Happy holidays! 2024 is almost over, but I wasn’t gonna let the year end without my ✨ yearly planner post!! ✨
This is my third year in a row using the Hobonichi Weeks (here’s my posts for 2022 and 2023). There’s no big changes in how I used it compared to previous years, but there’s always little tweaks to the system as I find what works best for my needs 🙂
NOTE: This also means I’ll be repeating some things from previous years, but I’ll still include them in this post so it can stand on its own.
THE CONTEXT
For some life context, I have a scicomm job at a planetarium but I also make comics on the side. Comics-wise, I’ve spent most of 2024 working on the sequel to our graphic novel The Do-Over.
I’m still using this planner for both comic work and personal tasks like appointments, chores, etc. I actually tried adding my planetarium tasks to this planner for one week and I haaaated it (you can see it later in this post), so I keep managing that in a separate bullet journal. I’ll still write down time-sensitive planetarium stuff here, though, like meetings or special events.
THE TOOLS
I like keeping my planner tools simple and consistent—a black-ink fountain pen for writing (my favorite black ink right now is J.Herbin Perle Noire), a colored-ink fountain pen for highlights (this year I’ve mostly used TWSBI Sky Blue and Pelikan Edelstein Rose Quartz), and some Zebra Mildliners for color coding: red for comics, yellow for planetarium/scicomm stuff, blue for everything else. This year I added a fourth color to my color-coding set, a gray I use for “awareness”: stuff that I want to keep in mind, but that doesn’t directly involve me. This is the same color-coding system I use on my digital calendar and my task manager—,consistency!!
THE YEARLY SPREAD
I’ve come to really enjoy the yearly spread as a very-big-picture view of the year! Deadlines, travel dates, my family’s birthdays, and important events at work. This time I also wrote down when I have to renew yearly subscriptions so they don’t catch me by surprise, and I added arrows when I’ve had to push deadlines, which might serve as info for my future self to…set more realistic deadlines…? Hopefully…? 😳💦
THE MONTHLY SPREADS
Since I use a digital calendar as my main calendar, I always struggle with what to do with the monthly pages! This year I’ve been writing down big, important events (deadlines, birthdays, holidays…), and then in a different color I track my personal expenses. In the bottom area I have a checklist for our monthly bills and subscriptions, and a checklist for monthly tasks/goals.
THE WEEKLY SPREADS
I’ve been keeping my weeklies pretty similar to last year: events and tasks on the left side, and then habit tracking, time tracking for book work, a weekly tasklist and random notes on the right side. This year I moved my expense tracking to the monthly spread, so I have a lot more space on the right side of my weeklies!
During some particularly rough weeks, I switched things up to add a section for wins and gratitudes. It felt good to write down the highlights of each day, but I eventually decided to move that to my journal and keep this as a more functional planner.
Finally, here’s a week where I tried something different—three columns on the left to separate planetarium, comics, and personal tasks. I liked the idea of it, but it ended up feeling too crowded and messy!!
That’s one of the things I really like about the Weeks—it’s easily customizable, and if I end up making a spread I hate, I only have to deal with it for a week and then I get to start over!
NOTES PAGES
There’s one tweak I’ve really enjoyed in my notes pages this year…color-coded headers!!
Some of the things I have in my notes pages are:
- My goals for the year
- A list of things lent/borrowed
- “When’s the last time I…?” (donated blood? got a haircut?)
- Comic planning (as seen here)
- A list of freelance/comic payments
- Fountain pen-related expenses (to keep myself in check lol)
I never use all of the notes pages, so I’ve been trying to also use them for quick notes…for example, this list of corrections I needed to do for our book:
MY 100
This is my second year using the “My 100” section at the end of the planner as a reading log! I’ve tried using Goodreads to track my reading for AGES and I always end up forgetting to update it, but this little list works great for me! It is also color-coded because I’ll color-code every time I get the chance!!
THOUGHTS FOR 2025
After 3 years using the same planner I’m feeling pretty consistent! ✨ I have a good system going, and even though it rarely leaves my desk I really appreciate how portable it is. For 2025, I decided to take the leap and bought a second Weeks for my planetarium job…the bullet journal I use is really messy compared to my Weeks, so I think it’d really help me be more organized at work :B and since the Weeks starts in December, I get a whole month to try things out before setting up a system for 2025!
I’m already a little overwhelmed by the thought of keeping two planners at the same time (I’m just one person!), but I’m hoping that it’ll help me get more organized at work while also keeping some boundaries…you know? Anyway, I guess you’ll know how that goes at the end of next year lol
I also realized that I reference my past planners more often than I expected! For example, to know when I sent or received an important payment. Knowing this, I’m gonna try to be more thorough in having my planner as a log of events so I can easily reference it later.
Okay, that’s it for this year! Thanks for reading! 👋