I did a small test the other week about if I need a separate daily planner or not.

Or I don’t need one, but if it would be better or just whatever.

For me, it is something I prefer to have, because having something that looks different for it, makes it easier for me when I just look at open notebooks at my desk. I also like having it as a thing of its own for the sole purpose of being able to fill it out and just put it in a book stand and let it be there as I work through the day reminding me of the plan.

Because I’m currently looking into smaller notebooks, I started to look at the non A5 Plotter sizes, and some of them are really weird.

William Hannah has two sizes, A5 and A6; the smaller is half the size of the larger one. Makes sense. And with Travelers you have a similar thing going on, not exactly, but fairly close. There an A6 notebook spread out will be the same as a single sheet of A5, a passport spread out is close to the same, probably need between another 1/4 and 1/2 passport page to get there.

Then we have Plotter, the A5 is what it is, then you have the four other sizes Bible, Narrow, Mini and Mini 5, they are kind of two pairs of sizes with a tiny difference between each. Where I’m like why? If I were to pick between them I’d either pick the larger in each group or flip a coin.

That’s what she said.

On a more serious note, sometimes I have these weird ideas. My purple Kaweco Al Sport was almost out of ink, and my ADHD (possibly AuDHD) tendencies both pulls me against using up the cartridge in that pen while at the same time wanting to put another in the loop on my Travelers Notebook Passport because what if I run out of ink.

Then I looked at both the cartridge and the pen and wondered if I could fit a spare one on top of the one in it.

Almost. Another 11mm would have made work.

That made me think that all cartridge pens should allow for this.

My current carry is mostly the same as before.

The minimal version of it is my Travelers Notebook in Passport size with some pen in it, typically either my Gel multi pen or a Kaweco Sport.

When I carry a bag I’ll also usually bring my Hobonichi planner, Bullet Journal, some A5 notebook that I use for hitlists etc. Plus a bunch of pens in my Nock.co Tallulah case. Typically two more Kaweco pens, a bigger fountain pen and either the gel pen or a third Kaweco depending on what is in the pen holder of my Travelers Notebook. And I always have a ruler with me for marking up pages quickly.

Sometimes I also bring my big Travelers Notebook and or my lined notebook for long form writing if I plan on using them for something.

Both the bullet journal and the planner have brass clips, pictures in them and all kinds of weirdness to make them very me; both of them are currently Hobonichi notebooks and both use the same cover in different colors.

The Kaweco Sport line of pens is a recent favorite less expensive brand for me. But I can never remember their naming scheme.

You have the regular plastic ones named “Classic Sport”, then you have a bunch of others all named like “X Sport” like Al Sport, Brass Sport etc.

But I never use this scheme in my pen note/spreadsheet because I prefer to not to multi column sorting and have names like “Kaweco Sport Al Purple”. Plus that it removes the entire complexity of how many columns to use for the naming.

Not that Kaweco is the worst at having weird names. I just use them as an example because they are the ones I never get right.

TWSBI is particularly annoying to me. Because you have “TWSBI Eco Color” “TWSBI Diamond 580 Color”. Some have the Diamond prefix others not. At first glance it seems like all the fancier clear body ones have it, except the Vac series? And then they have all kinds of “sub” brands like the “580AL”, “580ALR”, “Vac700R” and suddenly the “ECO-T”. But it gets worse with the Mini’s because they are just “Vac Mini”, “Diamond Mini” “Diamond Mini AL” without the numbers even though it’s just a smaller 580.

For sanity reasons I roll my own naming scheme, and try to find the actual name before writing about it.

One alternative to this would have been to use the A6 Planner plus their Weekly insert.

Because of how I use my Week / Month plans I’m not sure how much this makes sense to do. I mostly only look at them when I start a new week / month and fill them out and glance at it before planning my days. So having it in a separate notebook would make a lot of sense because then I can just put it away once that is set up or not even bring it to work if I do it before leaving.

The other big question is if I have a Daily Planner and a fast moving notebook or just combine them. This is a much more difficult one for me, because I’m leaning both ways at the same time. But dropping the planner is probably the more sensible thing to do.

As it doesn’t seem very likely that I get to where I buy any binder related things for the rest of this year, I’ve been looking into things for next year.

This usually starts with me taking a look at how I use things and what I’m not that happy about with my current setup.

• I use an A5 notebook for my bullet journal that contains lists of high level tasks, logs / tracking for various things, lists of goals for periods of year, quarter, month and week.
• I use an A5 Hobonichi Cousin for planning of months, weeks and days.

The issues I have with my current setup is the following:

• I’d like to move to a smaller format than A5 to make it more portable
• I’d like to split my Bullet Journal in two notebooks because part of it moves very slow: a bunch of “undated” collections, plus year, quarter, monthly stuff. But all the weekly stuff move very fast.

After looking at a lot of notebooks, refills and planners etc. And trying a bunch out I’ve landed at the following

• I need a notebook with dated months, weeks etc.
• I need an A6 notebook for each of the Bullet Journals
• The daily dated pages could either be in a planner or in the fast moving Bullet Journal

The size I think I’m going with is A6.

At the moment this is the plan

• Hobonichi Weeks for Planning of Months and Weeks
• Some A6 dot or grid notebook for the Bullet Journals; at the moment it seems like Leuchtturm1917 or Hobonichi is the most obvious choices

I might also want a Hobonichi A6 Planner Avec for the daily pages. It adds bulk, but it is also nice to have a separate notebook that is always visible from where ever I am working that I just set up in the morning.

The dot pads I use so many of comes in two variations. Top stapled, or top spiral bound.

They are mostly the same. How the pages hang together is the only difference. Plus I think the stapled one are a bit cheaper.

The big advantage to the stabled ones is the they’re more compact and there isn’t really anything that can break on them. But is isn’t very convenient to use multiple pages at a time.

While the big advantage on the spiral bound ones is that it is much easier to flip over pages and use more than one page at a time. But the spiral is very easy to get stuck in stuff going in and out of bags and they have a bit extra bulk.

I have gone back and forth on my preference 3 times a year for as long as I can remember. But in general I think the spiral bound ones are better. But sometimes I prefer the stable bound ones.

I recently bought a A5 Clipboard from Penco.

It was originally on the short list of binder options, but I decided to get it for a compact writing surface. And I really like it as a thing to have when I’m writing on a soft notebook on the couch.