I bought another heavy brass ruler. Not because I need it, but I’m trying to get to a place where I have some stuff I can just leave in the office and not hate having done some when I’m at home.

I got a black one from Ystudio this time. I looks cooler than the one from Ystudio, but not sure how the paint will hold up and look compared to the plain brass one.

But the same awesome heavy feel though.

When I buy my yearly Hobonichi planner, I try to always remember to check out some of their other stuff and get some interesting stuff. This time, almost a year ago at this point, I bought a ruler than I can clip to the planner.

This is one of those items I have and carry that I don’t use a lot. Not because it is bad, but because I have much better ones. It is always clipped inside the cover of my planner, just in case. But most of the time I go for my brass Travelers Company one.

I like it though, but a heavy brass one is a lot more fun.

I have this dumb habit of changing things up and stopping using notebooks kind of in the middle of them. Leading to me often having this pile of notebooks with between 1/3 and 2/3 of the pages being unused.

If it is a notebook type I don’t like I just throw it out. But usually it is a Leuchtturm1917 or similar, and then I never throw them out, because I like them.

Over the last month or so I have been focusing on using all of them before I open anything new. So far I’ve used a handful of notebooks all with less than 50 pages left. Hopefully I have another one or two before they’re all gone.

Ridiculous how much space that took up.

There are currently two binders that are left on my list, after a really long process: Plotter and William Hannah.

It is kind of up in the air what I end up getting at this point. But I’m certain it will be one of them.

I prefer the overall look of the Plotter, plus that their binder rings seems to be much more compact. But they only ship in US and Canada so I’d have to do some tricks to make it work.

William Hannah has much more colors than the Plotter, but fewer sizing options. Not having to deal with the different kinds of leather without a comparison page is kind of consider an plus to be honest. Plus they’re cheaper and ships internationally.

It would not be that unlikely that I end up having both. Will continue this saga as I make up my mind.

The short term plan is to continue using my current Hobonichi setup until the end of the year. But also experiment with using two parallel systems in some periods to test things out.

Mainly to figure out two things:

• How much work is it to draw up layouts by hand
• Does it improve things like I hope to keep the various things I want to reference a lot close to each other.

And in the process landing on a proper bullet journaling setup for next year.

The final step before this probably will be continued in Bullet Journaling setup posts is what the binder I’m getting with a backup if I can’t get one.

On to all of the things I looked into using but decided to not go forward with, and why.

• Penco A5 Clipboard: just clipping things inside my Hobonichi or another A5 notebook would do more or less the same thing for me.
• Postalco Snap: this top bound binder was interesting, but not being able to properly turn the pages made it a no-go
• Everbook: I liked the idea of this, and the idea is great but not a good fit for what I want for this.
• Looked at a bunch of binders on JetPens and friends, but didn’t like any of them
• Levenger Circa: really dislike their design. Otherwise it could have been a good option

My setup would most likely be very simple.

• The binder
• Planner pages(3 month page, monthly page, weekly page, day pages, goal pages)
• Empty dot grid pages
• Tab Dividers
• Pencil board to give it more of a notebook feel
• Some cardboard / kraft pages to make it weird and artsy

Because I usually just use planner pages, plus dot grid pages for my hit lists and usually don’t have a lot longer lasting things going on. Except for when I do. My setup most of the time would probably look like this

• Empty pages in the back
• A kraft page with some pictures or whatever
• Divider
• Long term goal page
• 3 month page
• 3 month goal page
• Monthly page
• Monthly goal page
• Weekly page
• Weekly goal page
• Pages for each days in that week
• And put hit list pages I filled out after the day page of current day.
• Repeat that, so I have this to cover previous week, this week and next week.
• Divider
• All the empty pages
• The rest of the dividers
• And add dividers if I end up with things that need their own thing.

As I’ve touched on before, the big advantage for me with something like this is that I’d probably carry at most more like a Rhodia Dotpad amount of paper, instead of my current setup that is more like 3x that.

When something don’t work out at all the first time I try, and I still can’t let the idea go, I usually go very far in the let’s get it right when I try again; usually the second time or at least the third time.

That is where I’m at with this binder thing at the moment.

I’m not sure if I’m really going to do it yet either.

At the moment I’m at a place where I have a screen height worth of links to things. Some of it is accessories and stuff I’d need and a few distinct options I’m considering. Some more likely than others.

I have also found a few things as I’ve been looking into it that makes it more likely to actually make it work. The short version is that I was reading something else, and realized there are people who make printable designs for planner pages on Etsy. And that would make this much more likely to work out, if I could just print them.

The next thing I need to figure out, if I can find some designs for it that would actually work out for me, is a hole punch that can take enough pages at a time for it to not be a giant pain in the ass.

And the final would be to find a binder that isn’t too bindery. As in the rings aren’t huge, that they line up when I close them, that they don’t feel loose or anything like that.

In other words, if I can find something that still feel kind of like a notebook, with the added flexibility, that don’t add too much extra work for setup it could work.

I have looked around in a bunch of different weird corners of the internet over the last few weeks and I have a bunch of links that I am considering. Everything from a clipboard to some weird ish binder like systems to more expensive binders.

When I look at how much I spent on the binder I have, I’m thinking that it would not take many rounds of trying various cheap stuff to end up in a place where it would have been Plotter / William Hannah money.

So now I’m just looking at the different things I would have to buy for it to work out in the long term, like a good hole punch etc. And thinking about the different options that could work, with a very strict limit on how much before dropping them for Plotter / WH.

Also I don’t really think I have to decide if I’m going for it before it is time to order planners (or not) for 2025.