Index Card Bleachers

I operated a small business for several years and wanted to have a paper based system to keep me organized. I settled on 3 x 5 index cards as the best size and material. With them I worked out a way to  carry my calendar, task list and note taking tools all the time.


I checked different brands of cards and carrying systems. Mead index cards were and are my first choice with Oxford a close second. I used Scan/Plan pocket packs, binder clips, coin envelopes and Moleskine pocket organizers to carry the cards. A Fisher space pen or Parker Jotter with a space pen cartridge let me write on them at any angle.

When I got back to my home office I spread the cards across my index card bleachers. I had designed the bleachers and a friend had made them from scrap pieces of oak from his woodworking. The bleachers let me keep eight days' work in front of me.

With this simple system I kept on top of my clients' and my own projects. I made lists, notes and sketches in meetings, on planes, and at stop lights without opening my laptop or worrying if my phone was charged.


My current job requires managing more than ten tasks for several clients every day. The index card system has evolved to let me do that in a format that I will cover in a future post.

Multicolor Pens - The Rotring Quad



Multicolor pens are more publicly acceptable than multicolor pencils today. New styles and ink formulas are still being developed. They are great for taking notes and emphasizing certain words or lines with different colors of writing, underlining and circling.

The Rotring Quad in the picture got me to switch from multicolor pencils to multicolor pens in the mid-1990s. It has black, blue and red pens and a 0.5 mm pencil. I carried it in the Eagle Planner I used then. The Eagle was and is a modification of the Franklin Planner. It is mainly different in having die cut pages to let you find specific days quickly. I used the Rotring's colors to indicate the first, second and third priority items in my To-Do lists and the key appointments on the daily calendar pages.

When I started pulling it out for fast note taking in meetings the slight but constant rattling of the different cartridges in the barrel got annoying. I put it back in the planner’s pen loop and used it for lists and appointments for years, through several sets of blue and red refills.

Buying the Rotring Quad started me back into using multicolor pens because it demonstrated that multicolors could look good and not nerdy. Then the utility of the multiple colors and fine point pencil in a single tool won me over to other multicolor pens that edged closer to overt nerdiness. I keep this one in my collection and regularly rotate it into use to recall the pre-smartphone efficiency of multipurpose pens and multipurpose planners.

Multicolor Pencils

Multicolor pencils are not very popular today because they are very geeky, even more so than multicolor pens. The Norma and Fend pencils use 0.46 inch or 1.1 mm lead just like the old Scriptos and the still available Autopoint pencils. Compared to even 0.7 and 0.9 mm pencils these can take a lot of writing or drawing pressure without breaking.

All of the pictured pencils are at least 50 years old. The top two are Norma pencils, once available at any stationery store. The bottom three are Fend pencils acquired through eBay. The lead advance spurs on the Fends are easier on the hand when writing.

If you come across one of these or an old Scripto you can still get 1.1 mm lead for them from Autopointinc.com in black, blue, red and green for your drawing and doodling fun. Also, Roger Russell at Roger-Russell.com has a great web page about Norma pencils.

Writing Tools

I have been fascinated by writing tools and the surfaces on which to use them since fourth grade when I got a Norma multicolor pencil and started trying it on different types of paper. Since then I have collected a lot of pencils and pens, notebooks, pads and cards to try out and use. 

My current tools include Parker Jotters with Fisher Space Pen fine point blue and red cartridges, a lot of Uniball, Pilot and BIC ballpoint and rollerball and gel pens, Lamy and Waterman modern and Wearever old fountain pens, Uniball, Pentel, antique Norma/Fend, old Scripto and wood-cased pencils. I use them on ruled pads and Moleskine notebooks and loose paper and index cards in Circa and Rollabind bound notebooks and on large and small clipboards.


All of these tools and paper are fun to collect and use to communicate and to try to stay organized.