Journals, planners, and more

It's about the time of year when everyone starts thinking about what planner(s) they're going to use for 2024; the Hobonichi Store has had its first 2024 releases, a lot of smaller brands have had their preorders, and if you're anything like me you're looking at your 2023 solution trying to decide what has worked for you and what you want to carry over to 2024.

My 2023 setup:

* Personal planner: Hobonichi Cousin A5. Mostly a success; I haven't yet managed to make the monthly spreads work for me, and the dated dailies means that if I miss a day I have a glaring hole, which irks me. Overall a win though.

* Work planner: Wonderland 222 A5. Similar to the Cousin, but with weeklies interspersed between the relevant months, and with a few extra spreads. Structurally this works fairly well for me; the weekly layout has a stacked weekend rather than a column for both days, which saves space and means all the columns can be wider, which is perfect for a work planner for me. The undated dailies are a must, as well, since I use them as general note-taking and task-management pages. I didn't use this planner as well as I could have this year, but I think that's about establishing better habits rather than the planner itself not working for me.

* Desk notes/commonplace book: A5 TN-style folder + Midori inserts. A total fail; I haven't used this at all, instead defaulting to a spiral-bound Maruman notebook every time. Need to rethink this.

* Ink journal: "Regular" size TN-style folder + Midori regular and lightweight inserts. This has worked OK; I use one insert for tracking my currently-inked fountain pens, one for swatching new arrivals in the order I get them, and one (a project I'm still working on) doing very small swatches by brand. (My main ink swatching is on a home-made Col-O-Ring knockoff using Tomoe River paper, and that's sorted by colour order, so I wanted a source of very basic swatches by brand/range as well.) I'm also planning on adding more inserts for pen records and paper tests.

My 2024 plans:

One of the main criteria for my choices was the paper used; as a FP user I'm pretty picky about paper as I want to enjoy all the beautiful properties of my inks. 2024 is the first year that Hobonichi is moving to the new Sanzen Tomoe River paper; they had enough old TRP to finish out 2023, which gave them a big advantage over other planner brands in my reckoning. Come 2024, though, and all the Tomoe River planners will be on the same playing field.

* Personal planner: Sterling Ink Common Planner A5. A lot of the planner community raved about this in 2023, and in 2024 they're introducing an A5 variant which will suit me. It's heavily inspired by the Hobonichi Cousin, starting out as a "Cousin but better/Cousin but without those things you don't like". Now, I like the Cousin a lot, so I'm not trying to fix some of the 'problems' that other Sterling Ink users are fixing, but I like some of the features that the Common Planner offers. (The product listing pages have been hidden, but there's a Youtube video showing the 2024 lineup here.) And I had an absolute shipping nightmare trying to get my 2023 Cousin delivered, so I was happy enough to avoid the Hobonichi Store this year. My main concern is that the daily pages aren't numbered – which means no ugly gaps, but also perhaps no structured incentive to actually journal every day.

* Work planner: Wonderland 222 A5, again the Stacked Weekend variant. The main downside of this is that there are only 90 undated note pages, so I've ordered the 368 page notebook to go along with it. (I'm going to have to find a spacious cover to handle these!)

* Ink journal: Carrying on with what I have. It's only barely started; no need for anything new!

* Desk journal/commonplace book: This is where I'm really not sure; I'm contemplating switching to a single thick notebook, like the Nanami Seven Seas Crossfield, but I don't really have any great ideas here. I also wouldn't mind trying to find a notebook with Cosmo Air paper, like the Taroko Odyssey. I think I need a better idea of how I want to use this book before I make any decisions.

So that's where I'm at. Is anyone else starting to plan out (heh!) what they're using for 2024, and if so, what's your thought process?