Journal

A planner and a plan

/ Pete Denison / 2 Comments
Image courtesy Bunbougu

Sure, everyone has long moved on from planner season and even the “my year in review” posts are done and dusted, though I guess you cannot say this blog has ever really been at the cutting edge of anything. So here I am talking of my initial foray into planners. Better late than never, I guess. Surely having been into stationery all your life and written this blog for over ten years now, this can’t be an initiation into the world of planners. Can it? Well, ostensibly friends, the answer is yes.

Yes, there were the yearly, very cheap appointment diaries of many years ago, and the Filofax years (loved my brown leather Timberland cover) in between, however since becoming really invested in all things pen and stationery over the past decade, I had largely been a notebook only kind of person. At least until now. Honestly, this makes me both excited and a little nervous all at the same time.

Why now?

Well, it’s not been a great year to be honest, and during the tougher times the tendency for me is to turn inwards and embrace what brings a little joy. Something to turn your mind to when it needs an outlet. I don’t think anyone will be surprised when I say the very topic themes on this blog (pens, coffee, stationery and the like) are generally the things that help me do that.

Viewing a few planner videos on YouTube (and wow, dangerous as that is…), I began to see a slightly different angle on things. Maybe trying to develop my creative side a little? What began attempting a few basic drawings and sketches, morphed into accumulating a few stickers and templates. I also shifted gears a little from my fountain pens back towards a case full of gel pens. Needless to say, both my favourite Brisbane pen store, Pen and Ink, and online Japanese stationery site Bunbougu facilitated this transition nicely.

How it’s going

I’d have to say I’m fairly pleased so far. Sure, I’ve ultimately realised I’m not great with the drawing, nor am I overly creative, but let’s just call it a work-in-progress. An evolution if you will. Some days I give it a run, others are just words-only as they always were, and that’s more than okay.

If you can’t sketch… then stamp. The Everyday Explorers Currently Inked stamp set

The usual crew

Planner season or not, it’s always notebook season… in some form or another. So, at the current time, things are looking like this:

  1. Daily Journal: Black Leuchtturm1917 A5 Hardcover in dot grid (a left over from a second failed Bullet Journal experiment earlier in the year)
  2. Everyday Notebook: new addition outlined below
  3. Novel Writing Notebook: Montblanc #149 lined notebook (sounds grand, though when your last story was 2014’s NaNoWriMo and this is a follow-up — it has been a long time…)
  4. Pure Capture: a mix of 2. above and a Field Notes Pitch Black
  5. Travel Diary: again, that’s integrated with 2. above as well…
  6. 2024 Diary/Planner: the second new addition, further details below

New additions

Traveler’s Notebook – Olive Regular Size

I guess this is where things get a little more interesting — at least in terms of the purpose of this post. In the context of some of that list (numbers 2,4 and 5) above, it perhaps comes as no surprise I have delved into the world of the Traveler’s Notebook system. Having purchased an Olive Regular size Traveler’s Notebook cover in August before a 10-day trip away, it has now also become my everyday notebook of sorts as well. I’m still tinkering with various inserts and thinking about how I might “section off” various aspects of my writing life (travel, commonplace, general note-taking, writing etc) so I’ll say the TN lifestyle is also still a work in progress.

Notebooks and coffee – that theme thread is strong… the pen is a Caran d’Ache + Nespresso 849 ballpoint pen

Things seem to be working well at the moment though, and I have embraced various pockets, clips, and other accessories in my quest for something a little different to my typical standard notebooks of the past. Inserts are your standard dot grid, blank, and grid, though I’ll be adding a lined version soon. The slimmer, taller nature of the regular inserts seems to suit me fairly well, and a 0.5mm gel pen has turned out to be the tool of choice (currently a couple of Uniball Signo DX, however there are quite a few 0.7mm Pentel Energels’ that emerged from the second drawer when this all began).

Behold the results of sending your sister and niece all over Tokyo searching for additions…

The Olive leather on the Traveler’s cover is certainly something to behold, and is already showing a little lived-in wear which looks fantastic, and will no doubt become even better with age. I do have a matching Traveler’s Company pen loop attached, which is 50:50 both useful and annoying, though I think it will stay given its utility. I of course also could not go past Mal’s perfect monogramming for that personal touch — love it.

First comes the creativity…

You can say I’m very much enjoying the change so far.

Hobonichi Weeks 2024 Hardcover Planner

This one I’m a little less sure about. Not because I have any doubts about the planner itself, just what I’ll use it for. I have a few ideas, and they are mainly around the wellness/habit tracking type of area, and I’ve been noting down some ideas over the past month or so.

Then comes the structure…

I seem to have mostly settled on a combination of personal development/self-improvement/wellness journal/health/habit tracker. I lump them all together because I’d like it to be more than a simple tracker, yet terms like “wellness” though valid, give me Instagram snake oil/supplement seller — vibes. Whilst I realise that sweeping generalisation is unfair; I simply cannot comfortably call this anything ”wellness”, and it will be more than simply a healthy habits’ tracker.

So, in the interests of something meaningful and relevant to the task at hand, the working title which has meandered its way into my consciousness: my TG37 Journal. This is simply based upon the writing of James Clear on “tiny gains”, and the “1% better every day providing a 37-fold improvement at year end” theory. We’ll see how things go.

The tracking options are many

For my first foray into Hobonichi land, I went with a cover design by Japanese illustrator Hiroko Kubota, called Another night of falling star sparklers. I was looking for something a little unique and upon seeing a shared birth year with the cover designer, it seemed a pretty good fit.

Something a little unique for the cover design

I think the challenge here will be not overthinking things, though it has indeed been a while since I’ve entertained the structure of a dated planner in my analogue tools. Overall, I’d say I am fairly optimistic though.

Wrapping Up

It can be a little funny putting together a post like this, in that when summarised on a page, what feels like a significant change in reality, perhaps doesn’t sound as grandiose when outlined on a blog. Then again, it isn’t meant to be either. Our interests, plans, and realities take many forms, and how we document this is unique to each of us. Thankfully, we have as many options for tools as there are approaches to doing it.

I hope the finish to your 2023 is a good one, and 2024 is looking promising as well — however you intend to plan, log, track, or document your own journey.

A Journalling Streak – holding on a little too tightly

/ Pete Denison / Leave a comment

The same morning I read Mary’s account on From the Pen Cup of reaching the milestone of seven years of Morning Pages (well-deserved applause all round), I ended my own daily journalling streak which stood at 1308 consecutive days. A tip of the hat in either direction, perhaps. Congratulations Mary, I wish you many more years, Morning Pages, and words to come.

Myself? Well, I’m guessing it will largely be the same, and while 1308 days is no seven year run, I’m fairly content with my consistency, particularly given there were a few decent consecutive-day streaks (albeit lower in number) before that. If so, why the celebratory “I missed a day” post? It certainly isn’t to decry the act of journalling, and whether it’s a page a day in the Muji A6 notebooks I’ve used these past couple of years, or the mind map I’ve just dumped into a new MindNode document for this post, both have the same effect: thoughts are out (page, screen, blog…) and better for it.

Given the subtext of this post might read: a post related to journalling but not really a post about journalling, forgive me for the confusion. What I’m railing against a little here is becoming too wrapped up in my “streak” for its own sake — or the sake of my “system”. That said, I suspect this journalling example is simply bearing the brunt of a certain level of frustration with my other systems, habits, and routines as they relate to output when sitting at my desk. As the commonly used quote attributed to Peter Drucker states” ”if you can’t measure it, you can’t manage it.” Well, to that I’d counter: “if you can measure it, you can certainly obsess over it” – attribute that one to me…

Journalling is the first thing I do every morning and something I certainly see continuing indefinitely, as I find it a great way to ease into the day. Some days I write about everything, others it’s nothing at all. There are days I’ve Googled and rewritten song lyrics for goodness’ sake, and yes, there have been some significant life events mentioned in those pages as well. As you’d expect, there are (brief) tales of challenging and emotional times, however the last sentence of every entry begins with two letters enclosed in a box: GF (grateful for…). Whatever follows in that final line or two is a simple reminder of the good. Of course, this again runs the gamut: overcoming struggles, life events, a great cappuccino, or just how good the nib is on my Pilot Custom 823. The big and the small — it’s all there.

I guess that is where I’m coming from with my thinking on this — hastily scrawling a date and “nothing to see here” (or similar) on days when I’d missed the morning routine (usually when away from home), just doesn’t feel quite right. Of course, it’s not wrong either — if it had a purpose other than to simply fill in the circle on my Streaks app.

In many ways, the streak needed to be broken simply to put my mind at ease and confirm it could be broken without the earth somehow falling off its axis. It didn’t by the way, with the new streak now sitting at 7 days. I do feel quite ridiculous in saying some sort of weight had been lifted, when after missing the morning routine that day, I made a conscious decision to leave it that way as I walked past the journal sitting on my desk that same night. Be real and end it…

I started a daily journalling habit a good few years ago because I thought I should, though I’ll keep going for any number of great reasons. I never have to decide what the first task or activity is in my day; it is a perfect chance to work through a rotation of fountain pens; it gives the coffee machine time to warm up; and I do feel as though I’ve missed something on the few occasions I haven’t done it.

Now though? Well, I’ll happily continue this helpful and calming daily ritual without the overhead of a 1300+ daily streak to maintain. It is indeed ok to “break the chain” Jerry.

So today, I am indeed grateful for: ending a streak, but continuing one of the more valuable habits I’ve managed to form.

Publish – a new feature for Day One

/ Pete Denison / Leave a comment

Day One imageFor a journaling app (or any app for the matter), Day One already had an unsurpassed feature set. Now it is even better. Developer Bloom has now added an additional feature called Publish, which provides a way to share individual diary entries with a select few, or the whole world.

I have written previously about one way I have used Day One, however the use case possibilities are endless. Along with a very clean, distraction free writing environment, Day One will also automatically add temperature, weather, location information, time and date, activity data (iPhone 5s) and even what music you have playing. A key feature for me has been the ability to tag entries, allowing use of the app for specific holidays, events, or themes running through the various unique individual entries.

Now, with Publish, users are able to do just that – publish individual entries to the Day One webpage, where those who have the unique URL, can view the shared entry. Social media accounts can be linked should you wish to share beyond a simple few, with data such as views, likes and total shares available to you in relation to each published entry. Or if you prefer to share entriesmore privately, the usual iOS share sheet options of messaging, mail, or copying the unique URL can be used.

Although most will likely use this feature as a means to share entries to social media, I cannot help but think this type of service would also be useful in sharing (read – sending) things such as health data with medical practitioners (e.g. home blood pressure monitoring, blood sugar levels, food intake); tracking and sending exercise data to your personal trainer (particularly for iPhone 5s users to track overall activity also); recording moods and feelings shared with a psychologist; or even time tracking / job details completed and sent to an employer. There really are endless possibilities with this type of service, however understandably many may be nervous about sharing such information in this way from a security point of view[1]. In any event, there are certainly emerging possibilities here.

Personally, I plan on using this on my next holiday, to share some of the craziness we get up to with other family members. For example a three day trip last year generated 43 Day One entries, most with photos. Given our family sharing occurs privately on Path, rather than posting entries to two services (or even a third in Twitter), a copied and shared URL via Publish is looking increasingly attractive as a simple, elegant means of sharing these experiences at whatever level I choose.

Day One is available through the respective App Stores for Mac and iOS, with the sharing feature currently available only on iPhone, though iPad support is coming soon.

Other reviews of Publish can be found on The Sweet Setup and Macstories, and was discussed recently on Episode 39 of The Prompt podcast.

  1. Comment from the developer around security can be found in The Sweet Setup post linked above.  ↩