Welcome to Part 3.
Originally, I set out to test five different planners:
- • Traveller Style Planner
- • Trigg Life Mapper
- • Brownie Techou Planner
- • Hobonichi Techo
- • Harry Potter Weekly Planner
From this assortment the first three fell very quickly and I have persevered with the last two; working from the perspective that it would be good to test both a pocket and desktop planner to see which would be most useful.
So, which one survived?
The Hobonichi Techo is the winner but not without caveats. Whilst it is a great A6 pocket planner it does have the odd drawback; for me it was the monthly planner pages which I found next to useless. For someone with average sized handwriting the boxes are too small, but I acknowledge that anyone with smaller handwriting than mine and a fine or extra fine nibbed pen will not have the same issues.
On the upside I initially thought that the day per page would be too small to be effective, but I am happy to say I was wrong they are an ideal size for scribbling notes, recording meetings, posting dates etc. and the Tomoe River Paper is wonderful to write on.
If I have a clear winner, then why is it ‘Almost One Planner’? For that you can blame Amazon or more precisely my curiosity.
This year I was trying out a Harry Potter Weekly Planner which is a desk sized planner and therefore not really suitable for carrying around so when I spotted the ‘Hogwarts School List’ diary for 2020 I thought why not.
This is a licenced product, produced by Pyramid, and is essentially a generic A5 week across two pages diary wrapped in very nice leather effect hardcover with front and rear flyleaves printed with an image of Hogwarts. The front and rear covers are embossed with a mixture of black text and gold block imagery; to match this the edges of the pages are also gold blocked and it has a matching gold place marker ribbon and brown elastic closure. All in all, it is a nice, lightweight diary.
So, as you can see, I ended up with almost one planner for 2020 but to make life a little easier I have decided my Hobonichi will be the primary go anywhere and everywhere with me planner and the Harry Potter will sit on the desk.
The bottom line with any planner is your willingness to use it; it can cost a few pennies or many pennies but the bottom line is making the commitment to use it for whatever purpose you want whether it’s everyday of your life or just appointments it’s up to you.
Every planner has its merits and its drawbacks but if I had to make a recommendation I would, despite it being in the many many pennies category, say go with the Hobonichi.
To Be Continued ………. Maybe.
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 