I’m going to order a bible sized plotter as soon as I have room for it in my budget. The initial plan is to just get the binder, some basic refills and accessories.

What have made this take forever is both expense and the added complexities of me having to order it through different channels than their store, because their “international” shipping is limited to US + Canada.

All my “systems” digital and analog have this weird tendency to just be additive. I make it to solve a system, and then I just keep adding things until I end up in a place where I just need to scrap it all and start from scratch to get something to works for me again.

I’ve been in that place with my planning / goals etc over the last year to year and a half. Trying to avoid starting from scratch a bunch of times.

But it was where I just had to go a few weeks ago. I just moved most things digital for now, leaving me with capture, hit lists and “working things out” as my paper stuff for now.

Funny thing is that I often end up doing this and getting back to the initial idea of how I used do things dropping the time warped misconception of it.

I love the feeling when I get to the last page of a notebook and can finish it all up, get a new one and start fresh.

Once I’m done with it I appreciate all the pages I have filled up before I throw it in the bin.

I was thinking the other day while using the Pilot Custom 823: if I could only have one fountain pen this would be it.

Why? It is a great pen that just works great. Never have anything to complain about with it.

I’d love to have better color options and all the regular shit. Otherwise a really fucking awesome pen.

When I completed the first refill I started to do some minor changes to how I use it. The biggest one is to use half a page for what used to use a full page for.

The main reason was that most of the time I used close to a half page, and where I didn’t it have been useful to “focus” (or reduce) my plans or goals.

Also useful for when I pick a binder size.

One of the reasons I usually wait until very late with ordering planners is that I usually go back and forth for a really long time before finally making up my mind.

This year I have currently decided to not get a Hobonichi, and just continue with undated weekly refills for my Travelers Notebook and use regular notebook refills otherwise.

When I’m writing or doing a lot of planning / list writing I take a Panobook and use it vertically. Sometimes I split it in two, because it is a bit wasteful for my style to use it full width.

Like a really long A5 notebook.

Most of the time this isn’t a good setup for either of those purposes for me, because I’ll write it and then transcribe it at a different point or spread over multiple sessions.

But if I’m writing a bunch on the couch and then write it into my Mac right after I prefer just having to go through one or two pages instead of a stack of them.

The typical setup is that I use it horizontally, putting a vertical line at each 45mm mark, leaving me with six sections.

Then I often will split the last two sections horizontally in the middle. Leaving me something similar to 4 standard index cards.

These sections I will typically use for a more “ordered” or focused collection of items. One of them is often capture, another might be work, or if I’m working on planning some project.

The others I use for my hit list. Starting with the first one and just kind of marking things as done or crossing them over as I move, and scribbling over sections as I complete them. Both as a mindful relaxation exercise and as a way to make it easy to see where I have active items.

For some reason I find it so much easier to have consecutive sections of current items instead of have one item, then 10 completed, another one, 8 more completed etc. So I often migrate things ahead.

One of the sings something is a good fit for me is that I get back to using it multiple times.

If I only use something over one period, try something else, and never get back to it, it wasn’t a great fit.

The Panobook is something I have used at multiple times over the last year or so, and I really like them a lot.

I use mine in two different ways, depending on what I do: one typical desk setup and one for more focused planning or writing. Decided to split it into separate blog posts.