Welcome to Walker Weekly, a regularly scheduled newsletter where I share things that I find interesting, useful, inspiring, or thought-provoking. If you have anything of your own that falls into these categories, please let me know in the comments! I’m always looking for new inspiration.
Book of the week
The Notebook: A History of Thinking on Paper by Roland Allen. This is definitely one of the more nerdy things I’ve read. A history of notebooks? For some reason I’ve been moderately obsessed with notebooks and journals recently. I’ve been keeping a personal journal for over 4 years now, but it’s only in the last few months that I’ve had the desire to go fully analog with all note-taking endeavors. The process of writing your thoughts – or the thoughts of others – out on paper feels more thoughtful, intentional, and satisfying to me than typing it into a doc. Not to mention the fact that writing by hand is commonly cited as being far superior to typing in terms of memory retention and learning ability.
Anyways, if you have any notebook nerds in your life, people who appreciate stationary and writing, this is a great book for them. It covers the humble beginnings of the notebook (spoiler: as a tool for merchants in Italy who then mastered double-entry bookkeeping as an accounting process, enabling them to dominate trade starting in the 1200s) through modern day practices like bullet journaling. It also expands on the famous notebook users of antiquity, like Leonardo da Vinci, Frida Kahlo, Isaac Newton, Chaucer, Marie Curie, and more. I’ll never look at a notebook the same again!
Quote I’m pondering
Speaking of Leonardo…
It had long since come to my attention that people of accomplishment rarely sat back and let things happen to them. They went out and happened to things.
Leonardo da Vinci
This quote reminds me to take initiative. It’s too easy to simply sit back and let the minor whims of the day dictate my life. You check your emails, you do your work, you cook some food, you scroll through social media, and before you know it, the day is gone. The day turns into weeks, and weeks turn into years. Leonardo reminds us to be proactive about the things we want to achieve.
That’s all for this week, thanks a lot for following along!
Stay curious,
Walker
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