Taking Notes

I’ve noticed that the best and brightest business professionals have been looking very writerly lately. They seem to have all migrated away from using plain notebooks and folios, and are now bringing these very expensive-looking leather bound diaries to meetings.

I first noticed this with my Executive Coach. As we spoke, he would take notes in this elaborate-looking oversized notebook that, by the looks of it, may very well have been scarfed from an ancient European monastery.

Then, darn it, my CEO started bringing one of these supple beauties to keep track of all the brilliant ideas I was proposing in our conferences together. I had this impulsive urge to grab the thing and hold it to my nose to get a good snuff of that musky grain leather scent. But so far, I have resisted.

And now, just about every meeting that I attend where the likes of sales professionals, investment bankers, accountants or lawyers are involved, I see someone pulling out a gorgeous 9 x 11 fancy book to take their notes in. 

Have all these business professionals become closet journal-writers?

It used to be the only people I knew who would spring for those big journally-looking things were the writer-journal-wonks (like me). I’ve got them strewn all over the house in drawers and bookshelves, stuck in between the couch cushions, for anyone to read my private thoughts. No wonder the cleaning people give me that startled look when I run into them. “Oh jyes, chello, meester Moore!” they say with a sly grin and sideways glances. And then it dawns on me: They’ve seen everything! Oh well. Who cares.

Apparently, journals notebooks are now the trendy thing for corporate professionals to be using for note-taking.

I think it makes them look smart and bookish, rather than all business. It says, “I may be speaking in business gobbledygook right now, but in my other life I am a deeply reflective and well-tempered intellectual.”

Maybe that’s why it’s catching on. I, for one, don’t mind this trend at all. 

And I found out where they are all coming from. Yesterday I joined the club and purchased my first business Notabilia Notebook from the Levenger Company, whose tag line, btw, is “Tools for serious readers.” How can you not want to drop some serious coin on that? I chose red. I even had my initials monogrammed on the corner.

I am certainly not going to let everyone else in my business professional world get away with this. I mean, come on. I’m the one who’s the writer here!