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.

As I’ve been thinking a lot about using different notebooks for a year, I have tried a bunch of things, and it have been a process that haven’t really progressed to anywhere useful for me, except that I haven’t let the idea go.

What I have tried is

• A cheap binder that I really didn’t enjoy using
• To use a hardcover notebook with perforated pages.
• To the different kinds of Rhodia pads with perforated pages.

I think the first could have worked out if it didn’t feel so cheap and was so much fiddling every time I opened the binder rings. And the Rhodia pads worked fine. But I really missed having a place to put pages when it wasn’t just fill it out, done, in the trash. Like weekly plans etc.

Something as dumb as a cover plus a clipboard could work. I’m still in a place where I would like to move to a place where I just have two notebooks in my daily carry. One A5, and one pocket sized.

There are a few reasons I have not gone deeper into this yet.

The main one is that it requires a lot more setup and preparing than my current system of just using notebooks that to some degree are just made for what I use them for.

It would require me to draw up layouts, at least in the start. And the tests with things like this up to now have not worked out. For the binder I got it required a lot of fiddling when I opened the rings and they didn’t like up most of the time when I closed them again. And using notebooks I can pull out pages or pulling them out by cutting have never worked out.

So, this could turn out to be something where I just spend a bunch of money on something that don’t work out.

I think this topic has moved past binders from the start, mostly because what I really want ins’t really limited to a regular binder by definition, and there are a bunch of options I am considering that isn’t really a binder.

A thing I’ve been feeling for at least a year at this point is the urge to have one notebook for my daily “stuff”. What makes it more complicated is that I also would like to be able to remove and re-order things as I do, plus remove pages that are no longer in use or relevant. Because in theory a simple Leuchtturm1917 A5 Dotgrid notebook or a top spiral Rhodia DotPad would solve this for me.

Or the Rhodia would solve it even more for various reasons, because they let me pull out pages.

But. There are a few ways each of them would not solve things for me long term. The big one for the Leuchtturm1917 is that I can’t remove pages. With the Rhoda I can pull out pages but not re-order them, plus you often end up with this big stack of left overs from pages you have removed between pages sometimes that I hate.

This leaves me at wanting something I can put A5 pages in to both hold them and kind of use them as a notebook. So a good clipboard or anything that can hold pages with holes in them in place would work.

My main two requirements in the short term would be

• A5
• The mechanism just works, no fiddling or things like that.

The setup as I see it would be something like this.

• 1 A5 page with something like the Hobonichi 3 month overview
• Then the following would depend on the actual month, but let’s say we start on a Monday in the middle of a month.
• 1 A5 page with a month layout
• 1 A5 page with the week layout
• 1 A5 page with a day layout
• Then I add pages with Hitlist layout as needed or plain A4 dot grid pages if that is more appropriate

When the next day comes, I add another day layout and combine like that, another week when I come to the next week etc.

It would make it dead simple to prepare things in advance, and change things as I go. Plus I could get a printer and actually print or copy the layouts making it even simpler.