Just curious -- do many of you have a "hierarchy" of journals? I have disposable legal pads for scribbling out poorly formed ideas, hashing out the details etc., mini-moleskines for carrying around/beating up, doodling, and writing down potentially interesting but possibly stupid ideas to be hashed out later on the legal pads, and a high-end Epica for recording those concepts and ideas that turn out to be particularly interesting (this one fills up slowly).

I have to say I sort of like this system -- somehow I feel it kind of lends a justification to my fountain pen fetish, because at the end of the process I have something extremely nice and of great value to me (as well as a bunch of beat-up moleskines tracking the random directions I've explored along the way).

Anyone else have a system like this? Or an entirely different one, for that matter?

I have a hierarchy similar to yours. I carry small notebooks and an FP around for jotting down ideas. I then develop the ideas in a large notebook I keep beside my easy chair. (There is a Snorkel desk pen on the table next to the chair) The gussied-up screed is then copied with a dip pen and light-fast, water resistant ink into my journal.

Paddler

mine is more of a system than a heirarchy, i suppose. i use letter-sized legal pads for almost everything: composing drafts, taking down notes from the books i read for my research and during interviews and lectures and when i sit in seminars. then when the drafts are done i encode them into my compter and revise them while typing them up, and then print them out. the handwritten drafts then get filed into the appropriate folders. for further revisions, i just write onto the printouts of the drafts, and go back to the legal pad when i need to insert a larger block of text. when the draft has been revised enough, all the drafts and previous printouts get filed in folders.

some notes i transfer to microsoft word and then file away, some i just file away.

i journal a lot, but not to talk about myself or my day, but to help me get a clearer perspective on things when a dilemma or quandary develops in connection with something that i am writing. i have separate notebooks for this, all letter-sized, that i go back to when a similar dilemma arises, just to remind myself of how i dealt with it.

i do have a pocket squared moleskine, but these are just for quite and short notes while on the go.

I have started using A5 lined or plain pads for everything. The only heirarchy is where they get filed in my planner/journal/notes/life binder.