing down or writing down. So this, this is, so far, it's been like a really nice hybrid. It has a really good point and, you know, if I lost it, it wouldn't be the end of the world. That's right. I think that's why a lot of people like that pen because it's, it's, it's cheap, but it's like one of the best, like, pens, you can just go grab and if you lose it, you know, you're not going to care. You can just go get another one and, and just, just move on. And you also use the, you also use the grid Moleskin journal. Is that, is that your, your primary capturing notebook? It has been for many years. I have been experimenting with some other journals, like recently I've been using a dock grid, which, which has been interesting, the dock grid journal by the Behance network people, which I also like. I think also in the process of doing the bullet journal, I wanted to make sure that it worked in other books as well. I didn't want to just assume that it did. So yeah, overall, the bullet journal has been my go-to book, but I, I, I like learning about new books and they all have a kind of different feel and they put a different spin on how you use them. And I find that interesting. I didn't think that was going to happen. Yeah, for sure. And I'm using the rodeo dot web notebook, which is, you know, the same, the same as the others you were talking about, same size, you know, like the approximately, you know, five by sevenish size to dot grid journal. When I fill this one up, I think I have one, maybe you should, should check out when you get a chance that the pages are pre-formatted in a very helpful way for a dot, for the bullet journal is, it's called the Leuch term 1917. And I can spell that for you. I'll send you a link afterwards. But what it, but what it does, it's got pre-numbered pages, it's got an index in the front, and it's got a spot at the top of each page where it can have like a title or a date or something like that. But then it also comes in plain line grid and dot, I believe. So just having those pre-numbered pages will really help in the index page in the front would help someone like me to organize better. I definitely check that out. It sounds fantastic. Yep, it sounds like a perfect, just a basic setup to where the, you know, someone, the bullet journal would be kind of a perfect fit to start in that book. And you wouldn't have to do, you know, keep track of your page, number, index or things like that. It's kind of already built in for you. But then the rest of the book is blank and you can go for it. That'd be great. Yeah. I mean, the less things that you have to think about, the more time you can spend on thinking about what you're actually putting in the book. I really like that. Yep. Yep. Well, this is working for me. And I really like the idea. And it's been a good system to learn without being even remotely overbearing at all. And it works for me, works for my workflow. So hopefully, you know, the listeners got a lot out of this and we'll definitely check you out at bulletjournal.com. And, you know, where else can anyone get in touch with you on the internet? Do you have some other sites? You got some other things going on? Yeah. You can find me at writercarole.com and at writercarole on Twitter. Awesome. Thank you so much, man. This has been really fascinating to listen to. Thank you so much for having me. Thanks, writers. It was a great conversation. We really appreciate you coming on. Thank you. Cheers, man. Bye. Bye. That was really interesting. That was awesome. I enjoyed that a lot. Right. Are you great? He's a writer's gone. Oh, just me and you now get straight up. No, I did. Because we're carrying on with the show. This is this is a video production. Carry on up the charts, man. Let's go. Because we didn't mention, I guess, at the show that we're doing the follow up now. Yeah. Yeah. I might buy one of these lectern 1917s. Yeah, I didn't get it out of the closet to look at everything. But I know how it's set up with the indexing and the page numbering and the titles at the top that I've always liked that laid out. So that's a for a bullet journal. This would be really, really awesome. Because what I did actually just get a new pad. Okay. What'd you get? Moving things now. White lines. Yeah. Now I'd never heard of these until Mr. Patrick Rohn told me about them on a recent episode of Enough. Essentially the inverted grid. Yeah. So it's gray paper with white lines. Interesting. It's like a hard cover. It's it's bound and presented like a book. Yep. Very interesting. Yeah, I've always I've always enjoyed the white lines. I've got some here and I'm not using them right now, but it's just because I've got stacks of other things. So I've got some other new paper product. I've got I've got four or five paper products I'm super excited about that I have not started messing around with yet. So I need to check those out soon. We did say that we were going to try and do more. I know. I know. I keep threatening and you know people get on me. What about this? What about that? When are you going to review this? I was like, well, it's sitting on my desk. When are you going to do it? I was like, well, if you know me, you know how my schedule works, it'll be when it happens. So I'm wondering whether to just get one of these like terms for this. Yeah. Seems that the right thing. That's the one thing I didn't want to do was start. I didn't want to. This goes back to our whole resolutions thing that we talked about. I didn't want to start a new journal and have more than one journal. I didn't want to have, you know, a journal that I sketched in a journal that I did bullet journal and things like that. So that's why I was trying to incorporate in the one Rodeo web notebook that I'm using. Yeah. See, I haven't been using the moleskin. I mean, I've been using field notes like crazy, but also the moleskin professional is one of the worst notebooks I've ever used. Yeah, it's absolutely terrible. I'm thinking about just replacing it. Like, I'm not even, I don't even want to finish it. Sure. It's a terrible, terrible notebook. I cannot stress enough how little I recommend it. Yeah. I mean, there's no sense in being frustrated about what the tools you're using, you know, put it to the side and get something else. Yeah, although I have been filled note in like crazy. That's true. I've got something that I want to mention in regards to that in our follow up. But I want to talk about our second sponsor first, if that's a KVU Bradley for that'd be great. I'll just give you a new name. Why not? Why not Sir Bradington, something like that? Just trying to give you fancier and fancier names now. I'm a fancy guy. We know that. So this episode is brought to you by Squarespace, the all-in-one platform that makes it easy to create your own website. During the month of September, they're giving you 20% off and a free trial. If you go to squarespace.com and use the offer code, tally-ho-9. Let me tell you some stuff that I love about Squarespace. They're always doing great work to improve their platform with new features, new designs and even better support. They're beautiful designs that you can start with and so many style options to create a really unique website for you or your business. They have 20 highly customizable templates to choose from. They've won numerous design awards for these from institutions like the Webbies and Forbes, a really prestigious design awards that they've won. It's so easy to use, but they have an amazing support team that worked 24 hours a day, seven days a week. They have over 70 employees on their customer care team, which are based in New York City, and the office of which these people sit in has been renamed The Care Bear Layer, which is awesome. They've won an award for their customer support as well, most recently, a Gold Stevie Award. They've won many, many awards, actually, for their customer support, because it is that awesome. Every design automatically includes a unique mobile experience that matches the overall style of your website, so your content's going to look great on every device, every time. Now, this is what you need to do. Go to squarespace.com, take a look at the awesome videos that they have there so you can get some inspiration for how to make your own space online. If you've been holding off now is the right time. Squarespace plans start at just $8 a month, and they include a domain name for free, if you sign up for a year. But you will get 20% off in September and support the show if you use the code tallyho9. Don't delay, go now 20% off, go check out Squarespace, everything that you need to create an exceptional website. Awesome. Thank you, Squarespace. Cool, right, 20%, so yeah, way cool. I bet you're upset. You just bought a site like two weeks ago. Yeah, I only got 10%. Take that tallyho8 and shove it with this tallyho9. You'll make that 10% back through the fact that they're here. Hey, I'm happy to do it. I'm happy to do it. So just to comment on their customer service real quick, I think it's common knowledge that I'm a night worker, so I'm up all night, and my day's off. I'm still up all night and sleep during the day. And if ever I've had, you know, when we're working on website or, you know, pin addict or setting up the not-code website, if I've had a question for Squarespace, I'll just open up a ticket through their help center at three o'clock in the morning. And like within five minutes, I've got a response saying we're looking at it. Or here's the answer. So 24/7 is the truth. It's not just, well, kind of sort of in the middle of the night when you need us or if the case it's an emergency. It's like for the littlest thing, like, you know, if I've had some simple problem at three o'clock in the morning, I've got help within just a couple minutes. So I've been very pleased with that. So I know that they have an office in Dublin, Squarespace. So maybe that's what helps with that. Cool. That's great. Which I'm actually hoping to visit that office sometime in the next year. Oh, they'll be sweet. Yeah, just go and say hi. Hey, Dublin people like that. You don't know who I am, but hi. Hi, I'm Mike. Tally Ho. Just running around the Squarespace office is screaming Tally Ho. Dan sent me. Oh my goodness. So, um, this is the, uh, the official backwards episode. Yep. So, uh, we got some follow up to get to. It's actually been been a couple of weeks. Except before we get to our main topic. Yeah, before we get to our main topic. A bunch of people just screamed for 42 minutes in. I'm like, oh my gosh. Yeah, please stop. Our follow up isn't actually epic link. So, um, I don't say that yet. I don't know. That's true. So, um, today was the launch of a new blogger joining me at Panatic.com. Her name is Lisa Needham and I'm super excited about, um, having her join me at the blog. This has been kind of a long time coming. And it was, I mean, when today came to finally post the first review, I was so excited to do it. And then I just remembered how hard it was to pick people and how many people I felt like, you know, I'll let them down by not picking them. But, uh, Lisa, I'm super excited to have. She's going to do a great job. I love her writing style and, um, she's going to do super, super fantastic. So look for a bunch more from Lisa. Hopefully at least, you know, a post a week or something like that. And, um, you know, I got a couple of, uh, posting things to work out to where I can post it under her name. So you guys know it's a different, you know, different review than something that I wrote. I just want to be clear that whether I write it or Lisa writes it. So I've got to work on that. But, um, otherwise, um, I'm super excited to have her along. Savvy question. You, have you set up a user account? No. Right. That's what you need to do. You can set up a user account, sends her an email, job done. I didn't figure that out until too late last night and I started to work on it. And then I got distracted. And I wanted to go ahead and get this post up. I didn't want to delay it. So I went ahead and did that. And then I'm going to do that tonight. I figured out that that's how I need to do it. So I'll give her a user account that way. Everything will be listed under her name. And we will be good to go. So how are things fairing in over at NOC? Going really good. We have our labels on order. You know, like the little tags that'll go on the edge of the bag. You know, little small NOC labels that I think everyone's going to like when they see them. They're going to be pretty cool. We don't have images of those up yet. We've gotten in some color samples that we are working through. To see which colors we're going to launch with on Kickstarter. We posted kind of a. I hope you do a Kickstarter green. We've talked about it. And I don't want to get your hopes up, but probably not. And there's specific reasons for that. We can go into that later day. Well, I mean, there's nothing to discuss, but it's a conscious effort. First thing was, you know, if we're going to do a Kickstarter specific color, it needs to be, you know, this green. And have other reasons, you know, most everyone does like a Kickstarter green special. Ours is not going to be a Kickstarter green, but there's external reasons for that that there's nothing really to go into on that. But there it was a conscious effort to not do Kickstarter green, but we will have a limited Kickstarter color. How about that? Now I'll live with that. All right, all right. I bet I know what color will be used at some, at least an option. I don't know, man. You might be surprised. Well, I know you well enough to know there's going to be an orange. Well, have you seen the latest post on the not co-blog? Of course I have. Yeah. So this one's pretty much going to be a go. It's like kind of a dark orange exterior and a lighter orange interior. The pictures don't really do it justice. I like the images because they don't really show too much. It's very sort of like you can kind of see what we're doing here. I like it. Yeah. And I'm actually, if everyone wants a, I don't want to totally pimp this out. Because that's not my style. But if you go to the not co-blog, which is notco.com/blog, the most current post is a post about this orange color that we're looking at. So in the comment section, this is what I wanted everyone to see. A gentleman named Harold Himmler really liked the color. And he says, "I have not a single clue regarding stitching and manufacturing of fabrics, but I've had several different products with the same flaw that knots would sometimes untangle risking the seam to come undone looking at the knot next to the field notes. Could this be wax sealed or hot glued or something in the manufacturing process? That would be really neat." Well, since this is our prototypes, we don't have all the machinery that we're buying. But this is like the first thing that we plan when Jeff and I were sitting down a month ago, saying when we're doing this Kickstarter project and we're launching the business, what are the things we need and what we need to help with Kickstarter and this money that we're hoping to get from Kickstarter is we're going to buy a bar-tax sewing machine. So Jeffrey goes into a long explanation of exactly what Harold's talking about in our exact solution that we have already planned for. Oh, I'm looking at it now, so I'm reading it as we speak. Yes, so Jeff gave him a long answer about exactly how we're going to solve that problem, and that's because that's a concern of ours too, and that's the primary piece of machinery that we're hoping to buy with this Kickstarter project. One I think the best way to describe it is the machine that you guys will have stitches like a knot or a stitch in the same way that Levi belt loops are attached, and everybody knows how strong they are, so I'm happy. Yeah, so it'll do this like a zigzag stitch on these seams so you don't have the loose popping up or anything crazy. Like you'll see it in our prototypes, you'll see that it looks kind of loose or not finished exactly perfect. It's like a little mess, it's like a little mess, it's not on the end. So when we have this new machine, it'll be neat and tidy, and it'll look exactly like that seam on the Levi belt loops, a little zigzag tight stitch, and that'll not going to have any problems with the seams coming apart. So we're super excited about that. I was really glad he asked that question, because that's the level of detail that we're looking at when we're looking at these, and to have someone else point that out, and us are already have a solution to kind of tells you where our head's at and getting these things out. So it's important, if it's important to you guys, it's important to us, so we want to hear any comments and questions you guys have about things like that. So it's very, very vital. Also on the blog at the moment, there's a picture of two very handsome gentlemen of a big amount of black. Did you see that, huh? Looking good? Yeah, looking very good, too handsome guys. We had fun shooting the video. So you shot the video, the video is done. Video's done, I haven't seen anything of it yet, but Jeff's seen bits and pieces of it. So yep, it came out hopefully good. I had a blast with the guy shooting the video. I was super, I wasn't, both Jeff and I were complete nervous wrecks as soon as the camera switched on, and then shortly thereafter, Shari, who did the video for us, he got us, he got us loosened up and then hopefully, hopefully it came out good. So I'm anxious to see it. Just in case, I don't want to see it. Yeah, okay. I don't want to see anything that the people don't see, unless you need, unless you want or need some specific advice for me or whatever. Yeah, no, I think that'll just pretty be pretty sure that's going to be just a launch day unveil. So yeah, I don't think I don't think anyone will see that except me and Jeff. Good, because I want to have the whole experience just wash over me. So then I was going to quiz you on the show running up to it. Have you got anything new that you can share today? Not other than the colors that we've showed, that's a new thing for us. People are wondering what colors are going to be available. We're going to do, you'll be able to choose any case that you back in three separate color ways. And this orange is probably going to be one of those. So that's the newest thing. Outside of that, you know, just like I was talking about the labels, we'll show what those labels looks like when we get those in and we're able to stitch up our final prototypes. So we'll be good to go. Everything's still tracking good. It's definitely going to launch this month. I just don't have an exact date yet. So just everyone, we appreciate the support. That's for sure. It's been hugely, hugely positive. And we really appreciate that. And we want to be able to be accessible to anyone who has questions or ideas or anything like that. So y'all definitely let us know. I'm very, very exciting. I'm excited to Jeff and I are getting really excited. It's getting close because we're almost there. We're like, we're almost like at the twiddling our thumbs phase where we don't have, we're not going full gangbusters like we have been for the past couple weeks. Now we just kind of get to get the final touches, the Kickstarter project page finalized and then some of the backend stuff set. But we're ready. It's that close to where we're ready. We're ready to go. We're ready for this to be a thing. So it's exciting and nerve-wracking. Oh, I just thought of something that we haven't spoken about. Me and you were part of an amazing article. Oh yeah, we didn't even put that in the notes. So we had a, we had a, I assume, yeah, Gabe listens. Yeah, Gabe Bullard. We had a listener Gabe Bullard contact us. To say that he was going to be writing an article in the magazine, which is an iOS publication currently run by Glenn Fleischman. And it's an online publication. Yeah, it's web accessible. Yeah, it's web accessible. But you have to subscribe first. I don't know. I don't know if Glenn has changed that. Yeah, I think you have to subscribe first. Anyway, whatever. It's not important. It's a magazine that was established by Michael Arman and is now run by Glenn Fleischman. And he contacted us to say he'd pitched to write a story about people that love pens, pen addicts. So he contacted us both separately. We both jumped on a call with Gabe and we gave an interview. Now, I don't know what you thought, but I didn't necessarily think that it was going to be a piece about us as such. I'm not in that way. No, I thought it was going to be more general. And with us, you know, triming in on bits and pieces, right? It turned out to be as kind of like expose a piece about the show and about me and you and our love for pens and how that's grown over time and the fact, you know, the blog exists. And he speaks to a couple of other people for some quotes as well. I think he speaks to the guys at JetPens. Yes. She's the CEO of JetPens. She talks to her. Who else? I don't have it right in front of me. There was one or two others. It's an incredibly humbling and awesome article. And I urge everybody to just go and sign up. You have to sign up for the magazine, but you can counsel it after you've read the article, whatever. And it'd only be like two bucks. Yeah, there's a seven there's a seven day free trial. Oh, there you go. Counseling in seven days, you can pay and just go have a read of it. The magazine is really cool, but, you know, I think that every all of the listeners will get a kick out of reading that because it it knocked my socks off. And I said some things that seem very smart and when they were when I read them back, I was like, I sound very smart. I was happy with it. Gave did such such a good job out of, you know, what I felt the content was that I gave him to write this story. I just when someone does something like that, I just I just look at it and go, I could never do that. No, he turned he turned it into a very, very awesome piece, like a really great article. Like it felt like it was, you know, mainstream magazine type stuff and absolutely humbled and thrilled and so happy that that we took part in it because it's a it's one of those things that in 10 years time, I will I will think about and it will make me happy like it's one you know, one of those things I was like that that's one of those little things which is like a check on the list. So very, very cool, very cool. It was well done, Gabe. We really appreciate it. And you pretty much knocked it out of the park. Thank you. Thank you for including us. Yes, yes. Catching up on what seemed to be a recurring theme that we haven't gotten finalized yet is I finally got my cult pins, then my Kawiko cult pins pin in the design that cult pins and Kawiko work together. It's a it's a mini fountain pin aluminum barrel. It's really, really sweet looking. I've just got it in like late last week, like Friday. I haven't had a lot of time to play with it yet. But my goal is to have that taken care of between now and next episode. And I think we'll have a full full big segment on reviewing that pin on the episode next week because I know you've had yours for a bit now. And that would give me some time to get some ideas with it. So I'm going to start using that tonight and have a good feel for it next week. So we'll do a good full full review on that. Yeah, because we did we did promise that we also promised to talk about the Lami 2000 as well. So we'll do that as well next week. So that's a perfect perfect combo meal right there. And less and less I randomly book another guest. It would be fun for me. Which was what happened. Yeah, by the way, I think we're going to ride around. At least he gave me like two weeks notice. That was good. But that was that was an awesome he's an awesome guy. And I'm glad we glad we had him on in the bullet journal. It was fantastic. So you put you put something in the in the notes on what why. So yeah, this is in here. Mike Dudek the groove. Why would this why would this be in the show notes, Mike? Our good friend friend of the show, Mr. Mike Dudek of clickypost.com. You may remember him. He he made he sent us both me and Brad a pen holder called the block, which is this beautiful wooden pen holder. I received a package a couple of days ago and he sent me another one. And this I I believed that I loved the block. I loved it. It was a beautiful piece of of carpentry very nicely put together. But my life has been changed. Now. I'm so happy with this. So it's a smaller pen holder. It holds nine pens. It has nine holes to put your pens in. But it has a groove, a big chunk taken out of it, which is made to put field notes books in. I love it. I love it so much. So I'm going to take a picture. I'm going to take a picture of it all loaded up and I'm going to put it in the show notes. So I assume you've had one for a bit. Yeah, he said I got mine in about a week, week and a half ago just unsolicited. This box shows up and he's he sent me this really nice letter and things like that and then it included the groove and he's like I so I texted him that night and I said, Oh, man, you didn't have to do this. And and we just got to talk and he's like, now I sent one to Mike to don't tell him. I was like, OK, so good. I'm glad you got it in. Yeah, I live. Yeah, I really, really love this thing. Yeah, it's going to be my favorite. It's it's perfect for someone like us. You know, I mean, it's it's fantastic. I love the love the spot for the field notes. It's got the right amount of pins in it. I mean, it's pretty cool. It's sitting on my desk right now. So I love it. So thank you, Mr. Dudek. This was a fantastic surprise and we really appreciate it. And you guys definitely go check these out. We'll have the link in the show notes for you to go check out the groove. It's it's a beautiful piece, looks great on the desk and super, super functional, well made. I can't say enough nice things about Mike and the products that he makes. They're excellent. Like if if you look at it and you think you might like it, I can show you that you will, because they're just really, really well, he's hand makes them. Like it's just good stuff, you know, they're being handmade by the dude in his in his workshop. This is good stuff. So yeah, you should go check it out stuff. Mr. Doudy. Yes, sir. I believe that we can wrap this episode up just just about to hit an hour. Yeah, I think I think that's a good time for us to call it an episode. So Brad is a contributor over at pan addict.com. So you can find his writings there, of which will probably be a bit a little lighter over the next few weeks. I'm going to assume. Nah, nah, it's going to stay about the same. I can't look, you know, I can't let that go. I just wanted in addition to. In addition. That works. Okay, and you can also find Brad here at Doudyism, D-O-W-Y-I-S-M. And of course, go to knockco.com N-O-C-K-C-O.com. I'm Mike. I am Y-K-E. We'll be back next week. Thank you for listening. Thanks again to Ryder for joining us. I hope you've enjoyed this episode at the pan addict. Normal service will resume next week, and we will order the show correctly. We should have done this at the start and then said hello at the end. Yeah, exactly. Just to make it all done full circle. Thanks for listening. We'll be back next week. Bye-bye. Bye.
