re: I Started a "Dirt Notebook" (Beautiful Ones Hold Back My Bad Ideas)

16 Jul 2026 #misc

Since 2024, I’ve kept ideapads to capture bad ideas.

Back then, by pure chance, I found the concept of becoming an idea machine. That’s writing 10 bad ideas about anything. Every. Single. Day.

That habit has helped me write books and keep my creative juices flowing. It’s been so helpful that I made it Idea #5 in my book, 10 Surprisingly Simple Ideas That Changed My Life And Could Change Yours Too. That book itself started as a 10-idea list.

But before starting to write bad ideas, I faced the question of where to write them.

Those days, a friend came from France on her vacation. She brought me a Mona Lisa notebook as a gift, likely from the Louvre.

It was simply too beautiful to fill it with my bad ideas. Afraid of “damaging” it, I stapled recycled paper into an ideapad. A notebook small enough to only write 10 lines, one per idea.

I went through the same experience Kwist shared in this post:

“In an attempt to change [keeping clean and tidy notebooks], I’ve started a dedicated “dirt notebook” now…I’m using an old, empty notebook that I found lying around the other day. The paper quality is pretty bad; every kind of fountain pen ink bleeds through so I’m forced to use cheap ballpoints and it doesn’t open flat, which makes it hard to take clean-looking notes in.”

Don’t let a beautiful notebook or perfect pens restrain your ideas. The roughest paper ignites your best ideas.