It’s a new year, and I learned from 2022 that when I don’t use a planner or tracker of some kind for all areas of my life I forget too much and end up stressing over things. Do I tend to overplan? Yep. Do I sometimes turn into a rage monster for about 5 minutes when my plans need to be changed? Yep.

Do I use erasable pens not just to fix mistakes but also because plans do change so often? Oh, heck yeah.

I have tried so many different ways to plan from a cheap spiral notebook, to a Midori grid notebook (I do love Midori notebooks), to disc notebooks, to a Moleskine, and now…the one I have wanted for ages to try…a Hobonichi.

Three Hobonichi to be exact. No covers, so the bank was just dented, not broken, but they were a present to myself for finally paying off my grad school loan and I’m having a ball figuring out how to use them.

These planners are from Japan and they’re very cool. Year at a glance, months, weeks, and daily pages…they have something to fit all, it seems. I got the A5 Cousin in Simplified Mandarin, the A6 Original One Piece version (!!!!!) in Japanese, and the Week’s version in English.

Each has been assigned to help track different things and since they are all different I don’t think my interest will fade like it tends to with other planners when I try to do it all in one. I thought bullet journals would help with that, creating new layouts as I got bored of the old ones, but actually creating the layouts was often too time consuming due to my need for perfection, and minimalist bullet journaling doesn’t stick with me visually. 

These planners have the dates, have sections that I don’t have to draw in…and also space to make my own layout if I want to! But the best part is that since I am tackling both Mandarin and Japanese this year, I can see how much of the quotes on each page, in each language, that I can understand! How cool is that?

The A6 One Piece planner is awesome. I adore the anime, and so I wanted to make it fun. I also have a regular journal for daily (rants) about work and life, and I realized that while I get all of my frustration out on the page, I haven’t been trying to find a good thing to close with, so that’s what I will be doing: after I get my day out in my journal, I will turn to my One Piece planner and record One Good Thing from my day, as well as 3 things I am grateful for. That way, it is an all positive planner that I can look at on any day and feel good.

I watched a bunch of YT videos on how people use their Hobonichi planners and I am envious of their creativity with Washi Tape, markers and stickers. I do like stickers, though they would need to be really small for the A6 and Weeks. I’ll look into it. And by look into it, I mean possibly create my own for fun. We shall see.

I’m hoping that keeping myself on track with the planners reduces some of the stress that I feel when I can’t keep all of my ducks in a row. Between my job and regular life it’s a lot of ducks, but I’m hopeful the money I spent will be worth it in the end.

Does anyone else use planners to keep life in order, or for memory keeping? Got a favorite notebook that you use? Let me know!