Productivity

Why I’m Doing One Book July This Year

I love buying planners.

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I love researching and finding new ones, setting them up and using them.

The problem comes when you have too many planners on the go and lose your way with what you’re trying to do.

Sound familiar?

I’ve recently reached that point with my planning.

This year I’ve set up and been using:

A Hobonichi Cousin
A Hobonichi Weeks
Passport Travelers Notebook
Bullet journal

I loved the different elements of these planners, but it was getting too complicated. I’ve been finding myself writing the same thing multiple times, or not keeping up with whichever planner I’d set up that week, and I knew it couldn’t continue.

So with this in mind, I decided to be bold and try something different and basically ditch all four of the above planners and set ups.

I thought it would be a fun challenge and hopefully help me get back to basics with my planning.

The planner

So I haven’t gone wildly different here. I haven’t gone and ordered something like the Wonderland222* or Sterling Ink Common Planner. Two planners which have been on my wishlist for a while. Instead, I picked up a new notebook for bullet journaling.

lt1917 a6

I’ve definitely been leaning into more bullet journaling with my planning recently, but the A5 bullet journal I’d set up wasn’t sparking joy. It felt a bit too big and cumbersome. I was enjoying planning in my Weeks in a bullet journal style, but if I was going to even replace the Passport TN for July, I knew I needed something more of that size. Enter, the A6 LT1917* in orange.

While the paper in the LT isn’t my fave, and the dot grid is probably a little large for me (I’m definitely used to the small graph paper on the Hobonichi paper now), I knew this would be a safe bet. I didn’t want to spend a lot of money trying out new notebooks, I wanted something reliable and inexpensive for this little experiment.

I also loved the idea of a softcover as I’ll be carrying this around with me. The colour was a no brainer (if you’ve been a follower for a while, you’ll know I love anything yellow or orange). Finally, as I intend on using this as a bit of a purse too, the gusseted back pocket makes it perfect for holding some of the bits I’d usually carry in my TN.

lt1917 back pocket

This will be perfect for vouchers and things. For the actual wallet items, like bank cards, I’ll be using at least one adhesive pocket*. I actually brought these back to the shop, so I’d have some for this set up.

The pen

This is an important bit. As much as I love my fountain pens, I don’t think it’ll work for a planner that I intend to use on the go. I have a bit of an issue at the moment with the ink constantly smearing even on my planners I don’t move around. Additionally, I do like a bit of colour coding. Particularly on my monthly pages. Therefore, I’m going to be bringing back my trusty Uni Jetstream*.

uniball jetstream pen

I’m not a huge fan of the colour combo here but I’ll make it work. I primarily picked this over my Hobonichi Jetstream because alongside the four ink colours, this also comes with a pencil and an eraser. This will make drawing anything out super easy as I won’t need any other writing instruments with me. In fact, the only other thing I’ll need to get this set up is a ruler. I don’t have a pencil board in A6 size currently, otherwise I’d use that.

I think this is my first time doing OBJ.

Will I keep it up all month? I hope so! I’ll be doing regular updates both on here and YouTube to help keep me accountable. Hopefully it’ll serve as a bit of inspiration for anyone struggling to keep to one book too.

Are you doing One Book July? Let me know what you’re using below!