A super short review of the A5 Hobonichi Cousin I used as my planner last year.

• In general very happy with it
• But a bit too big; aka too many pages for my taste
• Trying out using the Avec this year.
• Other than that it works great as a tool to plan high level plans and tasks.

I’ve mostly used the two panopads I bought in December by now, and I’ve liked them a lot. Going to give their panobook a shot next. But I might get back to the pads later for a few reasons.

What I’ve ended on for my layout for them is to put up a vertical line at every 11th dot, leaving me with 5 columns of almost identical width columns (the last one has one to spare).

This setup works well for me, enough space for most tasks on a single line, plus wasting very little room on the page.

Another thing I find myself doing a lot is to just take a ruler and ripping off columns as I’ done with them.

When I first planned to write this blog post I had emptied the first bottle a few days before, by the time I got around to writing it, I emptied a second one.

I really enjoy how I’m able to empty them in a bit over a year, without it being the only ink I’m using.

After months of looking at pen trays I finally ordered one. I got the dual one from Studio neat.

It is great. I usually keep it between whatever hit-list notebook I’m using (currently a Panopad) and my keyboard.

It is great to just have a place to put the pen or pens you’re currently using when you move between making notes and doing real work. I like having room for two pens because I often find myself using more than one. Especially nice for pens that could roll off the desk.

Will most likely get another of them to avoid carrying it with me to the office.

I’ve been trying to avoid this for a while now: notebooks you put below your keyboard.

So I started with the Panopad. I guess I’ll probably move on to the Panopad and the “Psychic notebook” after.

The moment I started to use my A5 Rhodia dotpads on the side was when I knew I’d probably move down this road sooner or later.

The concept is great, you just have a notebook that is more or less the width of your keyboard and you keep it below there to write task lists or to capture stuff. I usually divide mine in like 4-5 sections and write lists in it. Using it more or less like I would use a dotpad, except it is like 1/3 longer. Haven’t actually measured it, but it seems to be like that.

I love how much in can fill on it, the paper quality is great and I love the dots and the size. The two things I don’t like about it is that I can’t flip the page, and that it is kind of weird to bring it with me. All of that is something I think the Panobook probably solves.

So the one detail I have omitted this far is that this is like a giant ass sticky note. Like it in theory, but probably not for me.

This is one of the multi pens I decided to get after starting to play around with the one I got with my 2024 Hobonichi order.

This pen is a lot more like what you expect a multi pen to be like, than the Coleto 1000. It is thick, looks weird and childish; I got one in pink.

I love it, and it is fun to use, but less comfortable to write with for longer sessions than the 1000. On the other hand: five colors.

This one will most likely be more of a at my desk at home kind of pen. But might be something I bring if I want to just bring one pen somewhere. Or together with the 1000 if it is a no fountain pens situation.

This is one of the multi pens I decided to get after starting to play around with the one I got with my 2024 Hobonichi order.

I really like this pen. It is much slimmer than most multi pens, more like a regular pen. It has room for 4 refills. A thing about the pens I have in rotation is that some of them are really loud and weird, while others are not something you’d notice much. This is very much in the latter, if you ignore that I got the red one and not a black one.

Whenever I use it, I always find myself changing color every paragraph or line when I’m writing lists. Love how weird and quirky it looks.

This will without a doubt become a part of my regular carry. Probably as one of the pens I always have in my sling.

When I got the same rollerball multi pen with my Hobonichi order this year that I always get, and for some dumb reason didn’t throw it out with the rest of the packaging, and started to write with it. I did as mentioned earlier go “fuck”, and started to collect interesting multi pen links on JetPens.

After some pruning I decided on the Pilot Hi-Tec C Coleto line. Ordered a 15 pack of colorful refills and two empty bodies:

• a red Coleto 1000 4 Color
• a pink Coleto 5 Color

I’ve been down this road of considering this for a really long time at this point.

I have a 5 year old journal from Midori, that I’m fine with. Nothing to complain about, but I don’t love it either. And not long after I started using it I discovered the thing Hobonichi have and started to regret it.

For most of the year I have moved back and forth about if I should get the Hobonichi one or not, and last week I decided to actually do it. It is dated so I’ll start using it on 1st of January.

My existing journal will be changed into being a gratitude journal, and the new one will be used like I use my current one and used the Leuchtturm1917 one before that. And that is to write the most important thing of the day.

The reason I’ve been wanting to get this one is mostly because of how much I enjoy the Hobonichi journals but also because their format is two pages per day.

Left page is a A5 (or A6 if you get that model) divided into 5 (one for each year) and then a full page on the right for whatever you want.