I’ve been looking into what my planner setup will be for 2024 for a while now.

Here are the requirements

• Dated
• Monthly, Weekly and Daily pages
• Weekly layout must be vertical
• Monthly and Weekly should be spread over two pages
• Multiple books are fine, but no duplicate sections

Nice to have:

• Space in weekly and monthly pages for goals and such
• Opens flat
• Loads of empty pages

I’ve used my current setup now for a year and a half by the time the year rolls around, because I used a six month Hobonichi Cousin A5 before I got my current one. There are only two things about I’m not happy with at the moment. I’d like more empty pages close to it to have a place to keep track of long term goals that isn’t tied to weeks or months and similar things. And I’d also like something smaller.

It may seem contradictory to want less bulk and more pages, and yes I know. Less bulk could also mean smaller pages etc.

I’m going into the options I didn’t go with in another post. And I’ll probably get into the lineup of Hobonichi planners in a third one.

The short version is that I ended up going with Hobonichi this year as well. There wasn’t really many options that would give me all of my requirements. And of the few that would, Hobonichi is the nicest.

Like I could have gone with something like Weeks plus a A6 one but it would mean duplicate sections of at least months.

Instead I went with Hobonichi Cousin A5 Avec plus a Hobonichi A5 Notebook. Avec is the same buying two six month planners at the same time. This means that I can add a notebook that looks and behaves more or less the same as my planner to the nib and maintain the same amount of bulk. I think it might be a tiny bit smaller actually.