Yes, we’ve still 4 months to go in 2023 – why am I thinking about 2024? Because it’s Hobonichi season that’s why!
Hobonichi is a Japanese company known for their high quality planners using the Tomoe River paper which I’ve discovered is an absolute dream to write on. As with most Japanese products, the attention to detail is amazing. Which makes their beautiful planners sell out pretty quickly. And which is why I’ve been fretting over how my planning system is going to look like in 2024 and therefore which planners I’m going to order when Hobonichi launches their 2024 lineup on September 1st.
After many rounds of back and forth conversations with myself, I’ve finally landed on a planning system which I think I can buy into and sustain for the year. It looks like this:
1. A5 one day a page (I got the Tomitaro Makino Yamazakura HON) for daily reflections and intentions, focusing on personal growth and team achievements and development areas. I’m newly taking on a team lead role, and I want to be more intentional and focused on developing myself as a leader and keeping track of my team’s growth.
2. Weeks (I got the Tiny Dragons design because next year is the Year of Dragon, which is my son’s birth year so I’m happy to have something commemorative of the year). This will be my personal wellness tracker for meals, exercise, blood pressure, moods, self-care, etc. Now reaching middle age and recently starting to show signs of elevated blood pressure, I want to be more conscious and deliberate about my lifestyle habits.
3. Weeks Mega. This will be my reading and side hustle tracker, containing my reading log, favourite quotes, schedule for blog and social media posts and followers tracking, and any to-dos or brainstorms relating to my blog and social media.
4. Blank notebook for work notes and plans. This will be my catch-all planner bullet journal style. I started bullet journaling this year and really found the habit of rapid logging and brain dumping beneficial. I kept everything personal and work and notes etc in one book, which means it fills up quickly. The problem with this is, I do want to keep my journals over time but most of the work notes and to-dos in my bullet journal become irrelevant over time. I don’t want to store stacks of journals when I would only be interested in 20% of the book over time. So my plan is to use this blank notebook as a catch-all rapid log, and transfer out anything meaningful once a week to the above dedicated purpose journals. I think this would be a more deliberate approach and the special purpose journals will be something worthy for archival.
5. 5-year Hobonichi A5 techo. I started this 5-year journal earlier this year as a memory keeping book and will continue writing in this book for next year as well. The idea of returning to the same date over 5 years and logging memorable events is really fun. This is also part family album, where I like to add photos to the events.
6. Reading and learning journal. I’ve been keeping a journal to write more detailed notes of the books I’ve read and online courses that I’ve attended. This brings back memories of my student days, and I like having a quick summary of my learning points handy.
So there it is, my planning plans for 2024! What are yours and are you caught up in the Hobonichi fever as I was?
Rin Ranger 