Stationery🍕

How I use the my Theme System

2024-03-28 00:00

The way I do my own theme system is like this.

I look at my previous theme and think about putting into words how I want to improve over the next three months.

Then I try to find 5-10 outcomes to make that happen.

After that I do what I call a “sub-theme”; and that is a 1-2 week period where I have one goal and one action per outcome. Where the idea is that I try to move them forward every day by doing something.

At the end of a theme or sub-theme I do a retrospective and use that to influence what I’ll do next.

All the pens vs minimal

2024-03-26 00:00

I always have these phases with my pens. Sometimes I have 2-3 fountain pens and a gel pen in my bag. And other items I just have like 10 pens in it.

Until I just can’t deal with having so many pens in use and start cleaning and putting them away as I write them empty.

At the moment I’m very much in all the pens territory.

When you are at the end of a yearly planner

2024-03-20 00:00

There is a weird feeling I get when I get near the end of a yearly planner. Partly it is like: I filled all of this; but also: why am I dragging around 11 months of filled in pages?!

Theme System Post Series: Where I landed for now

2024-03-18 00:00

This is the system I have been on for a while now.

Structure

Let’s start with that.

  • I write a Theme, plus description, and 5-10 outcomes. Ideally closer to 5. That lasts 3 calendar months.
  • Then I do weekly Sub Themes. For them I define one goal for each outcome, and a Daily Action for each. The idea is to have a thing I can do often and reach the goal that in turn moves me closer to the outcome
  • I journal every day in relation to the Theme / Sub-Theme mainly about what worked, didn’t work and turn it into tasks that I can work on.
  • After each Sub-Theme and Theme I write a retrospective before deciding on the next one; I usually have a draft written before the retrospective and change it based on it

Tools

  • I use Chronicling for tracking the Actions
  • I write the daily journaling on paper in a lined refill in my passport sized Travelers Notebook. Because they have no long term value for me to keep around.
  • The retrospectives are currently being kept. It might change
  • The Themes and Sub Themes exist both digitally and analog; the analog version is in my A5 Hobonochi notebook that I use for all goal and focus tracking. I also keep a digital version to make it easy to look up.

Theme System Post Series: The process of finding out my own

2024-03-13 00:00

My first attempt at this was to do it on paper, a long time ago actually, this summer. I tried to do my own thing on paper. But it never worked out for me. Mostly because of all the up keep of creating the layouts.

This time I first tried to do it in Notion, but I never liked it that much. And doing it digitally lead me to a setup with too many Outcomes, Daily Themes etc.

Then I started to play around with a different system; mostly the app Chronicling for Daily Themes and Day One for Daily Journaling; it stil had all the too much problems that I hadn’t addressed yet, plus the daily journaling had no structure at all.

After trying this out for a while I ended up with more of a hybrid system

Theme System Post Series: Why I stopped using them

2024-03-11 00:00

The official journals worked well, for the most part during the time I used it.

But at the end of last year a bunch of things happened causing me to move on from it.

I had a subscription for them through Cotton Bureau; fuck I hate spelling that. That got in this weird state because they complained my card didn’t work, I made sure it was money on it and they used like FOREVER to actually charge it, like 12+ hours, and by that time there wasn’t enough money anymore.

And I started to think and decided I wanted to try something else for a while. Mostly because I felt like it was a good time to do something based on the same idea but with less fixed constraints.

Theme System Post Series: How I used the official Theme System Journal

2024-03-06 00:00

For the year or so I used the Theme System Journals this is how I used them as I reached the end of the final one.

Something got messed up with the subscription renewal on the one I had and I just decided to explore doing a similar things with other tools when that happened.

  • I did a new theme and new goals after three months always
  • Sometimes a slight variation other times a big shift
  • The Daily Themes was adjusted after each 15 day period
  • In the daily journal pages I used to fill in the best and worst things in relation to the theme / goals in the two first boxes
  • Then some things I could improve on and ideas etc in the big one
  • And in the final one I wrote the most important thing for the next day

In addition to all of this I always wrote a retrospective after each 15-day period plus after each journal was used up.

Mont Blanc: Royal Blue

2024-03-04 00:00

I have never really used any Mont Blanc products, because most of them are stupid expensive. Like ridiculous expensive. Where it is so far beyond what I’d ever consider that I just start laughing whenever I find myself looking at their pens etc.

Anyways.

I decided to check out one of their inks a while back, and I ordered a bottle of “Royal Blue”.

Interesting enough their ink is really cheap.

I like the color, it isn’t anything amazing, but I have had a lot blues that are much worse than this. The ink is a little bit dryer than I prefer, at least in the Pilot Custom 823 I’ve been testing it in. Much better in the Lamy 2000 I also inked up at the same time though. So might just be that the dry pen and drier ink combination that rubs me the wrong way; as always.

I really like their ink bottle design though. Different look and interesting take on how to make it possible to ink up pens from a bottle as it gets empty.

More pocket notebooks

2024-03-01 00:00

I’ve been trying hard to get back into using pocket notebooks over the last couple of months. And it have gotten better. Still far from anywhere at the level I was at pre-pandemic.

My setup at the moment is to use my Passport Travelers Notebook. I have the blueish color.

I have two refills in it, one dotgrid and one lined. Plus a pen holder on it, where I usually have the Pilot Hi-Tec-C Coleto 1000 multi pen.

The dotgrid refills is for lists, either capture, or todo lists when it is the best option. And the lined is for writing drafts or journaling that I’m not going to keep for the long term.

Made with ❤️ in Bergen, Norway by Eivind Hjertnes