My Notebook Ecosystem

📚 Welcome to the jungle.

Daniela

Jun 28, 2025

∙ Paid

The Concept of a Notebook Ecosystem

is best explained by

Petya K. Grady

of A Reading Life:

“A notebook ecosystem refers to the interconnected collection of physical and/or digital notebooks that a person deliberately curates to serve different aspects of their intellectual, creative, and personal life. Like a natural ecosystem where diverse species fulfill distinct roles while contributing to a balanced whole, a thoughtfully designed notebook ecosystem assigns specific functions to different notebooks (journaling, planning, idea collection, etc.) that complement one another and collectively support the individual's thinking, creativity, and productivity.”
—
Petya K. Grady

Petya K. Grady’s Post on her Notebook Ecosystem⤵

A reading life

Issue 116: My notebook ecosystem (as a book nerd)

Keeping a notebook is how I make sense of the world — and myself within it. It’s an act of memory, a gesture of hope, and sometimes, survival. A good notebook becomes a confidante, a thinking partner, a container for all that might otherwise slip through the cracks. The touch and smell and sound of pen on paper draw me out of my head and into the present moment — a rare and necessary thing for someone who lives so much in thought. Some days, the only evidence that I existed at all is the ink I left behind…

3 months ago · 550 likes · 121 comments

One of my favorite ecosystems,

to study (literal), is that of the tropical rainforest. While revisiting my childhood literature collection for the last post (The Klutz Books that Raised Me), I also flipped through another Scholastic book series: my Magic School Bus books. These illustrated books chronicle the chaotic yet informative adventures of Ms. Frizzle and her class on a number of scientific field trips on subjects such as: hurricanes, outer space, the human body, the ocean floor, and rainforests.

A photo from my trip to the Peruvian Amazon in 2017.

It was because of this book, and the accompanying computer game (The Magic School Bus Explores the Rainforest), that I was so prepared for my trip to the Peruvian Amazon in my adulthood. Hours of reading the book and playing the game ensured I was well versed in the various layers of the tropical rainforest ecosystem, the climate, its inhabitants, and how they all interact with each other in one of the richest, most biodiverse environments in the world.

I currently use six notebooks simultaneously, and each one has a different shape, type of paper, or format intended to serve a different purpose. Some notebooks have symbiotic relationships with others. Some notebooks I depend on regularly, while others are designated as special projects, visited sparingly, but serving an indispensable role in the environment all the same. Let’s explore my unique notebook ecosystem, Magic School Bus style:

Keep reading with a 7-day free trial

Subscribe to Journaling Dan to keep reading this post and get 7 days of free access to the full post archives.