When Elise Blaha Cripe announced her new Get to Work Book, I nearly leaped through my computer screen to grab it.
Elise is a craft blogger, but unlike many products created by craft bloggers for their audience, the Get to Work Book has no colour in it. No trendy flourescent pops of pizzazz, no doodads to add to the feeling of it all. No assumption that we creative women need everything around us, including our tools, to be bedazzled and awash in rainbows in order for us to tolerate getting to work.
No. The wire-bound book is printed in greyscale, sandwiched between thick, matte kraft-board covers. Will I take some paint to it someday? Maybe. But I love the no-nonsense feel of the thing. It’s not about making work palatable, as if anyone who decides to create a job for themselves is disinclined to do the tedious bits; it’s about getting shit done.
And it is quite possibly the most expensive non-leather-bound day-planner I’ve ever seen. I forked over my cash, plus shipping to Canada from the U.S., without hesitation.
The book arrived just in time for its start date of July 1st, and since yesterday was Canada Day and I spent the day splitting my time between lounging on the beach and doing house chores, I finally cracked it open this morning. And I do believe I am in love.
The book marries the open-endedness of a bullet-journal notebook with the structure of my favourite academic planners from back in the day.
I’ll write more after I’ve used it for a while for a more detailed look, but for now, I’m confident I’m going to love this book. I think I’m going to love it hard. It’s possible I already do.
Did you get a Get to Work Book? What do you think of it? Are you using it as a bullet journal? Any tips or hacks?
PS It looks like the July-start books have sold out (congratulations, Elise!), but they’re taking pre-orders for the January-start version.
PPS Though I once moderated a panel Elise was on, I’m not affiliated with this product in any way. All gushing is entirely due to notebook nerdery.
Well, the selling out made the decision of whether to buy this for me, I guess. (Delayed gratification can be a problem…) And thanks to my new academic schedule, I don’t think I want to grab the January edition. I think I’ll just modify my bullet journaling so it fits better with the way this works, and then snap it up ASAP when the 2016—2017 edition comes out!