DESIGNED FOR FOUNDERS

Every legend kept a notebook.Yours thinks back.

Think out loud. Compass turns every thought into a clean note, then shows you the patterns you keep circling.

THE NOTEBOOKS

Before the breakthrough, the notebook.

Inventors, scientists and founders have thought on paper for five centuries. A few of the pages we still talk about.

1489

Leonardo da Vinci

Painter and engineer 1452–1519

About 7,000 pages of his notebooks survive, many of them written in mirror script.

After the aerial screw, Manuscript B, about 1489

1733

Benjamin Franklin

Printer and publisher 1706–1790

Kept a little book with a page for each of 13 virtues, and marked each day's faults with a black dot.

After the chart of virtues in his Autobiography

1837

Charles Darwin

Naturalist 1809–1882

In 1837 he sketched a branching tree in his notebook and wrote two words above it: I think.

After Notebook B, page 36, 1837

1843

Ada Lovelace

Mathematician 1815–1852

Her notes ran longer than the paper they annotated. Note G showed how a machine could compute Bernoulli numbers.

After the table in Note G, 1843

1858

Florence Nightingale

Nurse and statistician 1820–1910

Turned Crimean War death records into her famous 1858 rose diagram, then opened a nursing school in 1860.

After the diagram of the causes of mortality, 1858

1879

Thomas Edison

Inventor 1847–1931

Left more than 3,000 notebooks from his labs, about 280 pages each.

After his lamp sketches, 1879 to 1880

1898

Marie Curie

Physicist and chemist 1867–1934

Her notebooks from the radium years still carry traces of radioactivity. The originals can be consulted only under a strict protocol.

After her laboratory notebooks, 1897 to 1900

TODAY

The habit outlived the quill.

Plenty of today's best-known founders still think on paper.

  1. Oprah Winfrey

    Harpo Productions

    Has kept a journal since she was 15.

  2. Richard Branson

    Virgin Group

    Keeps a notebook on hand almost everywhere he goes.

  3. Sara Blakely

    Spanx

    Carried dozens of the same kind of notebook while building Spanx, to catch her ideas.

  4. Bill Gates

    Microsoft

    Took Think Weeks alone in a cabin to read, think and write.

  5. Melanie Perkins

    Canva

    Journals to clarify her thinking, usually in the evening.

  6. Jeff Bezos

    Amazon

    Built Amazon's meetings around six-page memos, read in silence first.

  7. Diane von Furstenberg

    DVF

    Starts a new diary every January 1 and chooses her words for the year.

  8. Brian Chesky

    Airbnb

    Keeps a daily journal and writes himself notes every day.

Sources

Their notebooks never wrote back.

Yours does.

YOUR TURN

Every note you don't capture is a pattern you'll never see.

Join other world-class founders who believe notes should work harder.

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