Kokuyo Fieldnote
The Fieldnote (測量野帳, Sokuryo Yacho) is used and loved by surveyors and field scientists for long time. Kokuyo, a Japanese largest stationery company, sells fieldnote in several format : sketch book (quadrille), level book, and water resistant. I use quadrille as same for index cards.
A simple definition of the “fieldnote” is pocket size note book with tough hard cover. So one cannot call a pocket size quadrille note without hard cover as “fieldnote” : that’s just a “note”.
Umesao and Kawakita, Japanese field scientists, both wrote books about productivity and index cards in 1960’s. According to their books, they used this kind of fieldnote. Their books became de-facto standard, bible, for intellectual productivity and knowledge work in Japan.
I have been using the fieldnote after my job. Through my own experience, I found the fieldnote can be used not only for field work, but also personal idea capturing media.
I hack it by adding elastic band as you see in the picture above. It enables to put a pencil between current writing pages. I use a pencil itself as bookmark. I open current page in a second.
