This is a current account of my planning stack. It is a living document that gets updated periodically, retaining some remnants of historical information.

Two journals for "pages" journalling

Right now, I'm using a lined Paperblanks Softcover Flexi journal in Midi size for Morning Pages, and a lined Spirax A5 hardcover notebook for an accompanying Evening Pages ritual. I adore the beautiful cover and crisp paper of the Paperblanks journal, and am pleasantly surprised that the Spirax notebook works so well with my fountain pen. Even more pleasantly surprised than I was about fiding that notebook at a thrift store.

Previous journals: Leuchtturm1917 A5 hardcover dot grid. Hobonichi Techo. Hobonichi Techo Cousin. Moleskine.

A hardcover planner and calendar

Currently, I'm rocking a Paperblanks 12-month Midi Verso hardcover planner for calendar-based stuff. Verso is a layout that features a week layout on the left side of the spread + a lined page on the right side. 2023 saw the end of bullet journalling for me, so a layout that would let me capture notes just made sense.

After leaving Google Calendar, I realised I don't actually like digital calendars, as they don't suit how the planning part of my brain likes to work. The tactile nature of an analogue planner is one of the factors making me feel more grounded this year.

Previous planners/calendars: Otto Personal Monthly Undated Planner (A5), Google Calendar.

A couple of scrappy notebooks for throwaway writing

These include old notebooks and leftover notebooks that have hung around the study for years, plus out of season notebooks in the bargain bin at the shops. It's nice if they play well with my writing instruments, but since these are for functional ephemeral handwriting, it doesn't matter all that much.

Throwaway writing includes handwritten drafts for work (sometimes ideas flow better by hand), snail mail, personal notes, on-the-fly todo lists, shopping lists, and rapid notetaking for matters of short-term relevance.

Writing instruments

My weapons of choice are:

• 1 x fountain pen (cartridge converter)
• 1 x wooden 2B pencil

Previous writing instruments (and/or no longer regularly used): Muji gel pen. Glass dip pen. Calligraphy pens.

Digital tools

In 2022, I embraced the plaintext life, using it as my default unless unavoidable (eg. Word docs to colleauges, spreadsheets, etc.). As such, most of my tools are text editors.

Vim is my daily driver. I love how fast and simple it is, even if after 20+ years, I still feel like a newbie at using it. It's great for just getting stuff done in a single text file. When I need to work on many text files at once, Sublime Text is my go-to. It's also very snappy and straightforward.

Text-based planning and personal knowledge management typically happens in Obsidian, chosen for its respect for open formats (Markdown), data portability (uses local files), and extensibility (thanks to its plugins, I can still access plain text files and use a kanban board).

For plaintext editing on my phone, I use the free version of Runestone.

Previous digital tools: VSCode.