Welcome to Part 2.
In Part 1 I set out to test five different planners for a year and I did so in the certain knowledge that some would fall by the wayside whilst others continued onwards.
What I didn’t expect was how quickly three of them would fall.
The first to fall was the ‘Traveller’ style planner; it wasn’t just that the supplied paper was very closely related to blotting paper and was only suitable for pencils and standard ‘Biro’s’, anything else and it turned into a sponge, it was simply me. I just couldn’t get used to the ‘Traveller’ design. The whole three in one arrangement just doesn’t work for me and I end up taking the notebook I want to us out of the cover and thus negating the purpose of the cover.
The next victim was the Trigg Life Mapper; I couldn’t get used to the lifestyle angle of this planner. I’m a scribble a few hurried notes type of guy and I’m not looking for anything deep and meaningful from my planner, just space to scribble, which is why we didn’t hit it off. I may go back to the Life Mapper and look at different sections and see what I can take from it. I have to stress that I don’t think there is anything wrong with this approach and life mapper is a great tool if you are willing to give it the time it deserves.
The third casualty was the Brownie Techou Planner; this planner has the best paper of all of them my pen literally just glided across the paper, if they ever start to produce notebooks then this paper will give Tomoe River a run for its money. Again, this one was culled not because there was anything wrong with it, only that it does not meet my current planner needs.
So, left standing is the Hobonichi Techo and the Harry Potter Weekly Planner both of which are working really well for me which is going to make the final decision even harder when it comes to ordering for 2020.
In neither of them have I used the monthly planner charts at the moment; in the Hobo they are just too small to do any real planning on but the Harry Potter monthly planner would work for me if I was so inclined.
The paper in both is standing up to the test very well and they are both being suitably abused to see how they stand up to everyday life; often being buried under a pile of pens and inks and other junk.
In a way I am pleased that I have got it down from five planners to two planners and in another way I’m not because when I draft the next instalment, I will need to have made a decision about what to order and right now, I couldn’t tell you which one I will go with.
To Be Continued ……….
Disclaimer: All of the planners were purchased with my own funds at retail price. The opinions expressed in this review are my own; and I am not connected with either the retailers or manufacturers in any way.
The Indian Marmalade Company 