I usually go through this 30 minute research loop every six months or so. Where I first wonder why I never buy refills for any of my gel ink pens, and then realizing how weird the whole situation is.

Here are some price example from JetPens on the Signo DX 0.38mm

• Single pen: $2.85
• Single refill: $1.65
• 10 pack of pens: $17.50, $1.75 per pen
• 10 pack of refills: can’t find any

If it actually was cheaper by a meaningful margin to buy refills vs the whole pen I’d obviously do it. But when that entire margin can also be saved by buying 10 pens at a time I don’t really see the point.

There are a lot of environmental reasons for why I’d like for this to not be the case.

Why can’t we have 10 packs of refills with similar savings that we see in single pens vs 10 packs of pens?

Not really stationery, but I kind of include anything bag, carry, desk related as a part of what this blog is about.

I did not have any interest in this product when it came out, but a lot of life changes have occurred between then and now.

My aging Trove have moved from being my main wallet to a collection of all the cards I sometimes use that I keep in my bag.

I had been looking at various options for a new wallet for months when I started to consider this one seriously.

The Apple MagSafe wallet is this minimal wallet that attaches and detaches with magnets on the back of any iPhone that supports MagSafe. It fits three cards.

It is a product that is a really good, if you want to carry some cards together with your phone but really dislike how bulky most “wallet phone cases” are, and can limit yourself to three cards. I usually carry two different VISA cards plus my drivers license / ID in mine. And sometimes I exchange one of the VISA cards for various customer loyalty cards for when I need them. This covers like 99% of what I need. And for the rare time when I need a bunch of different cards I just put the Trove with all of my cards in my bag.

There are two things I don’t love about this wallet. It is a little bit of a pain to get the cards out of it, and it is a little bit of a pain to put my phone in a pocket with tight jeans without it detaching. Other than that a great product if you can work within the 3 card limit.

So I bought another ruler.

It’s a 20 cm aluminum one from Staedler.

I bought it while I was buying some other stuff because the cool one from Travelers Company is like 2-3 cm too short to let me draw lines in my Hobonichi in one go, so I just bought a larger one to use when I’m doing it at home. Which is most of the time.

It is far from as nice or cool as the first one. It kind of feels like the metal version of a plastic ruler. It is fine. Like nothing wrong with it. But it isn’t fun to hold or use. More convenient though.

I’ve been trying to find a good solution to my charging setup for a while now. The short version is that it consist of: two magSafe pucks, one Apple Watch puck, one lightning cable, two micro USB, and one USB-C. Mostly there to cover anything smaller than an MacBook or iPad Pro.

What I wanted to start with was some kind of stand that covered at least the two MagSafe pucks and the Apple Watch puck. Because that is by far the stuff I use the most and would benefit the most from having something that kept it in place to avoid a cable mess.

At some point I saw that Studio Neat had a “Trio” Material Dock in production. So I went on and ordered it.

After I got it and got it assembled I noticed a few things.

First of all, it made the cable mess a lot better over night. From being something I spent some time tidying most days to something I might not have to deal with most weeks.

Second. The upright charing stand for the iPhone is awesome. Because now I can leave my iPhone there and glance up to see if there are anything I need to deal with on the phone without having to get dragged into some app on it. Like I usually do if it is next to me.

I like this so much that I will most likely buy another upright charger stand to have at the office.

And I also like that i have a place where I always put my phone and AirPods when I’m at home.

I use a Nock.co Tallulah as my pen carry case these days. In some periods like now, I like to carry a minimal amount of tools, and it is perfect for that.

I have a brass ruler from Travelers Company, a gel ink pen and one fountain pen in it.

The gel ink pen changes based on whatever I use at the moment. Preferably a Signo DX or Hi Tec-C. But sometimes something else I had laying around that I wanted to use up.

And the fountain pen changes every night / morning after I have filled out my Theme System Journal.

The brass ruler is something I use to divide pages of my A5 Hobonichi Cousin into three to make it fit more tasks.

The gel ink pen usually go in and out all the time. I use the same pen as my pocket pen when needed. And the fountain pen is usually what I use most of them time when I’m at a desk.

The ones I use are the model called the A5 Cousin. The big difference between it and the more popular A6 version is that it also has a weekly double page layout in addition to the daily pages.

Here is how I use mine.

Yearly goals

There are a bunch of empty grid pages at the end of the planner, I use these to track my larger yearly goals. They are usually very high level and sometimes change. I just write them as lists and change as needed.

Monthly goals

There are some double spread monthly pages in the start of the planner. Most of the page is just a grid of boxes for each of the days in a month, plus a small section on the left without any purpose. I cross out the boxes as days end, plus if there is one important thing on a day I write that in there. Plus that I use the section on the left to track monthly goals.

Weekly goals & planning

The weekly view I use to have a very high level overview of the week. I write down each thing that I’m going to do each day that either involve other people or going somewhere. Plus that in the same way I use the monthly pages to track monthly goals on the section to the left, I use the similar section on the weekly page to track weekly goals.

Daily pages

What I do with these is that I take a ruler and divide it into three sections. And then I write down all the most important things I want to get done today. Not any details but just the most important stuff. I consider what’s in there to have a due date and that I should really do my best to always get it done.

This planner works really well for my to kind of have a high level overview of things both at a yearly, monthly, weekly and daily level. And makes it really easy to plan. It isn’t really what I look at while I work most of the time. But it is what I look at when I refill my list of stuff I’m working at right now to make sure I focus on the most important things.

I have a cover for my Hobonichi Techo Cousin A5. The one I got is called “Dreamy Soda”. They call it a light blue, I call it turquoise on the outside and pink on the inside.

It features two page markers, two pen holders and a bunch of pockets both on the back outside and on the inside. I usually don’t use any of that except the page markers.

I think it is a good idea to put any notebook you expect to use for an entire year that isn’t hardcover in a cover, especially if you are going to have it in a bag or close to coffee or other drinks.

This cover is really good, and I will most likely order another soon in not too long to use with my Theme Journal.

However, there are a few times I’d love to change about this cover:

• I’d like to just remove the pen loops and all the pockets
• Have some kind of mechanism to keep it closed
• More page markers.

One of the things I really like about the Hobonichi brand is that they like Travelers Company they’re fully in on also providing less than 12 month dated planners.

The products are not always 100% identical to their 12-month versions, but all the essential features are the same. They also sell sets of two 6-month planners if you prefer it to the 12-month one. Either of weight or size reasons.

I started to use paper week on a double page planners to kind of plan my week at a very high level early last year. I usually only include things that involve other people or going places. And then I also used a daily one page per day planner for more like the most important tasks for the day.

In the start I used undated inserts for my regular sized Travelers Notebook, then I moved to dated ones and finally I ordered a six month Hobonichi last summer. The reason I changed it was because I liked its layout better plus I also liked the idea of it being one things instead of two separate refills.

And it was really great that I could get a dated planner where I only had to cross out like a couple of weeks worth of daily pages before I could start using it when I decided to do this in the middle of the year. I wish this was more of an option from more planners and products like them. Because not all workflow changes like this align with the big planner order season of October-November. Plus that shorter period planners (3 or 6 months) are really awesome for when you just want to see if something will work out for you.

All the pens I have in regular rotation I like, but there are some I like less than others, some I like for some tasks, but what are the ones I like to use the most for regular writing:

• Pilot Custom 823
• Sailor Pro Gear Slim
• Ystudio Portable with the FC EF steel nib