That’s a pretty bold statement!  I feel I can be bold because I do feel like I will at least use the same book all year.  Now the layout may change as my needs change or when I get bored with the current layout, but I do feel confident that I will use my Hobonichi Cousin all year.

Daily Layout in the Hobonichi Cousin

Why am I focusing on planning and planners.  Simple, while my house is organized, my brain is not.  I’m not sure what changed last year that I could no longer remember anything or why my old methods simply were not working.  I teach my patients all the time how to augment their memory (our meds cause short term memory loss), so it was time for me to put into practice what I continually teach.

Planning

Anyone that know me is stunned that I don’t use my iPhone as my planner.  It is great to add appointments on the spot.  It is always with me.  It has nifty reminders for when I arrive and leave.  I can color code to my heart’s content.  If I don’t like the native calendar app I have thousand more options in the App Store.  With all of these neat features, it has one significant drawback for me, I don’t use it.  I’ve tried a couple of times over the years (going back to my Palm Pilot) to use an electronic calendar exclusively.  The problem isn’t putting in all the data, the problem was I just didn’t look at it.  So I fell back on the one method that has worked since middle school, I wrote things down.

Things changed in the last couple of years; I gained more responsibilities and my son got busier.  Where a monthly calendar was sufficient before, I needed more space for more details now.  Also, with my workload increasing with my home activities, I could no longer depend one book to keep it all. (I will write about my work changes in a future post).

I need a monthly page.  I need a daily or weekly page.  With my Hobonichi Cousin, I get all three.  To be honest, I don’t look at all three pages every day.  I look at my monthly page when I need to glance what is coming up in the next couple of weeks.  Each Sunday I plan my following week using the weekly layout.  This gives me an idea of what my week will look like (or should look like) so I can plan routine tasks for less busy days.  I do include work meetings and the clinic schedule in my weekly pages.  If I have a lot of patients in clinic, I know I will be tired that evening and not productive, so I will need to plan tasks for a different day.

Weekly view for a slow week

Then each day I focus on the daily page.  I do write down the appointments on my daily page.  If I don’t have any appointments, I celebrate by using that space for a quote or to stamp an image.  The right side of the appointment section I use like I used my monthly plan books or the A6 Hobonichi.  I write everything down, what I did, need to do, tasks I want to accomplish, thoughts, ideas, everything!  At the top where the section for top tasks are located, I use this for gratitude.  This is something I missed when I moved from my bullet journal to the monthly plan books.  The bottom section of the page is my free for all.  It isn’t for my private, daily journaling.  That goes in a separate A6 Hobonichi.  Some days I may use it for journaling, I could use it for notes or ideas, or I can draw.  I like having a section that will allow me to play as I see fit.

Daily layout put to use

Daily layout

So that’s it, one book, my Hobonichi Cousin.  I personally don’t like combining my journaling with my planning.  I don’t want to take that part of me outside the house where someone would have access to it.  My planner I like to leave open on my desk and and I don’t want my deepest, darkest thoughts exposed to the world.

I will chronicle my experience with using my Hobonichi Cousin.  If you search the web, YouTube, Instagram, or Pinterest for uses for the Hobonichi, you will find a lot about art journaling.  I wanted ideas to how to use it as a planner.  Layouts that work, ideas for the Remember This page, using a monthly, weekly, and daily.  I wanted to see how people used the blank pages at the back.  The Facebook Group: Hobonichi Strictly Planning has been a great resource, but the amount of info out there is still lacking.  Hopefully this will be a topic that expands as more people in the English speaking areas of the world become more acquainted with how amazing Hobonichi is.