The Range Book

I'm an analyst. Not just as in personality type I mean, literally, that I'm a data analyst. There are patterns anywhere if you care enough to look for them. It's all a matter of tracking it, manipulating it into a way that makes sense.

People who do precision shooting professionally keep something called a 'range book'. They write down all the details for that day - from weather to ammunition, even including sample targets - so that you won't lose what you learned to time.

The past year I've been keeping a 'range book' for my riding, and while I occasionally forget to update it, typically I write in it for every single ride. I now have hundreds of pages detailing how dressage tests felt, what saddle/girth/pad combination I used, how trailering went, and cataloging days off.

I started with the Equestrian Journal.

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I used this most of the time I was riding Runkle. There were a lot of things I loved about it.

• It had monthly, weekly, and daily pages for breaking down goals.
• The daily pages had prompts to keep what you detailed consistent.
• The weekly pages had a space at the end where your trainer could supply input as well.
• There was plenty of space to catalog more than just riding; I also included details on shoeing cycles, vet appointments, and alternative therapies. I found this really helpful that I could quickly and easily look at when things were done and be consistent.
• There weren't any dates written anywhere, so it was easy to tailor it to whatever year it was. It also didn't leave huge swathes of blank pages if you forgot to write for a few days (or like... a month).

My biggest complaint was the way the pages were physically in the book. The monthly pages were all at the front, followed by weekly pages, and then the daily pages. I wanted to have it set up more like a planner, where it had the month followed by a weekly planner, then the daily breakdown for that week, followed by the next weekly planner. However that could take away from the flexibility.

Because of that I switched to a small, plain, graph paper notebook. My weekly planner is usually a 4 page print out that I keep stapled together in my trunk and the monthly lookup is a calendar that hangs at my cube at work.

I thought about trying to design my own but then went back and saw the equestrian journal had done this:

That's a disc journal. With refillable pages. That I can put in any order I want.

SOLD.