I’ve done the Theme System for a while now, both with and without their notebooks, and to a varying degree of within their system.

One thing I do differently is that while I sometimes phrase it as “The year of X” I will often change or adjust my theme after 3 or 6 months.

For me and the kind of changes I’m working on an entire year is way too long.

A while back I bought one of those paper knife thingies that look like a pizza wheel that perforates pages.

Not perfect, and kind of screws up a lot of notebooks. But I love being able to do it on pages I know I’m going to want to pull out. Will almost certainly get another of the same thing that just cuts out pages.

I’ve used the Midori five year journal for a year now.

In general I liked it, but I would not buy another one of them. Mostly because I think there are so many more interesting options to it. At the end of last year I decided to change it from being my journal to a gratitude journal, because I wanted to start using the A5 Hobonichi 5 year for the journaling instead. The main reason for the switch was that I thought the Midori was too small, and I really liked the Hobonichi layout.

If I had to get another non Hobonichi 5 year I’d probably pick the Leuchtturm1917 one over the Midori.

These are most likely the pages in my journal setup that change the most.

Currently I have them set up as follows.

• I split them into 4 sections with a washitape grid, where the vertical one go more or less in the middle of the page and the horizontal is 2/3 down on the page.
• The stop two sections are for “Events” and “Focus”.
• While the bottom two are for “Due” and “Work”.
• “Events” is where I write an outline of the day to internalize how the day will be.
• “Focus” is important things that I should work on or complete. I try to write them in a way where it is obvious what I expected; how much progress etc.
• “Work” is for important work tasks
• “Due” is things I must get done on that day.

I ended up with three Hobonichi notebooks for 2024

• A5 Cousin Avec
• A5 Notebook
• A5 5 Year

This is about the first two

The notebook

I use this to track focus and goals, long term, short; plus weekly and monthly.

The planner

In the planner I use it for planning on different degrees of detail in the different pages they have.

• Yearly overview: 6 months over two pages
• Monthly: the month over two pages
• Weekly: the week over two pages
• Day: the day as a single page

Year

On the yearly page I try to plan for things that span multiple months and put down really important things, typically just one per date. Some super high level goals too.

Month

Here I go into more details, but not by a lot. At the most it is doubled.

Week

Here I get into more details. I map put all the different things that happen on each day as I see them at the end of the week before. And keep it updated as I go.

It is a big part of making sure I don’t overcommit in a way that will drain me or similar.

Day

The daily page I split into 4 sections with washing tape. One for events: these involve other people or me going somewhere, one for things that must or really should get done today. One for areas of focus and the last for work.

The areas of focus are ordered and I try to get all the stuff I put in there done or at least some work done on them.

When a day is over I use some stamps I got from JetPens to evaluate how the day went.

The rating system

1. Orange star: great
2. Blue panda: did my best
3. Pink heart: need love

This system works great for me. And helps me think through stuff and set a focus for each day. Some days I focus on one thing. Like today the only thing was to transcribe this blog post and a few others from paper. Other days there are more.

When I saw the layout of this, I just went a head and ordered one of them. I got the A5 5 year journal from Hobonichi.

I use it to journal about my day. Love how I have a few lines to summarize the day on one side, and a whole page for other stuff on the left. Might start putting photos and stuff there alter.

I’ve had this in use a few days at this point, and I really like it this far.

What I like about it is that it is a very wide notebook like the Panopad. But instead of being a huge post it like pad it is spiral bound notebook. Plus it is hardcover. These two details solves the three things about the Panopad that wasn’t ideal for me: hard to have two pages in progress at once, hard to move it between home and the office without messing up pages, and couldn’t write on it on the couch.

Other than that there is one thing I really like about it: the tear off is really great and doesn’t leave any left over paper in the ring. And two things I didn’t like as much: it isn’t as easy as I’d like to flip pages and I’d prefer if I could buy them without the slip case.

The slip case isn’t a big deal, but I just don’t like it when products come with packaging that isn’t necessary that is designed, that I’m just throwing out.

Some history here. When I got back into Hobonichi’s I got the six month July - Dec one for 2022, because I found out I wanted to give it a shot in the middle of the summer. Then when I got towards the end of ’22 I ordered a regular one.

As 2023 progress I kind of wanted to reduce how much paper I drag around, and I decided to get the Avec instead. So instead of one large notebook for the entire year, you get two six month ones.

This far I’m really loving it. My take on it is that most of the year I’d be carrying half the amount of notebook, and I might be back to carrying the old amount for a while as I progress between them in the middle of the year / end of the year.

As everyone should know at this point: my preferred way of filling anything is syringes, because of how easy it is to fill anything all the way with them.

It is very easy to do so with the VAC700R as well. I just unscrew the top of the pen, and then I unscrew the nib unit and fill it all the way, and re-assemble.