Noted!

It is only upon writing a table of contents for your lab notebook that you can truly appreciate how much your lab notebook skills suck.  Yeeeesh.

I have a fierce appreciation for a good lab notebook, the product of years of lab notebook incompetence.  As a complete lab novice in undergrad, a well-meaning but distracted postdoc handed me a handsome blue hardcover book and informed me that this was my notebook.  A notebook?  For me?  Why, thank you!  I proceeded to take the worst notes of all time over the course of the summer.  Really, it was my calculations and emotional ranting book.  After a few months, the postdoc scolded me for my borderline illegible notes.  I was (in my mind, justifiably) peeved.  It was my notebook!  Who cared if anyone else could read it?  I could!

(I probably couldn't, not now, anyway.  My rotation era notes were absolutely baffling to me this afternoon, and I'm doing very similar experiments then and now.  Eeeesh.  I really hope no one needed my notes for my undergrad thesis, because I'm certain they were not even a little bit better.)

We spent a class in one of my seminars going over how to keep a good lab notebook.  The professor repeatedly apologized to us for being boring, but I was thrilled.  THIS was what I needed, and had been lacking.  

I'm not going to say that my lab notebook is perfect (it is still somewhat disorganized, and I often forget to write out the purpose and conclusions), but it's a work in progress and I'm proud that I've been able to evolve.

For anyone who is interested (probably very few), here are my personal Notebook Commandments.  Yes, I did print out a copy and post it in my notebook.

1) Write in black ballpoint pen.
2) Start every experiment with a statement of objective, purpose, and plan.
3) Take notes on materials used (lot number, grade, sources: I am NOTORIOUSLY bad at this.)
4) Each repeat of an experiment should be written up separately, but you can refer back to previous ones if nothing has changed
5) State the conclusions
6) Record each experiment on consecutive pages (again, bad: it can be hard to predict how much space you'll need for an experiment, and I often do more than one experiment simultaneously)
7) Draw a single line through incorrect entries.  Draw a single line through unused spaces and sign/date it.  (This is so you can't fudge your notebook later with added data.)
8) Someone else should be able to follow your work.
9) Tape in all loose papers to your notebook.
10) Consider keeping a separate binder for supplemental materials and cross-referencing it as needed.