Planner set up for 2018 - 3 for 1 year
When I look back to my older blog posts … I think "planner peace" will be the running gag of my blog posts!
Here is the next one about finding my planner peace: my newest planner set up for 2018!
In my last post (please click on this hashtag #blogpost10) I was talking about the set up in my William Hannah A5 notebook together with the daily pages of the Hobonichi Cousin planner. I have punched these daily pages so that I can insert them into my discbound notebook and had one notebook for everything in the end.
At the end of my last blog post I have asked some questions, like "do you really need a new planner?" or "why does your planner system work for you?" or "why does it not work?".
I`m always asking myself these questions after a few weeks or months after I have changed to a new set up.
I really liked my new set up but one day these questions came up again just because I needed to take my planner with me in a bag (normally it stays at home) and it was just too big and heavy.
Ok, and there is was: "does your system still work for you?" and the answer this time was (again) a definitive "NO"!
Do I really need to take the whole notebook with me? With all the scribble notes and trackers when I just need the planner pages and some blank pages? Short answer to that one and quick decision: "no, I don`t"!
To have a portable planner I would need to downsize again and my first thought was, ok, then use the Hobonichi Techo in A6 again! But here I was at the same point again as before that the one daily page did not have enough space for my to-do-tasks and my daily journaling.
What a dilemma! I wanted to stay with the Hobo Techo because of the wonderful paper. I love to use my fountain pens and Tomoe River Paper and fountain pen ink work together so perfectly! But one page per day is not enough….
My next thought was, maybe there is another Hobo Planner in A6 with a different layout? But there isn`t. The A6 sizes are all with one page per day.
I was looking around to see if I can find another planner in A6 size with Tomoe River Paper, I only found the Jibun Techo planner but did not like the layout and the too colorful pages of that planner.
And then the idea: do you really need a preprinted planner or can you create your own planner, kind of a bullet journal in a notebook with already predated pages? And if one page per day is not enough what about 2 pages per day in an A6 size? Would that work out?
Last question first: two pages per day?
I just folded an A5 page in half to have a double page of A6, started scribbling down my task list and used some random stamps, just to see if I can fit all of them onto these two pages. And yes, that was working out fine: left side my tasks lists and right side my water tracker and daily journaling. Enough room without squishing the writing and still enough room to look clearly arranged and to make the task list longer if needed. And all on a two pages spread, easy to look at one glance.
And then: which notebook to use?
It just had to be Tomoe River Paper (of course!!), in A6, and preferably with white pages with a small grid size (in 3.7mm, just like the Hobonichi grid).
And I found one in the webshop of Nanami Paper, they have all these lovely products made out of Tomoe River Paper, and exactly the one I was looking for: the A6 Café Notebook with 480 pages (240 sheets) with a grid size of 3.7mm on white 52gsm Tomoe River Paper….. Heaven!!
In addition I just knew that I would take apart that notebook as well and punch the paper to be used in a discbound notebook. Back to William Hannah because I like my A5 notebook very much and I have seen that David Round now offers notebooks in A6 size as well. The "mini-brother" of my A5 was ordered and is looking gorgeous!
William Hannah in A6, Tomoe River Paper punched to be used, dividers and my ideas, ready to go!!
I want to have an easy set up of my daily pages and do not want to prepaint some fancy boxes per day or fancy boarders or whatever you very often see in some bullet journals. They do look gorgeous, don`t get me wrong, but I would not have time to paint and draw and use washi tape every day. I`m more on the minimalistic side, I just need a place to put the date box and my water tracker stamp. And the rest will be added during the day in writing.
And here you can now see my set up with my three books:
I have the following 4 sections between dividers in my small A6 sized notebook:
First section: monthly overview of each month on two pages for all my appointments and birthdays
Second section: the day-on-two-pages; each month starting with an overview of the current month and the coming month. It is now easier to find "the date of the day in two weeks" when you have to do this or that again
Here is my minimalistic set up of the daily pages, just a date box and a little check arrow, ready to be used for the day! I can easily fit three months of these daily double pages in this notebook so that I always have the last, the current and the next month in my planner:
And this is how a day looks like when all the tasks have either been done or transferred to the next day and some journaling including my water tracker on the right side has been done:
Third section: my tracker sheets, on the front my monthly habit tracker wheel and on the back my weekly step counter
Fourth section: some blank pages if I have to jot down something
Small, compact and easy to take with me!
My whole set up for 2018 consists of three books:
The small A6 sized discbound notebook from William Hannah as daily tasks list and journaling
The bigger A5 sized discbound notebook from William Hannah just as I have described it in my last post (#plannerpeace). I have just taken out the daily Hobonichi pages and added some more blank pages, this A5 will stay at home on my desk all the time. But I do not have to leave it open the whole day like my planner so enough room to have the A6 open on my desk and the A5 when needed.
Another A6 sized Café Note notebook from Nanami Paper, this time I will not take it apart but leave it as it is and use it as a self-made-5-year-planner. I was inspired by the new Hobonichi 5 year planner. I love the idea to track something for 5 years and see the day of the previous years at a glance. I just do not like the layout of the Hobo planner because the right pages have a small quote printed at the bottom (right at the height of the fifth year on the left page), therefore you cannot use the right side for all five years (to have added room), you can only fit 4 years if you use the same grid as on the left. Therefore I have divided each page of my notebook into five sections, each page is one day and I will track the daily weather in this notebook. And after 365 days I still have about 120 pages left and will track the garden work in it
I have added a clear cover to my Nanami notebook to protect it as it will need to hold up for the next 5 years, I will add a colored insert later, I just have to find the right one, right now it is just plain white.
I hope you have enjoyed reading my latest part of the journey to "planner peace", maybe I have given you some insipiration for your set up or is your planner ready for this year? Why not leave a comment about your set up, I would be interested to read how other people set up their planners!
Take care and (planner) peace for everybody!
Andrea
P.S. as always I do not get paid to write this, I paid for all of the mentioned notebooks above out of my own purse, I write about it because I like the products.
please click on any hashtag to display related posts: #plannerpeace #blogpost10 #blogpost11 #blogpost8 #bulletjournal