Prepare for the New Year! Take 10% Off All Planners and Diaries, Automatically Applied

Are you like me, spending this week getting organized for the close of 2021 and the start of 2022? Do your planners need a refresh? From today through Sunday, Jan. 2, take 10% off all planners, dated (2022) and undated, in the T.G.S. Curated Shop, including offerings from Midori, Traveler’s Company, Field Notes, and Stalogy. No coupon code is needed, as the discount will automatically be applied at checkout. Enjoy the last week of 2021, stay healthy, and best wishes for 2022!

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Workflows Update: Why I'm Choosing an Undated Planner for 2021

A few weeks ago I wrote about how pretty much all of my work “systems” broke down in 2020. Working from home full time revealed the ugly downside of working analog in a tight space: paper, lot’s of it, and not the good kind. Rather, I found myself overwhelmed with what I call “junk paper”, such as copies of memos, e-mails, letters, etc. that I tended to print out to read, mark up, and never use again.

My work circumstances also revealed a lot of pointless redundancies. For one think, I’ve realized that it probably makes very little sense for me to keep a traditional paper planner. I have far too many appointments, tasks, and reminders that I need to manage on a daily basis for it to be practical. Given that so much comes in through e-mail, it’s more efficient for me to manage these types of tasks electronically rather than transcribing entries back and forth between my phone and a planner.

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That said, I don’t want to give up planning on paper entirely. The value of sitting down to write out your primary tasks and goals can’t be understated, yet I don’t need to do it every day, or even every week. Instead, I tend to lean most on this technique when I’m overwhelmed and need to prioritize. An undated planner offers the flexibility I need without having to worry about “wasting” blank days and weeks in a planner that uses a dated format. Used this way, the undated planner may even last me for more than a year.

Favorite Undated Planner Options

Fortunately, undated planners have surged in popularity over the past few years, and you now have multiple options when looking for something that meets your needs. Today, I’ll take a look at a few different options.

1. Write Notepads Weekly Planner. This landscape spiral-bound notebook offers a large, week-on-two-pages format that offers plenty of space to manage tasks and even schedule your days down to the hour if that’s how you’d prefer to use it. I have one of these set aside for 2021 and plan to rely on it heavily, as Write Notepads paper is among the most versatile for all types of writing instruments, and landscape notebooks fit perfectly beneath a keyboard.

2. Traveler’s Notebook. You can’t understate the versatility of the Traveler’s Notebook system. Perfect for those looking for a highly customizable, compact notebook, TRC (“Traveler’s Company”) sells a range of undated planner inserts that you can include alongside standard notebook refills. My favorites include the Weekly “Free Diary” (a week-on-two-pages layout), but there are daily and monthly versions as well.

3. Field Notes Undated Weekly Planner. Prefer something less fussy, durable, and ultra-convenient? Field Notes’ simple 56-Week undated planner features a spiral binding and a sturdy chipboard cover. It’s also arguably the most portable of anything on this list.

4. BaronFig Mastermind Week Pad. Don’t care about saving your planners for posterity? Baron Fig’s weekly planning take on the standard Mastermind Desk Pad (another personal favorite) comes three pads to a pack for just $9 - a full year’s worth of weekly planning. Once you finish a week, tear it off and start fresh! I’ve used these periodically at work, but my job usually requires something with a larger format and more writing space.

5. Midori MD Notebook Journal (A5 Dot Grid). For the ultimate in unstructured, undated planning, you can always go the Bullet Journal route, and this Midori A5 Notebook Journal with blank dot grid pages and the place for the date in the upper right-hand corner will serve you well. Of course, you can substitute your own favorite brand of journal or preferred ruling, if dot grid isn’t your thing.

Where to Buy

You can find some of the options discussed above currently in stock at the T.G.S. Curated Shop. Others can be found at our sponsor Vanness Pens, or purchased directly from BaronFig. In addition to shopping for yourself during the waning months of 2020 (yay!), planner-style notebooks make great gifts for stationery enthusiasts and professionals during the ongoing holiday season.

My Jibun Techo: The Planner Geek's Planner

I’ve used a lot of planners, ranging from the more structured (Filofax A5, Traveler’s Notebook Week-per-Page) to the completely unstructured (Hobonichi Techo, Bullet Journal). Since my planning needs are pretty flexible, I can usually make any system work, but that doesn’t stop me from obsessively searching for the perfect planner, does it? Well, I think I found it this past year, and it’s a planner that receives surprisingly little attention for all its versatility.

The Jibun Techo is made by Japanese stationery conglomerate Kokuyo, which makes a wide range of products including excellent notebooks that are extremely ink-friendly. The Jibun Techo is no exception. I’m not 100% sure the planner contains Tomoe River paper, but it feels and performs like Tomoe River, and I can’t discern much of a difference if it’s something different. The Hobonichi series of planners gets recommended because they’re the default “fountain pen friendly” planner, but now that I’ve used both the Hobonichi and the Jibun Techo, I can shill for both in good conscience.

Note: Before I get into the “nuts and bolts” portion of this review, you’ll have to excuse me for showing you mostly blank pages, especially on the weekly layout. Given the nature of my day job (attorney), I obviously can’t publish detailed entries. Wherever possible, I’ve tried to provide an example of how I use this planner, but sometimes I can’t use a detailed photo of a completed page. Thanks for understanding!

Basic Planner Functions

The core of the Jibun Techo is what I would call a “classic planner,” broken down into two sections: a monthly layout section and a weekly layout section, each of which takes up two pages. While the primary language is Japanese, most of the headers are also show in English, so this becomes a non-issue for me. After the first couple of days I barely noticed anymore.

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As you can see, I use the monthly layout for my blog’s editorial calendar and other TGS-related planning, such as pen show travel. On the left, there’s a column for monthly lists, tracking, to-dos, or however else you want to use it.

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The weekly planner section is a bit more complex, though the great thing about the Jibun Techo is that you can make things as simple or as complicated as you want. Each week takes up two facing pages, with a seven-day vertical layout. I absolutely love how Saturday and Sunday don’t get short shrift - regardless of whether I’m “working” or not, I have plenty going on over the weekends to the point where I need to be able to track a full day of time and/or appointments. For each day, 3/4 of the column can be used for scheduling, with most space provided for 7am to midnight. The remaining 1/4 can be used to make notes, track your mood (or note good/bad/blah things that happened that day), and even record the weather. Someone who consistently takes advantage of all the Jibun Techo’s tracking functions will have a very thorough record of their year.

Dedicated Logging or Tracking Pages

The Jibun Techo shines with tracking, logging, and various forms of list-making. In addition to the monthly and weekly “classic planner” pages, which provide space for tracking various things, the Jibun Techo contains a more open-ended, versatile section that I use for tracking progress on work projects, exercise, reading, etc. I’ve been extremely inconsistent using this throughout the year, but at times it’s been absolutely critical to my efforts to maintain my sanity.

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Want to track something? Exercise? Food? Time? Reading? The Jibun Techo provides dedicated space. Also, notice that the logging and monthly layouts go all the way into March of the following year, if you need to plan ahead.

“Extra” Pages

For lack of a better term, I’ll refer to the rest of the Jibun Techo as “extras,” because they’re not essential for me but still offer a nice convenient space to keep track of running lists and other thoughts. The two sections I’ve used the most are the “Book List” to track my reading (though I will probably barely manage to fill up one side, if that), and the “Movie List” (where I did even worse, though I don’t necessarily consider that a bad thing). I haven’t used the other templates, which include sections to track “Gifts Received,” “Gifts Given,” a “Recommendation List” and “Favorite Phrases.” Come to think of it, the gift lists could end up being quite useful over the next month, and I may re-title and re-purpose some of the others once I start my 2020 planner.

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The “Promises” list is one of the stranger aspects of the Jibun Techo’s layout, and I assume something got lost in translation. IMHO, if you have to track 108 promises that you’ve made throughout the course of the year, make sure you’re not over-committed!

Takeaways and Where to Buy

After a few years of experimentation, I’m settling into the Jibun Techo for the foreseeable future. I’m somewhat of an obsessive list-maker and logger of various things, and having a set structure to do this in planner reduces not only the number of notebooks I have to cart around on a daily basis but also helps me manage the psychic load of organization by keeping all of these things in one place. The tracking/logging/listing function of the Jibun Techo is really its selling point - if you’re just looking for a planner with both a monthly and weekly layout in the same package, there are other options, but the true organization nerd will want to give Kokuyo’s planner a closer look.

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The Idea notebook is a standard slim Tomoe River notebook of good quality, which mainly serves as scratch paper in the back of my planner.

I purchased the Jibun Techo 3-in-1 Planner/Notebook set from Amazon, which still has 2020 versions in stock. (If you don’t like white, or think it will get too dirty over the course of the year, Blue and Pink versions are also available, along with a smaller B6 edition. The 3-in-1 set includes a graph-ruled “Idea” notebook and a “Life” journal, the latter of which looks like a tool for planning your memoirs or autobiography. I haven’t delved into that one yet, and won’t review it until I do, but maybe next year?

Finally, if you’re just looking for a stand-alone planner refill, and not a 3-in-1 set with a cover, Vanness Pens currently has some in stock.

Disclaimer: I purchased the planner featured in this review with my own money, for my own use.

My 2019 Journaling Setup: Nanami Paper Cafe Note and Midori 5-Years Journal

I was on the Hobonichi Techo bandwagon for a while, using everyone’s favorite A6 Japanese planner as a one-page-a-day journal. I actually have three of them filled up from 2016-2018. Although I liked the Hobonichi, I wanted something slightly less structured, that offered me the flexibility to write more than a page on one day, and sometimes skip a day with less “journaling guilt.” Some days absolutely nothing of note happens, right, much less nothing that justifies wasting a full page of precious Tomoe River!

Enter the Nanami Paper Cafe Note B6. I’ve long enjoyed the Nanami Paper Seven Seas series, both the original “Writer” and the “Crossfield,” but a couple years back they released the “Cafe Note,” which is a smaller Tomoe River notebook measuring roughly 4 x 7 inches in what is referred to as the Japanese “Shinsho” size. You can read more about the background of the notebook on the Nanami Paper website, but what’s notable is that this size book was “created for rail commuters that spend a lot of time standing in trains and hanging out in cafes between trains or after work.” In other words, if you’re looking for a highly portable notebook that’s easy to slip into a bag and write with in a coffee shop, on a train or airplane, or anywhere else space is at a premium, consider the Cafe Note.

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Small grid ruling with lots of boxes for organizing/summarizing notes? Count me in.

This layout works much better for me than the A6 Hobonichi. For starters, I appreciate that the Cafe Note is rather long and narrow, like these hardback Kunisawa “Find” notebooks, since I do much of my writing and note-taking in list or bullet format. Some people dislike the boxes at the top and bottom, but I find it convenient for organizing my notebook entries by date and topic. Finally, the grid/graph ruling is pretty small, but I have small handwriting so it works for me. Nanami Paper makes a lined version if grid isn’t your thing.

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At the end of the day, I did miss having a classic diary or “daily journal” to record the mundane happenings of life. For Christmas my family gave me a Vanness gift card, which I cashed in on a Midori 5-Years Diary. To me, the beauty of this particular journal is how easy it is to use consistently. There’s a page for each day of the month (including February 29 for those years), with each page broken down into five sections containing five lines each. I don’t care how boring the day was, you can always find one thing to record, and I recall that after I had used my old Levenger 5-Year Journal for a few years it was quite enjoyable to write each day’s entry and see exactly what I was doing and/or thinking one or two years earlier. I don’t have a perfect record of daily entries, but I’ve been pretty good so far.

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Noticing a trend here, size-wise?

Takeaways and Where to Buy

This particular setup has worked well for me in 2019, and in all likelihood I will continue it next year. The great thing about the Midori 5-Years Diary is - wait for it - that you only have to purchase it every five years, and the Nanami Paper Cafe Note has so many pages that it will also last you a long time. I do use an annual paper planner, the Jibun Techo 3-in-1 A5 Slim, for tracking tasks and logging things, but I plan to hold the review on that particular tool until the 2020 versions are released in the Fall.

I purchased my Midori 5-Year Diary from Vanness Pens, and it comes with either a red or black cover. At first glance, it’s not inexpensive at $42, but then again you’re only purchasing the Diary once every five years, so that’s $8 annually. The Nanami Paper Cafe Note “Slim B6” can be purchased directly from Nanami Paper, priced at $18, which to me represents an exceptional bargain given that you’re getting 384 pages of Tomoe River Paper. A ruled version is also available. If you’d like to add the Gfeller natural leather cover shown in my pictures, you can purchase it separately for $68.

Disclaimer: This post contains links to paid sponsors and affiliates.

My 2018 Notebook Setup, Plus a Planner Giveaway!

I forwent a Hobonichi Techo for 2018, after three years on the wagon. Why? Both to give myself the opportunity to try something different, but also to pare things back. I had at least seven different notebooks going at once last year, and it not only became mentally exhausting to keep track of what each of these notebooks was for (not to mention where they were located at any given time), but this "system" was extremely bulk to carry around. Since the Hobonichi was the one that received the least amount of practical use, and to be honest was starting to feel more like a daily chore than anything else, it was one of the items that went on the chopping block. 

So what does my setup for 2018 look like? I've narrowed it down to four notebooks that I use on a regular basis. I do use pocket notebooks as well, but primarily for things like quick idea capture, shopping lists, or a scratch pad. 

• Daily Carry for "Day Job" Projects. To track work projects I use a combination of a digital calendar and a loosely defined "bullet journal" that currently lives in a Midori MD A5 notebook. I'm thinking of trying out the Midori Cotton paper next, or moving this notebook to a Nanami Paper Crossfield. This notebook has been traveling with me every day in a zippered A5 Work Folio by Bellroy.

• Daily Carry for "Personal/Side Gig" Projects. A Roterfaden Taschenbegleiter set up as a three-subject notebook using smaller A5 softcover notebooks from Baron Fig and Nock Co. OK, while technically it's not a "single notebook," it's as close as I'm going to get. The Roterfaden gives me a way to keep track of all of my side projects in one place.

• Personal Journal. I've been using the Nanami Paper Cafe Note as a substitute for the Hobonichi, and it's both a nice size and a welcome change to be able to write/journal without (in my opinion) the unnecessary pressure of dated pages. I'm sure some people won't agree with me on this, but there are days when (1) nothing happens worth journaling about; or (2) you're just too exhausted or busy. I HATE ending up with blank dated pages, and I'm too OCD to restrain myself from going back and filling them in. The B6 size on the Cafe Note is insanely convenient in its portability, and the Gfeller natural leather covers sold by Nanami Paper are beautiful.

• Brainstorming Notebook. My Baron Fig Confidant, inside my One Star Leather Cover. This book typically sits at my desk for morning pages/brainstorming sessions, and any ideas that merit further development will eventually find their way into one of these other notebooks. I could also see the Baron Fig switching places with the Midori as a "Day Job" project planning notebook at some point.

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So far, this system has worked nicely for me, and I've stuck with it for two months without a hitch. (I actually started in early December 2017.) However, I also have a couple of paper planners that people have given me, that I won't use in this current system and I can now pass along to you readers in a giveaway! I need to get these out the door before any more time elapses in 2018. The prizes are: 

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• Karst 2018 Stone Paper Planner. This Stone Paper planner from Karst surprised me. Having heard not-so-great things about Stone Paper products in the past, mainly due to their inability to play well with liquid inks, my expectations were low, but this Karst version actually handled the two fountain pen inks I tested (Skrip Red and Robert Oster Maroon 1789) with a Tomoe River-like dry time. Ballpoints, gel pens, and even a liquid ink Pilot V5 also worked. This sturdy hardcover planner is set up in a weekly format with four days to a page. Due to the waterproof and tear-resistant properties of Stone Paper, it may be a good option for those who tend to be very hard on a paper planner. I'm looking forward to trying one of their hardcover notebooks.

• Slice Planner. You may recall that I reviewed the Slice Planner last year, which was developed as a hybrid digital-analog planning system that pairs a notebook with an app on your phone. The folks who developed the Slice Planner recently sent me a copy of their updated notebook, with upgraded paper and what feels like a more durable cover. As I mentioned in my previous review, I enjoyed my time with the Slice Planner, and if you can make Chronodex-style planning / time-tracking work for you, it should merit your consideration.

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Giveaway Rules / Terms and Conditions

To enter, simply leave a comment on this post. Giveaway closes at 11:59 pm CT on Saturday, January 27, when I will assign a number to all comments and randomly select two winners using a site like random.org. I will post the names of the winners here in next week's Sunday Reading post. Many thanks to both Karst Stone Paper and the team at Slice Planner for providing these two notebooks for review and giveaway. Note that each of these planners may have some small amount of writing on a blank page at the back, which I used to test the paper. Please see the links above for information regarding value, etc. of the respective prizes. 

Disclaimer: This post contains links to paid sponsors and affiliates. The Bellroy Work Folio, Karst Stone Paper Planner, Slice Planner, and One Star Leather Notebook Cover all were provided to me free of charge for review purposes. The Roterfaden and Cafe Note were purchased with my own funds for my own use.