I had the wonderful good fortune to chat to John Paul Flintoff, author of How To Change The World and A Modest Book About How To Make An Adequate Speech (could there be a better combination of book titles?), on a zoom call. To my surprise, he generously took the time to show me how to fold a piece of A4 paper into an 8-page booklet, or “signature” that will fit inside the smallest of pockets.

 

It was a privilege bordering on embarrassment to have a best-selling author show me how to fold paper, but in many ways, it was like being taught to sit still by a zen master. John Paul uses this booklet in all manner of wonderful ways, to note, sketch and jot down thoughts. He then even stitches them together, using a needle and thread, to see what flicking through a book like that might feel like.

 

He knows much, much more about putting a book together than I do, but the process of always having a booklet handy to jot down something can be valuable for all of us. For example, we can use them for tracking our week. We could track our spending, our saving, our great ideas, our meditation thoughts or our mantras to remember or as they occur to us, or even our resistance to temptations.

 

I can’t tell you how to fold the paper like he did, because I struggle to remember myself, but it really only involves three folds and one small cut. If you look on youtube, you will find some videos that show you how to do it in less than a minute, and there will be your notebook.

 

What’s even better, it will be one you made, so it will mean more to you and it should have cost nothing. More value and money saved!

 

Once you have your booklet, you can label it “My Zen Tracker” or anything you fancy. Perhaps “An Even Littler Book of Zen Money” . You could give it a front cover, and then label the seven days of the week after it, or start on the front with a weekday, and save the back cover for a gathering together of the week.

 

My favourite thing to do is draw an ensō, on the front, symbolising both simplicity and infinity – although I should confess I don’t draw them nearly as well as Soo, who made the ones illustrating this book.

 

Making the drawing is an act of meditation and intention itself, and it reminds me of that whenever I look at it. It also looks like a zero, which reminds me how much I should be spending!