I stumbled across this blog post yesterday, and I rather liked this paragraph.

This misses the point of notebooks entirely. When you need to write something down or draw something, the thing you reach for should be your notebook. If you pause for even a fraction of a second to consider whether the information or idea or whatever it is “deserves” to be in the notebook, then the thing you’re reaching for isn’t really a notebook at all, it’s a canvas for more fully formed ideas. Because notebooks aren’t supposed to be works of art; they’re supposed to be a mess.

I have a selection of notebooks on the go at the moment, and also have a shelf of untouched notebooks that I seem to be saving for some, currently unknown, purpose. I always feel a bit intimidated at the prospect of starting a new notebook. So much so, that I wrote a haiku about it at one point, just so that I could write that haiku on the first page of a notebook and therefore break through that barrier.

Intimidation:
the first page of a notebook
demands perfection

I might have to start doing that again and get some of my notebook backlog into everyday use.