What got me to use nice notebooks with abandon was switching to fountain pens, which require thicker paper not to bleed, and I did that because I'm left-handed and was tired of all the problems that come with that.

Some problems left-handers need to deal with:

    * smearing,
    * awkward hand positions to avoid smearing,
    * needing to press harder to get lines,
    * ripping paper because I'm pushing instead of pulling the pen to write, and
    * pens unscrewing themselves, leading to cracking and thread stripping