Deej Johnson on the power of keeping notebooks… And one huge mistake to avoid

In your role as a creative consultant, Deej, you sometimes get asked which technique you think is most important to creating thinking. What do you tend to say?
Thank you, Bill. It does depend on the context – but of all the creative techniques I champion, ‘notebooking’ is the one I tend to talk about most. It gets overlooked a fair bit – even by professional creatives. But I often quote the writer Jack London, who said: “Keep a notebook. Travel with it, eat with it, sleep with it!”

We’ve talked about this before so I know he wasn’t alone… Shall we talk about the practical side of things first, then come back to that? That and the rest of the theory?
Actually, yes! That would be great. Because if you’re happy to take my word for it and want to start keeping a notebook, you’ll want to crack on. If you need persuading, you can read the whole bally lot or jump to the bottom… I’ll talk about the theory and the neuroscience and the studies…

And I’ll have a nap. How long have you been keeping a notebook, Deej?
Oh, gosh. This’ll be grist for your mill of mockery, Bill, because it sounds horribly precocious… I’ve been making notes since I was about 11 – and actually keeping my notebooks since I was about 16 or 17. For the most part, I’ve stuck to a particular brand of pad that fits in my back pocket so that I can carry it with me everywhere. The most important thing is that you want something you can put your hand on quickly – so ‘Pocket’ and ‘Policeman’ notebooks are ideal.

And this is just in your back pocket, right?
In my back pocket, yes. I have a slightly different system at nighttime and in the shower – but yes… Day-to-day, there’s always a notebook in my back pocket to record ideas, questions, answers and do the occasional sketch. Personally, I like the so-called Policeman’s Notebook… These often come with an elastic strap, pencil and pencil holder. I get rid of the pencil and holder – I don’t need those. And I don’t use the elastic strap to keep the notebook closed either! Instead, I use that to bookmark the page I’m on.

Got it. You mentioned some of the things you write down there… If I asked you to read out the last three things in your notebook, would you do that? And tell me why you made those notes?
Yes, of course! Well – maybe not literally: the last three things were to do with a magic trick… They’re complete gobbledegook out of context! But I’ve written down a turn of phrase I overheard… I also made a note about the similarity of the words ‘unarmed’ and ‘unharmed’! And I’ve asked myself a question: “How can I make use of a double-ended pencil?”

A pencil sharpened at both ends?
Yes, but more than that: a pencil that has different softnesses of lead at each end! The important thing there, Bill, being that I’m asking myself a question! We’ll come back to that… As regards why I made those notes: with the turn of phrase, I was curious about the etymology. But I also thought it might make a good name for a game. ‘Unarmed’ and ‘unharmed’ being similar I thought might come in handy! I once made a note about ‘threat’ and ‘treat’ being similar – that ended up being a fun bit of copy for a client a few years ago.

And the question? The pencil?
Well, as we’ll discuss, questions stimulate thinking! I really don’t know if that will come to anything. But, you know, when you just said, “a pencil sharpened at both ends”, I had an idea… One of the problems people have when they’re making notes at night is that they don’t want to switch the light on to write. A double-ended pencil might help solve that – it’s always the right way up.

Well, on that… You said you have a different system for nighttime?
Yes! At nighttime I suggest upscaling the pad size to A4. That’s because it’s quite tricky to make notes on a small page in the dark! Lewis Carroll had an incredibly intricate solution to that problem… It’s now known as nyctography – you can read about it here. However, I tend not to write huge volumes at night! In fact, I have a specific approach to nocturnal creativity. Rather than just note down whatever comes to mind, my nighttime notepad is for unconscious problem solving…

Unconscious problem solving?
Right. So about 20 minutes before I go to sleep, I write – at the top of an A4 pad – one of three things… Either the gist of a problem I’d like to solve, a question to which I need an answer, or a word that relates to something around which I’d like to have ideas. Then I give conscious thought to the topic before I go to sleep. When I wake up – either in the night, or the following morning – I often find I have ideas to write down…

Being in a drowsy, near-hypnopompic state at that moment, though, is the reason for using a much larger notepad! When I reach for it in a stupor, I can grab it very easily. My uncapped pen is clipped to the already open page. Then, when I scrawl out my thoughts, I have PLENTY of space! That’s important because few things are more frustrating than writing one note over another and discovering – when fully awake – that you have two completely illegible notes! And the idea about the double-ended pencil might be quite useful in those circumstances – anything to avoid switching on the light!

You also did an article on having ideas in the shower, didn’t you?! People can read that here. Is it worth repeating what you said about waterproof notebooks?
Absolutely. Studies show that up to 72% of people say they have their best ideas in the shower! So it makes absolute sense that you would want to make notes there. That’s particularly true if you head to the shower while thinking about the subject at the top of your A4 pad from the night before because you’ve further ‘primed’ your mind to generate ideas. The notebook I personally prefer in the shower is a small, completely waterproof ‘paper’ pad made by a Rite in the Rain.

Another solution is to have something mounted to the wall. A company called Aqua Boat manufactures a fantastic waterproof pad, for example… It comes with suction pads that you stick to a tiled surface! It also has a sucker to keep a pencil next to it. Both good options.

Before we get to the even more dull part of this…
Thank you, Bill! I was waiting for a shot! Ha!

Ha! You say you keep your notebooks? What do you with them once you’ve filled one up?
That’s a very intelligent question – who told you to ask that?! Before I answer, I’ll warn you that this might seem a bit nuts! After I’ve filled in a number of pages, I don’t take any chance that I will lose the notebook. So: every few days, I slavishly copy the small notebook up into a larger one – the Master Notebook!

You copy them up by hand?
I do! Because that’s an opportunity to review and reinforce the content. To extend my analogy of putting a dot in a dot-to-dot book ready to make connections, think of it like this… When I first make the note, I’m putting a little dot in place. When I then read the note back to myself before I copy it up, I’m making the dot a little bolder! As I physically copy it up, it gets bolder still. And this always fills me with huge confident that the idea is firmly logged in my brain. And weirdly, while I have a terrible memory for just about everything, I really know my way around those notebooks!

And what sort of book do you use for the Master Notebooks?
Oh, they’re much bigger books, with hard covers. It’s a brand called Red & Black… They live in a fireproof safe – stored separately from the little books. That way, I’m unlikely ever to lose everything I’ve ever jotted down! Worth adding, too, that – every so often – I take out the Master Notebooks and flick through them… Just refresh my memory on old ideas. Quite often, I find myself marrying something I wrote way-back-when with a brand-new thought – and feeling like those two thoughts were always meant to be together… As if a circuit’s been completed in my head.

Alright. I think we should move onto the more theoretical side of this – why notebooking works, for example… Why is it better to physically write than to make a recording on your phone? Or type ideas up?
Almost everyone that’s respected for habitual creativity writes in a notebook – and I mean physically with a pencil or pen. Because that does three things… Specifically, it lets you remember ideas; it helps you conceptualise information better and – crucially – it encourages your brain to have more ideas. So it offers real benefits…

And you said earlier about the kind of thing people could be writing in a notebook – but you’re at pains to say it could be anything…
Yes, because this is where some people tend to go a bit wrong, I think… They think they should only put fully formed ideas in the notebooks. But how often do you have a fully formed idea pop into your head?! So what I tend to remind people is that the entire human experience comes to us through our instincts, thoughts, dreams, feelings, senses and perceptions. In that respect, it’s helpful to think of a notebook as a way of journaling and stimulating your sense of curiosity! Use it to make notes on sensations, images, emotions, observations, incomplete thoughts… And questions, because questions are SO powerful…

In what way?
When your brain registers a question, it more or less goes on a quest for answers. For that reason, just ASKING yourself questions is a creative approach in itself! Everyone from Thomas Edison and Albert Einstein to Charles Darwin and Leonardo da Vinci kept a notebook… But question asking was a technique that Leonardo da Vinci used – aggressively, I think, rather than habitually… Now, arguably da Vinci is the most creative man of all time! Is it a coincidence that he had somewhere between 14,000 and 20,000 pages of notes?!

And his notebooks survive?
Not all of them, no… But from the pages that do, we know da Vinci’s notes are full of sketches, mirror writing, fables, riddles, jokes and puzzles… There are designs for stages, costumes, weapons, flying machines, furnishings… Notes on anatomy, botany, architecture, engineering, geography, map making, geology, painting, music, sculpture, astronomy and physics… And questions! We’ll put a link to the Victoria and Albert Museum website so people can check out their article on da Vinci’s notebooks here. In the meanwhile, there’s an extract of what da Vinci wrote about searching for answers:

“I roamed the countryside searching for answers to things I did not understand. Why shells existed on the tops of mountains along with the imprints of coral and plants and seaweed usually found in the sea…

Why thunder lasts a longer time than that which causes it, and why immediately on its creation the lightning becomes visible to the eye while thunder requires time to travel…

How the various circles of water form around the spot which has been struck by a stone and why a bird sustains itself in the air. These questions and other strange phenomena engaged my thought throughout my life.”

But are you saying it doesn’t matter if you never find the answer to a question?
Well, yes and no… If you think of your notebook as a tool to stimulate your curiosity, you can see why just asking questions helps. A person that asks questions is curious! And while I think of it, Albert Einstein felt that his sense of curiosity was his big secret, saying, “I have no special talent. I am only passionately curious.” For good measure, he also said, “The important thing is to not stop questioning. Curiosity has its own reason for existing.” But to your question: it profoundly helps if you do actively find answers because learning something you didn’t know has a physical effect on your brain…

A physical effect? How so?
Let me read a quote from a TEDTalk on neuroplasticity! That’ll wake you up! There’s a chap called Dr. Joe Dispenza; he’s the author of a book called Evolve Your Brain: The Science of Changing Your Mind. This sums it up perfectly:

“Every time you learn something new, you make a synaptic connection in your thinking brain… That’s what learning is: making connections. So every time you learn something new, your brain physically changes.”

You can’t really lose – whether you find an answer to the question or not…
Exactly. And we can probably wrap this up there, Bill! Unless you want to ask me what the most interesting object on my desk is…

Oh god, no. I’ve seen your desk. Too stressful for me; let’s leave it a mystery.

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