And that has continued. They have always been cheap dollar store notebooks or gifts. Days were always drawn out in wobbly colored pencil. Despite my best efforts to appear organized and orderly, the contents of my commonplace book - and, of course, it is also a planner - reveal me to be a disorganized, chaotic wretch. The basic format has not changed:
- standard weekly planner format, always Monday to Sunday, six boxes with the weekend sharing the last. Deadlines and events and flights always immediately populated because I can't trust myself to not forget about them
- blank pages for whatever else: lists, brainstorming, drafts for presentations, information, questions, pearls collected from the wards, steps to induce and emerge from general anesthesia, how to close a fasciotomy, wardrobe planning for autumn/winter 2019, etc
- in earlier iterations of the CPB, there was one of each section, but I found it more convenient to have a few months of planner, a section of free pages to be used while that planner section is active, and then the next planner section, then the next free pages, etc
A sample of pages from past books loosely in chronological order: exams, deadlines, lists upon lists, course material, sketches, information, information, information, etc, etc, etc. When I went home last, I flipped through the old CPBs and took these photos, and tossed the books themselves into the recycling.
I don't know if this has increased my productivity or my focus because I have never been without it. I don't have any interest in buying a pre-made planner or improving the aesthetics or adopting any other system of organizing information at this time. Inevitably I will make a Google calendar for flights and interviews for residency applications, and will likely be subject to a shared calendar for residency, but for my personal use, I am happy as is. As much I admire the bullet journal movement, it is not for me. I am a person of habit. I am a person of habit.
