If you’ve ever bought a planner, a bullet journal kit or a fancy app to get more creative, and ended up with a nicely organized pile of nothing, this one’s for you. A YouTuber named Perry Daniels has a much simpler idea: get a notebook, put everything in it, and then look at it often.
He named it the Grail method.
Why It’s Called the Grail Method
The name comes from the notebook in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. Henry Jones Sr.’s Grail diary holds a lifetime of research on the Holy Grail: notes, sketches, photos and mementos from his travels, all crammed between the pages. He carries it everywhere and keeps going back through it for clues he missed. Perry made a replica of it, and that’s the prop you see in the background of his video.
That’s the whole idea, and Perry says he didn’t invent it. He points to people like Leonardo da Vinci, Mark Twain, Charles Darwin and Isaac Newton, who kept notebooks to plant the seeds of their ideas. He just gave it a name and a short list of guidelines.
The Method in Four Parts
Everything goes in one book
A thought, a quote, a sketch, a half-idea you can’t explain yet.
Tuck in what you find
Loose things go in the pages too: a ticket stub, a photo, a scrap of paper with a line you liked, a headline torn out of the newspaper.
Carry it, and flip through it often
This is the step Perry calls the most important. Take the notebook with you, and whenever you have a spare few minutes, dip in anywhere and read.
No to-do lists
This is the one rule. Keep the journal for creativity.
Why a Messy Notebook Works
Perry spent years trying productivity systems: bullet journals, Notion templates, second brains and the rest. His complaint is friction. Every idea needed a decision about where it belonged, and when he didn’t know, the idea went nowhere and vanished. With one book and no rules about where things go, there’s nothing to decide.
He also points to da Vinci’s notebooks, which run to thousands of pages and are, by his account, a jumble. Da Vinci even says in one of them that his collection has no order and that he’ll surely repeat himself. The point Perry takes from that: a notebook you’re afraid to use does you no good.
The messiness isn’t the end of it, though. It’s the flipping back through that does the work. When a sketch sits beside a quote, and a quote beside a story idea, they start to mix. Perry’s view is that when ideas live in separate files and folders, you lose those connections.
Creativity Is Sowing, Productivity Is Reaping
In his follow-up, “Your creativity never left. You just got distracted,” Perry goes deeper into why this works when so many systems don’t.
His big idea is a farming one. Creativity is the sowing and productivity is the reaping.
He also talks about how creativity felt easier when we were kids, because nobody was asking it to pay the bills. A notebook where nothing is expected of your ideas gives some of that back. His last piece of advice is patience, and trusting your own instincts about what interests you.
One more thing worth knowing: Perry says the Grail method isn’t for productivity, and it doesn’t replace your calendar or your to-do list. It just comes first.
How to Start Your Own Grail Diary
You don’t need much, which is the whole point. Here’s how we’d begin, using Perry’s ideas.
- Pick a book and start on the first page. Don’t wait for the perfect setup. Date the first page if you like, and go.
- Write the small stuff. The odd line you overheard, a color you liked, a question you can’t shake. Skip the editing in your head.
- Keep a glue stick or tape handy. Clippings and photos get stuck in. A little tape goes a long way.
- Read back a few pages before bed. Five minutes with last month’s notes will turn up something you forgot you thought.
- Pull the good ones out. When an idea keeps coming back, give it its own project: a draft, a painting, a song, a blank document. That’s the reaping, as Perry puts it.
- When it’s full, start the next one. Put the old book in a box. Perry says he finds himself reviewing the old ones less and less, and that’s fine.
And it’s still your notebook, so make up your own rules. Perry says himself that his no-to-do-list rule is his own addition, and you’re free to ignore it.
Which Journal Makes a Good Grail Diary?
Perry says the method needs “no special apps or notebooks,” so any notebook will do. But the Grail diary in the movie is a worn leather book, and a Grail diary gets a lot of use: it’s carried everywhere, stuffed with things, opened a hundred times. So we’d lean toward a sturdy one. These are the ones we’d pick.
The Nepali Traveler
The one that looks the most like the movie’s diary. Its wrap-around cover and leather closure keep everything you tuck inside safely shut, and its 96 handmade lokta pages give you plenty of room to fill.
The Everest Explorer
A leather tie strap holds it closed around your clippings. It comes in four sizes: the large ones suit a desk, where you might paste in a lot, and the small one fits a bag or jacket pocket, so you can carry it everywhere.
The Companion Heritage Deluxe Pockets
Perry fills a notebook, puts it in a box and starts a new one. At 4 × 6 inches with 24 pages, the Pocket slips into a back pocket and fills up fast, so you may want a few.
Whichever you choose, our guide to pens on lokta paper will help you pick something to write with. We like gel pens, and ballpoints and pencils work well too.
Try It for a Month
Pick a notebook, put everything in it, and look back through it now and then. Skip the lists and the setup. Before you know it, you might just develop that creative spark.
