against the journalling ecosystem
Or rather, a tale of my failed ecosystems, and why they didn't work for me. Disclaimer that everyone's journalling methods are valid and tailored to them!
I've written extensively about my love of all things physical writing: the letter, the annotations and to do lists, and of course, the journal. As I'm sure many of us who are jacks of all trades know, the issue of where to organize your neat notes, your sketches, and your scrawled out diary entries is a profound one. It's one that I've tweaked away at for many years. One method that works for me for certain stretches of time can suddenly not, and it's constantly evolving.
If you're in the online spheres of the journalling community, you may have heard of the journalling ecosystem, also known as the notebook ecosystem to some. The definition is laid down well by Petya Grady:
A notebook ecosystem refers to the interconnected collection of physical and/or digital notebooks that a person deliberately curates to serve different aspects of their intellectual, creative, and personal life. Like a natural ecosystem where diverse species fulfill distinct roles while contributing to a balanced whole, a thoughtfully designed notebook ecosystem assigns specific functions to different notebooks (journaling, planning, idea collection, etc.) that complement one another and collectively support the individual's thinking, creativity, and productivity.
When juggling so many different creative pursuits, it's very easy to become overwhelmed with the amount that you want to document, and the best way to lay it out. I myself have always leaned most into visual arts (ie. sketching, collage, etc.) and writing. For the past 5 years, I've gone through many variations to land where I am now, which is one notebook to rule them all.
A Brief History of my Ecosystems
2020-21
Around COVID times, I was much more of an artist than an active writer, and so I only had one Strathmore grey 9"x12" sketchbook where I made almost all of my art, save canvas paintings or one offs (which would usually be pasted in later anyway). This worked for me at first, and I found that I was blasting through the sketchbooks in a couple month's time for each one. Towards the end of this era though, I found that I was writing on loose sheets of paper while I was out and about and pasting those in my book as well, just looking for a place to store them.
2021-23
I got a little Tibetan paper notebook to house all of my writing, journalling, what have you in as I didn't want to keep clogging good quality sketching paper with just writing. Paper's expensive! I also downsized my sketchbook to be 3.5"x5.5". I noticed that as restrictions lightened up and we were all out and about again, I wasn't carrying my huge sketchbook nearly as much. This marked my move to small scale notebooks, the key factor being portability.
2023-24
I lost the aforementioned Tibetan notebook, and started going through a rotation of Rhodia notebooks, which I would get halfway through, misplace in some bag or jacket pocket, and buy another. I also tried having different notebooks for different areas that I would use them in. When I worked at the library, I kept a notebook in my locker that I would keep in my back pocket for ideas on the shift/jotting books down, but would always accidentally take it home with me. I also kept another sketchbook at the same size, which was slowly getting filled with more and more writing as I didn't have a stable place for my words.
Come the start of university, I added a studio notebook to my system to keep academic studio ideas separate, although many of my sketches started in my personal sketchbook anyway, and then moved to loose leaf sheets (which are an absolute nightmare to store but I would do it anyway out of some underlying masochistic tendencies).
2025-August
At the start of the new year, I was home for the break and discovered a nice Leuchtturm A4+ notebook that my dad had gotten at a work event that I gladly stole from him. Finally having a separate writing space was great for me, and I started writing daily in there with ideas, diary entries, more formal notes, anything. It wasn't until I finished my last sketchbook in April that things started to get a bit murky.
When I went home for the summer in May, I got a sketchbook to replace my old one, the same size but landscape bound. For some reason, even though I still carried it everywhere, it simply did not stick as much with me. On the other hand, my journal, although lined, started getting sketched in more and more, even when other sketching options were there. Maybe it's because the journal had already been "broken in", so to speak. I finished my Leuchtturm at the start of August, and decided to do something that I had done accidentally in other notebook iterations, but intentionally this time.
Now
I currently have a folio with one notebook in it. I have a blank Midori A5 notebook which houses everything: I sketch in it, I collage in it, I journal in it, I plan in it, I do everything. The folio has a little band in one side and a pocket in the other which allows me to slip loose papers I find in my travels inside. I can also tie string bands in the folio to secure more notebooks in should I change my mind about the one notebook method.
Why just one?
Here's the thing. As someone who's very forgetful, and also rotates through a number of different bags, to attempt to carry 3-4, even 5 different notebooks around with me at once, no matter how small, is a recipe for disaster. I found that when I had even 2-3 notebooks in my rotation at once, I would get almost a decision paralysis of where to put one certain idea. I would also get an idea, realize my exact notebook wasn't there to put it down in (say I get an art idea while on a library shift, with only my library notebook in my back pocket), sit on the idea until I could get it down, only to completely forget about by the time I would find the right book.
My catch-all notebook fits in every single bag I own, and most jacket pockets (I'm partial to a hefty men's bomber jacket, which tend to have huge pockets). Should I need a reminder of the work I have due, I can flip to my self-drawn calendar page for quick review, then flip over to the planning sketches I did for whatever project I want to focus on. Say it's at the research stage, I'll remember a journal entry I wrote on a similar topic, and flip right back to that for some self-reference. All under the same roof!
Sometimes reading about people's different ecosystems feels very reminiscent to the bullet journal craze of the late 2010s (buzzfeed article for maximized 2010s energy), which was essentially the most pinterest-perfect journalling method possible. There were countless people showing off their gorgeous watercolour and copic marker spreads for things like hobby and mood trackers, weekly to-do lists with drawn in sticky note calendars, all sorts of things. While these spreads were very fun to admire and aspire towards, the aestheticization of simple planning planted a seed of perfectionism anxiety in many (somewhat myself), as well as, arguably, consumerist pressure. Your bullet journal wasn't complete with washi tape and stickers adorning each page, wasn't complete without a full set of zebra fine liners and pastel highlighters to do your cursive headers with.
I feel that this phenomenon is manifesting itself now in the collection of cutesy, aesthetic journals for the sake of having the options. While reading about other's carefully curated ecosystems, I noticed this: the main way I've seen a lot of people go about their ecosystems barely allows for nuance in your ideas. Bustle's article specifically suggests these 5 themes for your journals: a thought journal, reflection journal, memory journal, travel/sensory journal, and a reading journal.
The issue I find with these themes in particular is the immense amount of crossover. Say you're abroad, sitting in a cafe people-watching. You'll open your travel journal and start taking note of the environment until your coffee comes out. You take a sip, and all of a sudden, you're reminded of a few years prior, when you were travelling with a good friend and sharing a coffee with them. Are you supposed to then cut off your travel entry and move to the memory one even though the two halves of the story are so immensely connected by taste, smell, thoughts? One of the most beautiful things about the human mind is how one idea can stretch so far in so many directions, if you let it. By boxing everything into little separate notebooks depending on the theme of one certain spark of your idea, you're effectively blocking yourself from naturally developing your work, severing the new branches from their roots.
Sure, my method of one for everything is a tad chaotic, but that is the way that my mind works best. In trying to separate all of my work into different groups, it felt dehumanized, orderly to a fault. It's not pretty in the traditional sense, but in a way that's very human: messy, exciting, yet functional. Who knows, anyway, maybe once I finish this notebook I'll realize my sketches are starting to butt heads with my writing too much again, and I'll convert to the ecosystem method. Should that day come, I'll eat my words.