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I used a paper-cover Hobonichi Techo Weeks in a clear cover for keeping appointments and micro-journaling. The weeks provides more space, but has a similar layout to the Moleskine I used in previous years, with the biggest improvement being that Saturdays and Sundays are alloted the same amount of space as other days. I plan on the left page of the weekly layouts and log on the right.

I used gel pens with the Weeks, namely the 0.38mm Uni-Ball One. I’ve been employing a simple color-coding scheme to differentiate basic entries (black) from all-day events or anniversaries (avocado green), as well as important supplementary information, such as cancellations, addresses, and reservation numbers (violet). I set up anniversaries/holidays up front, so I only need to keep two pens on hand for the day to day, which I initially kept clipped to the clear cover’s pen loop. I later added a pen pouch that straps onto the front cover.

I used the Hobonichi Schedule stencil and Activities stencil to decorate events with appropriate iconography, which respectively fit in and behind the clear cover’s front pocket. I later moved these into the zippered compartment of my pen pouch.

I marked tentative or far future appointments with Daiso sticky notes on the weekly pages, which gave me the flexibility to move or remove items as plans change. I initially planned to set aside time each weekend to set up the following week’s spread in pen with repeating events and any appointments that were marked by sticky notes, but I found it difficult to commit most plans to pen even as little as a day in advance. Plans change at the last minute too often. In previous years, I was being less precious with the planner and wasn’t afraid to simply cross off canceled or rescheduled items.

Highlights of this year’s system:

• The Hobonichi Weeks’ form factor and overall design (plus, picked a good cover)
• Being more intentional about the appearance of spreads
• Color-coding information
• More streamlined habit tracking

Next year, I would change:

• I created indentations in adjacent pages with the pens early on, especially when employing the stencil. Use a pencil board behind the page when stenciling.

At the end of last year, I moved into a paper-cover Hobonichi Techo Weeks in a clear cover for keeping appointments and micro-journaling. The weeks provides more space, but has a similar layout to the Moleskine I used in previous years, with the biggest improvement being that Saturdays and Sundays are alloted the same amount of space as other days. I plan on the left page of the weekly layouts and log on the right.

I’m using gel pens with the Weeks, namely the 0.38mm Uni-Ball One. I’ve been employing a simple color-coding scheme to differentiate basic entries (black) from all-day events or anniversaries (avocado green), as well as important supplementary information, such as cancellations, addresses, and reservation numbers (violet). I set up anniversaries/holidays up front, so I only need to keep two pens on hand for the day to day, which I keep clipped to the clear cover’s pen loop.

I’m using the Hobonichi Schedule stencil and Activities stencil to decorate events with appropriate iconography, which respectively fit in and behind the clear cover’s front pocket.

I’m using Daiso sticky notes to mark tentative or far future appointments on the weekly pages, which gives me the flexibility to move or remove items as plans change. I initially planned to set aside time each weekend to set up the following week’s spread in pen with repeating events and any appointments that were marked by sticky notes, but so far I’m finding it difficult to commit most plans to pen even as little as a day in advance. Plans change at the last minute too often. In previous years, I was being less precious with the planner and wasn’t afraid to simply cross off canceled or rescheduled items.

I used a Moleskine 12-Month Weekly Notebook Planner for keeping appointments and a Hobonichi Techo A6 Daily Planner for keeping a minimal daily journal and food log.

• I found I appreciated compartmentalizing in this way, where (forward-looking) appointments were kept separate from (backward-looking) daily logs. This relieves some of the tension of deciding what belongs where. However, managing two planners was somewhat inconvenient and resulted in not looking at the appointment book for periods of time.

• I experimented a little with color coding information in the Hobonichi Techo using highlighters to underline movie, book, and TV show titles.

• I added a simple habit tracker in the Hobonichi’s daily summary pages using highlighters of different colors to represent habits.

• Smearing became a vexing issue because of the combination of fountain pen ink, coated paper, and left-handed writing.

Highlights of this year’s system:

• Discovering Tomoe River paper in the Hobonichi Techo
• Playing with highlighters and color coding information
• Habit tracking
• Being consistent about micro-journaling each day
• Starting to consider the visual appearance of spreads

Next year, I would change:

• Stop logging food. It became burdensome early on, and wasn’t valuable.
• Merge planning and micro-journaling into one planner to ease the process by avoiding duplication.
• Color code to differentiate different types of events or information.
• Switch to gel pens to mitigate smearing and allow for color coding.
• Use blotting paper to keep between pages to prevent transfer of ink, keep place, rest writing hand on.
• Take advantage of sticky notes for marking tentative plans.

I browse the web with uBlock Origin set to nightmare mode as I generally don’t want to load scripts or images. Of course, many websites are not built with this in mind, and so they don’t work well. When it’s something I want to see, I manually unblock categories of resources until the page is rendered adequately.

Well, it turns out that

1. uBlock Origin has a Relax Blocking Mode command that progressively overrides your global blocking mode in a sensible order,
2. and you can set a keyboard shortcut to trigger this command.

The extension icon even changes color in your toolbar to indicate the current status.

There is a de facto standard for activating an emoji picker via the keyboard:

When using Microsoft keyboards such as Microsoft Ergonomic Keyboard, the emoji key on them maps to Meta+Ctrl+Alt+Shift+Space.

— Plasma Desktop: Activate Emoji Selector using emoji key

In keeping with the past couple of years, I used a Moleskine 12-Month Weekly Notebook Planner for keeping appointments and very light journaling.

One drawback I’ve noted of the planner’s horizontal weekly memo layout is that it allocates half as much space for Saturday and Sunday as it does for weekdays, while I tend to have more appointments on the weekend than I do during the work week.

For 2021, like last year, I used a Moleskine 12-Month Weekly Notebook Planner for keeping appointments and very light journaling. This year, I added a fountain pen (LAMY AL-star 〈F〉). Later in the year, I swapped the 〈F〉 nib for an 〈EF〉 to better accommodate my handwriting size.