It’s been a busy year so this took me a little longer than expected, but here’s my yearly planner overview!! ✨ This is my third year writing about my planners, AND my second year using the Hobonichi Weeks (you can check last year’s post here).
Keep in mind that this is not so much of a “review” as I won’t be going over all the details of the planner, but more of how I’m using the planner during this year. OK let’s go!
THE CONTEXT
I’m still using this planner for both comic work and personal tasks (house chores, appointments, etc.). Everything related to my Planetarium job is on a separate bullet journal that I keep at the office (work-life balance!!), but I’ll add time-sensitive stuff like traveling for work, meetings, etc.
I also use some digital tools alongside all this: GCal with Fantastical as my main calendar, and Todoist as an overall task manager. Maybe I’ll write about those in the future, but for now let’s focus on the planner!!
THE TOOLS
I like to keep my tools very minimal so I don’t need to carry a whole set of things to use my planner, but I still added in some new things compared to last year:
- Fountain pens! Last year I just wrote with whatever pen/ink combo I was using at the time, but this year I decided to be a bit more consistent and stick to black ink (I used Lamy Black, Kaweco Pearl Black and J. Herbin Perle Noire), plus one colored ink for highlights that I would change throughout the year.
- A sheet of blotting paper: as a left-handed person writing with fountain pens, having a sheet of blotting paper has been a total gamechanger. I use the ones from J. Herbin, they came in a pack of 10 and last pretty much forever, so now I keep one in every notebook I’m using.
- Zebra mildliners: I use these for color coding! I use a very simple system: red is for comics-related stuff, yellow is for my Planetarium work, and blue is for everything else–from friend hangouts to doctor’s appointments. This is the same color-coding I use on my digital calendar and on my task manager.
THE YEARLY SPREAD
This year I tried using the yearly spread as an actual calendar, but only for VERY BIG PICTURE STUFF like book deadlines, traveling for work, or vacations. It’s kinda intimidating to see the whole year in such a little space, but it’s pretty useful as a bird’s-eye view of how the year is looking.
THE MONTHLY SPREAD
I still use a digital calendar as my main calendar (because my appointments get moved a lot and I don’t like striking things out), but now I use this as a summary for the big important things: deadlines, travel dates, and important birthdays. I also use this calendar to keep track of home chores, so I can remember when’s the last time we changed the sheets or did a full vacuuming of the house instead of just running the roomba. On the bottom of the page I keep track of monthly goals and bills to pay.
THE WEEKLY SPREAD
Last year I was like “I love how you can customize the weekly pages in all these different ways!!”, but this year I’ve been using the exact same layout the entire year… 🤷 LOOK, it’s just what works for me right now!! It’s okay!!
Here’s a summary of what I have on my weekly pages:
- Events (color-coded!) and daily tasks on the left page, pretty straightforward.
- An expense tracker: I track our household expenses on a separate app, so this is just for personal expenses like my metro/bus card, personal shopping, etc. Mostly to keep myself aware of my expenses!
- A habit tracker: A little detail that I really appreciate is that instead of just doing an “X” to mark a habit, now I draw a little star…I did the self care! I win a star!!
- A time tracker for book work: I mentioned on my post about time management for our books that I mostly track my weekly hours of comic work, but sometimes I need something more specific…so, daily time tracker!
- Weekly tasks that don’t have a specific day set for them
- Random notes
NOTES PAGES
I use the notes pages for various things I want to reference: comic planning (you can read about it here), convention expenses/sales, a list of things lent/borrowed, and my “when’s the last time I…?” list to know when’s the last time I got a haircut or donated blood.
I also got some page flags to have quick access to my most referenced notes pages…which (you guessed it) are color-coded!! I’m a very consistent person!! 💁✨
I’m still a big fan of this planner! I already got one for 2024, which of course is red, to fit my color-coding scheme… 😎 does this mean 2024 will be the year of comics??
