New year, new notebooks? Yes to the new year (hello 2024!) but new notebooks? It’s a continuation of the same for me, which is a good place to be, plus a reimagining of an old standby that has me ready to tackle all that lies ahead this year.
Two products worked perfectly for me in 2023, and therefore I am happy to keep them going. I was successful in filling out the first full year in my 2023-2027 Hobonichi 5 Year Journal, only skipping a handful of days throughout the year. It was a habit that formed quickly, as I looked forward to updating the previous day’s activities the following morning. And on the occasions that I was away from home for an extended period of time, it was easy to catch back up on the few days I missed.
One change I made early on with this journal is to not log the pen and ink I was using on the opposite page. That seemed like a good idea at first, but looking at how little I used the right side of the page, it seemed wasteful. A friend mentioned they plan on using the right-hand pages to add years to the journal - up to four more years in the case of this layout - and while I have many years before I get to that point, I will keep that option open.
My first full year in the PLOTTER Narrow was a rousing success as well. This planner was used far more than the Hobonichi Journal, which is by design. I used the Weekly layout for a broad overview of what my week looked like, the standard grid pages for notes and lists, and I added in a batch of my favorite Bank Paper to the rear section for random pen tests and handout pages.
The only section I rarely used in my PLOTTER were the Monthly pages, but I plan on giving them another go this year and seeing what I can do to make them useful for me.
Towards the end of the year, I added in a Field Notes for a more easily pocketable, and portable, notebook for random thoughts, ideas, and scratch paper. The PLOTTER could be used for this (it does travel with me,) but I found the simplicity of a pocket notebook to be unsurpassed, once again.
The one frustration point in my current setup is with my Life Noble A5 Hardbound Notebook. It is an almost perfect notebook for me as far as style, layout, and performance goes, but I found myself rarely using it. My frustrations with it come from not knowing why I’m frustrated with it. I couldn’t design a better notebook for my own use, but I rarely choose to use it.
That brings me to my one new addition for the start of 2024: my William Hannah is back in the game! In its former life, it filled the role that my PLOTTER currently does. I like the PLOTTER format and size better for my planning needs, so I turned my William Hannah into my paper sampling notebook. Using a different hole punch than for my PLOTTER, I added in as many different paper types as I could to it. This made them easily accessible at my desk for testing, and portable to pen shows for others to try.
While I will miss this setup, I had an epiphany last week: this would make for a perfect project notebook. I removed all of the testing pages, and clamped them with this Medium Penco Clampy Clip, and added in the basic dot grid pages from William Hannah that I had ordered previously.
What this will allow is the proper organization for project plans and ideas. I can’t believe I am saying this, but I think this was my primary hangup with the bound A5 notebook. I want to project plan in it, but how do I allocate space for that? Is this a two-page project, or ten? When does one project start, and the next one end? I’m frozen by the inefficiency that this would introduce to the A5 notebook, and therefore it sat, mostly unused.
With the William Hannah, the pages are portable. Add a page here, remove a page there. The section dividers are movable, too, or I could simply mark the edges with washi tape or flags if I so desired. Flexibility, in this case, is peace of mind.
Will it work for me? Ask me in a year, but I’m anxious to get it going. If nothing else, thinking about overarching concepts such as allowing myself to set aside a product that doesn’t work, or repurposing something I already own into something new, has been a fun experiment. Let’s see how it plays out.
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