Field Notes with Elastic Band

Field Notes (コクヨ測量野帳). 80 pages, 3mm squared.

The field notes is used and loved by surveyors and field scientists for long time. Kokuyo, the Japanese largest stationery company, sells field notes in several format : sketch book (quadrille), level book, and water resistant. I use quadrille as same for index cards.

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 field notes. Their books became de-facto standard, bible, for intellectual productivity and knowledge work in Japan.

I have been using the field notes after my job. Through my own experience, I found the field notes 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.

Ref. : @blog, Kokuyo field notes

See also :
- Backpackers Note by Toku-chan
- Rollbahn by Toku-chan