You’ve started Notebooking. Great!

You’ve found your time, your place, your notebook, and your pen (or pencil). Even better!

You’re a week in and ready to start assessing your new Notebooking habit. Don’t you dare!

Yes, it’s possible that within a week, you’re discovering things you like and don’t like about your writing. Or you’re regretting choosing an unlined notebook. Or you’re wishing you could add something you didn’t think of to your content list. We still caution you to wait.

There are a few reasons that you shouldn’t start your assessment until you’ve done a minimum of 21 days. ¹

21 Days builds a habit

The science is out on how long it takes to build a habit. The truth is, it probably takes longer than 21 days. But it is certain that it takes at least this long. If you start tinkering with a habit before it is formed, you’re asking for trouble before you get started.

21 Days lets you experience your ‘rut’

It’s likely that somewhere in the first 3 weeks, you’re going to run into a problem or two. It’s hard to assess both the positives and negatives without going through a little bit of growing pains. You can’t solve a challenge until you’ve experienced it.

21 Days will use your whole Content List

Inevitably, some items on your Content List will seem like a better idea before you actually start writing. Once you start, you’ll discover that some aren’t as easy as you thought. But a difficult topic isn’t a worthless topic. Some of your best Notebooking will only come after you force yourself to notebook a difficult subject. 21 days keeps you from eliminating these valuable topics prematurely.

21 Days is long enough to develop patterns

If you’re going to make a mistake ² once, you’re going to make it again. It’s easier to identify these problems after you’ve made them a few times. You don’t want to let your weak areas sit for years, but they need to sit long enough for you to discover them.

You can see there’s lots of reasons to wait 21 days to do your first assessment, but the number 1 reason to wait 21 days is…

21 Days is a tried and true method

All the nerds have tried Notebooking several times before finding the right formula. We’ve failed to assess, and we’ve assessed too quickly. We’ve found that waiting 21 days is the perfect balance of “quick enough to keep the excitement” and “long enough to have continuity”. ³ In fact, it’s worthwhile to assess every 3-4 weeks until you know exactly what you want your notebook to be.

1. Really, the most valuable assessment will come at the end of your first notebook, but it’s likely you’ll run out of momentum before that happens, so we recommend the 21-day mark as the best time.
2. It’s your notebook. A mistake is anything you don’t like having in your notebook!
3. After all, do you really want your Notebooking to be herky jerky? That sounds awful!