The Hobonichi switch revisited - a year of using the system
Hi, everybody, and welcome to another episode of Stationery Freaks with myself, Rob Lambert, and, of course
Helen:with me, Helen Lisowski
Rob:So, Helen, we're having to squeeze this episode in, you know, between meetings, between life, between all sorts of crazy stuff. So, today, we're gonna talk about Hobonichi planners and do a bit of an update because the original one, which we'll cover a little bit in a minute, pretty much almost a year ago, not quite. It was about 11 months ago, wasn't it? And it's our most listened to podcast. And so we thought we'd do a bit of a revisit to that.
Rob:But before we do, Helen, what's been happening in your stationery story world?
Helen:You don't know this. We don't talk about this bit before we, before we go on air, do we? So I have combined 2 of my favorite things. I don't know if you'll remember me talking about a, set of stationary books called Atoms to Astronauts.
Rob:Oh, yes. I saw them on Instagram actually.
Helen:I think I
Rob:saw an advert. Yeah.
Helen:They've widened their range a bit. Well, I covered one of those. But Rob, as you know, I do not want for notebooks. And I would love one. But until I need one and I've got specific purpose, I'm not I'm not buying one of those except I saw one brand new on Vintage, so I bought it.
Rob:The the age old definitely don't need any new notebooks. Definitely don't. And then every episode, it's like, yeah, I bought 3 more new notebooks. So the atoms for astronauts, if correct me if I'm wrong, are the ones with the really funky covers of all the different, I guess, subjects and topics.
Helen:It is. So this one is a science one, which is what really sold it to me. There's lots of them. They do biology, and they do chemistry. They do all sorts.
Helen:Because this was sort of a science and space one, which I'm a bit of a fan of, I couldn't resist. It felt like it was there for me. So, yeah, my all my good intentions went out of the window along with my credit card number. So that was
Rob:You gotta just stop looking at stationery. That's what I found. I is I I was walking past the stationery shop the other day in London, and I actually resisted. Can you believe this? I resisted going in.
Helen:I can't.
Rob:And it it took a huge amount of willpower to not go in the shop, but I knew that if I went in, I would come out with a notebook that I don't need. So I think I'm getting better, but maybe I'm not. Maybe I'm just delusional.
Helen:You know I'm not allowed in a bookshop unsupervised. You know that.
Rob:Exactly. Exactly. Every time we go in, our favorite you know, we talk about this a lot with TK Maxx
Helen:Oh, yeah.
Rob:Which is you know, got a a little stationary section, which we've talked about before. It looks like it's being stocked by an 8 year old. There's just random books all over the place. It's pretty carnage. But every time we go in there, the boys are like, oh, god.
Rob:That's gonna go off to the stationary section.
Helen:Yeah. If
Rob:you can't find me in TK Maxx, you've gotta go look at the stationary section.
Helen:It's absolutely. Sometimes they split up, so it's Homesense, which is part of TK Maxx in the UK. So yeah.
Rob:Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So, these, Atom Swastronaut books
Helen:Yes.
Rob:Are they is there anything inside structurally to help you learn science or anything, or is it is it literally just the cover that's different?
Helen:It's the cover inside and out. Now I haven't got it yet. It's en route to me. So this is a new purchase this week. It's en route to me.
Helen:I haven't got it, but it is the outside and then is is obviously a shiny hardcover, but it's lay flat. And they are stationary freaks, these guys. So, inside as well is like hand drawn, they're not obviously hand drawn but printed and they look hand drawn. Pictures from all sorts of sciency notebooks. It's lovely.
Helen:I really, really love it. But this one is just a bog standard line notebook. It's just going to be a really nice one, I think. So
Rob:Some of our listeners may know I did a video on my other channel, and I still have to keep repeating to people in the comments that that is not an official Stationery Freaks video. But I've had some lovely comments, and I got a really, really nice one the other day from a lady who said she's over 80. So if you're listening, welcome. She said she was gonna subscribe, so welcome to the podcast. And I think in the comment you were describing or she was describing herself as somebody who's been a stationary freak for 80 plus years, and it's so nice to find a group of people that that share the same passion.
Rob:So welcome. I was pondering this, and I actually responded to the comments saying, I think and not no science here, of course, but I do wonder whether our love of stationery is set in our mind as kids, you know, during our sort of informative years. Do you think there's anything in that?
Helen:I don't know. I think, I remember at school, there was a whole thing about this, like, scented pencils and scented,
Rob:Yeah.
Helen:Renders rubbers as we call them in the UK, but not in America. That that that kind of thing was a big deal. I don't know. I do remember the joy of a new notebook. So they used to give us exercise books to write it at school, and they were your standard kind of kids exercise book size.
Helen:And I used to love it when you'd finished one and you got a new one because it's always that potential. So I remember that feeling
Rob:from being a kid.
Helen:But whether that was because or as a, you know, whether as a as a result or or that's why I enjoyed it, I don't know.
Rob:I don't know. We'll have to find out in the next generation of been using tablets and computers, along
Helen:with it.
Rob:Did you use to, wrap your exercise books as in, like, posters and wallpaper and stuff like that?
Helen:Some of them. Not when I was very young. When I was older, that that was kind of encouraged. But yeah. Yeah.
Rob:Just one other thing. I've been looking at I don't know whether you've heard of them. These Lamy fountain pens?
Helen:Oh, I have. Yes. I've looked at a few of those too. I don't own one though yet.
Rob:Well, I put one on my Christmas list. I resisted buying it, and I put it on my Christmas list as a gift for other people to purchase for me and the family. And I was doing a workshop, and I noticed that somebody in the the group had a Lammy fountain pen. So, of course, I had to go over and introduce myself and say, look, you know, I'm a stationary freak of you too. And it turns out that this person was a stationary freak.
Rob:They got loads of fountain pens. And the Lammy is just it feels great, and hopefully, somebody will will buy me one for Christmas. If not, I'll probably get one myself. And then I might do a little bit of a review on it because it's functionally designed slightly different to most fountain pens, and it gets rave reviews. And it looked great, and it wrote really well.
Rob:So, yeah, looking forward to that.
Helen:I know a few, converts as well, who absolutely rave about fan about the Lamy Lamy ones particularly. But I wonder what do you remember we had Urban on the program, who is a real pen and ink aficionado? I wonder what he thinks about that. So, yeah.
Rob:Oh, maybe it's a chance to get Urban back on if you're if you're listening. Maybe it's a chance to to come back on and share what's been happening in the fountain pen world. Yeah. Yeah. So, Helen, without further ado, let's jump into today's topic, which is Hobonichi.
Rob:So nearly a year ago, I think if memory serves me correctly, it was January of this year. You embarked on a brand new system moving away from the lovely and amazing bullet journaling into the world of Hobonichi planners with stickers and other stuff. And you said it was a terrible time to do that, and I think we've talked on previous episodes that actually it turned out okay. But how are you getting on? So nearly a year later, you know, are there any lessons that you'd like to share with our listeners about this whole exercise?
Helen:I would. Firstly, I think trying new management system. You call them knowledge management systems. That's not really what this is. This is a diary and note taking thing.
Helen:So this is a way of keeping my life controlled. So it's a little playpen for all the things in my head. And I would suggest that changing it is probably really good for your brain. It makes you think really carefully about how you use things and what you're doing. And whether what you're doing is a habit and whether it's serving you or whether it's just a bad habit that you do because you do and you never question it, and it's not actually doing anything.
Helen:From that point of view, I think it's really important to do. On the other hand, I would strongly advise you don't do this at the end of the year. I mean, I think I said this at the time that I was having a bit of a nightmare with it. The problem with it is that if you, like me, take quite a lot of time off over that Christmas period, that year change period, it's really overwhelming to come back. And not only have you forgotten everything you ever knew, but you're supposed to be keeping records of it.
Helen:And I don't know what I I'm out of the habit of writing things down. So it's a bit it's a bit of carnage for the 1st couple of weeks. It doesn't help me. It feels like a a millstone around my neck for the 1st couple of weeks. And then after that, it becomes a security blanket I don't want to let go of.
Helen:So yeah.
Rob:And and so you've you've you've let me get the words out properly. You've stuck with it. I know you said stick with it. You've stuck with it
Helen:I did.
Rob:All of this time. Is the system that you're running now broadly the same as the one that you kicked off after that sort of period of of quietness?
Helen:Yeah. It's adapted slightly, but it has. What was really interesting was I missed nothing from the bullet journaling. Now you'll remember I was an ardent fan of the bullet journaling. And when I chose the Hobonichi, I did so because it looked like it would fulfill all the needs, that I did.
Helen:And I was very careful. I went through my bullet journal and wrote down little I had little sticky notes. So I wrote down on each sticky note each thing that I was using it for. You know, so this is a month view, this is a week view, this is my to do list, and this is my bills payment page. So I had this collection of sticky notes and then I went through and stuck those sticky notes into the Hobonichi where I was intending to control and manage that information, and that's largely Because I spent time doing that, that's largely stayed in place.
Helen:I like the fact that I can look at 6 months at a time, a year at a time, a month at a time and a week at a time. I don't Mostly don't double count. So if I keep something on the daily pages, I don't actually keep them on the monthly pages. And if I do it on the monthly pages, I don't keep it on the yearly pages. So, my holidays, I track on the year to view.
Helen:I don't track them anywhere else. So I don't need to because I know when I'm on holiday.
Rob:So so as somebody who has never I've never got into the whole bullet journaling. You know, we Yay. You know, we actually almost started the podcast because, we were disagreeing about productivity systems and stationery. What what is the I'm I'm struggling, I guess, and maybe some listeners that don't necessarily know either of these two systems. What is the difference between the bullet journal and the Hobonichi?
Rob:It sounds to me, as a non expert like it's broadly the same system, but you're in just a Hobonichi notebook as in the brand notebook. What's what's the major difference
Helen:between those? So the major difference, do you remember all those mocking conversations we used to have when you turn up in the office and you'd be, like, laughing at me going, oh, you're drawing out your week this week again. Are you all Yeah. Taking out your month? I'm just gonna do 10 minutes work while you get on with that, Helen.
Rob:Yeah. Yeah. I remember that.
Helen:The Hobonichi is a diary system. So it's Right. It's like much more like a diary than a bullet journal. A bullet journal is completely free and every single page you decide what you need on it. What I needed on it was a page for my to do list and what I'm doing that day.
Helen:I needed pages for this week, this is what my week looks like, and then pages for my month, this is what my month looked like. I didn't really track anything yearly, so that was a bonus. And I use it mostly for holiday. I don't use anything else, which has been really useful. The one thing that the Hobonichi system doesn't give you is you get in the daily section, you get one day for a page.
Helen:And I have on that my to do list, but I can also put notes on there that, you know, journal y type notes. I don't do very many, but I do do some. And I keep notes where I have, like, I have a regular meeting on a Wednesday, for example. I will keep notes on that. Or on a Thursday, we have our team meeting, so I will keep notes that I want to make they're literally not even bullet points.
Helen:They're 3 words, and they literally just go down the page like that.
Rob:Okay. So the the hibernatures in in a sense a predefined diary with the pages defined as the Hobon Nature system has. Whereas with a bullet journal, for example, you could if you had more notes than would fit on one page, you just use a second page Yeah. And then you create the next day's page on the following page, if that makes sense.
Helen:Yeah. Absolutely.
Rob:Okay. Okay. So you like stickers. We joked during the original Hobonichi episode that you would need a suitcase to pull along all those stickers. And I know for a fact, and we've talked about this, that you've still been buying more stickers throughout the year.
Rob:Is your is your room literally full of stickers? And if so, how do you how do you organize this sticker addiction?
Helen:I use less washi tape now than I used to. So I don't use washi tape for the bullet journal thing. So I have a a box, quite a hefty box, about the size of a jewelry box that that has a lot of washi tape in it. However, there is some washi tape that I really, really love, so I've taken that out. So that lives out on the shelf.
Helen:And there's probably only about 40 of those. And then
Rob:40 40 reels of of washi tape.
Helen:Oh, yeah. And then I also have, a load of stickers. Now I have another jewelry box size that's full of stickers. On top of which I did actually another vintage purchase. I bought, Hobonichi do this little thing.
Helen:It's like a a bit like a desk tidy caddy. It's made of fabric, so it's a kind of like a big wallet. But it's the size of, I don't know, it's about 8, 10 inches long and about 6 inches tall, and it's got lots of pockets. So I now have one of those out for all the stickers I'm using this week or this month because it's, you know, they come in sets, Rob, and they don't like to be set split up. And I spent my entire life rifling through the big box of stickers for that.
Rob:I was gonna say I could just I could just sort of imagine you got into your your room or your home office or wherever you've got these stickers and then just coming out covered in them because it's just all gone crazy in there, and you can't find the stickers. You come out there all over your face and your hair and just get covered in stickers.
Helen:It's not like that because I'm very tidy. I have also got So when you get to the end of these like kits, you often have a few left over which don't really fit with anything but are nice and keep you wanna use them. I mean they're just little boxes with a bit of decoration on or whatever it is. It's not very much. Or, I've got some that have got words on them.
Helen:So like notes and it would just head up a section because then I can put my section of for notes anywhere in the book. Yes, I could write it down, Rob. Yes, I could. But it's pretty. And anyway, so I have a little again, I think this is some kind of jewelry box thing.
Helen:It's a set of drawers, and it's only about 4 or 5 inches high. And it's just got sort of 3 or 4 drawers in that. I put all sorts of things in there.
Rob:Sounds good. Well, you you get a lot of joy from the stickers. So, yeah, as much as I may take the Mickey and and we mock each other about our stationary habits Yeah. When you get joy from it, I mean, that's the ultimate thing, isn't it? That's why we do this, you know, because you enjoy and you get joy from it.
Rob:I guess if we enjoy it, it's worth the friction. And we've actually done an episode, haven't we, on friction Yes. Versus reward where actually, if the friction is really high, but the reward is high, then it's worth it, isn't it? And and that's a lot of what we do with stationery. Yes, you could write your titles out, but you like to have stickers.
Rob:That's the joy that it brings.
Helen:I do the color and the fact that I get bored. So my my brain likes novelty, new things. So at the moment, I'm on a really nice kind of, I don't know, milky tea color, scheme at the moment. So that's fine for this week. But next week, if we're getting close to Christmas, I'm thinking it's gonna go much more red and greens and, you know, I don't know, little hot chocolatey stickers or whatever it is I've got going on.
Helen:Most of my stickers, I don't know what you envisage when you see the stickers, most of my stickers are things like the days of the week that stick ironically smack bang over the top of an already labeled week that habaneci has labeled. So it's not that I'm doing anything new. I'm just painting the color scheme so my brain sees it as something different.
Rob:I I was I was trying to describe it earlier. In fact, the other day to somebody about, like, why do the 2 of you do this podcast? And, you know, surely, you know, you've got the same taste and the same habits, and we absolutely have not.
Helen:No. No.
Rob:No. We both live stationary, but we use it and the things that we use in extremely different ways sometimes. And for me, I'm very functional in some respects with my stationery apart from maybe yellow legal pads and and other stuff that brings me immense joy. So I wouldn't see the value in buying some stickers to stick on a date over the top of the date that was already in a book that I'd already bought.
Helen:And when you say it like that, it sounds ludicrous.
Rob:It does, doesn't it?
Helen:But I'll be honest, I do it and I do it with joy and I it does bring me joy and there is low friction, but it's also for me, the doing of that is part of the preparation for the week. I'm thinking about, what's coming up. Okay. I've got, I have a doctor's appointment or I I mustn't forget the doctor's appointment. So it helps me remember where I am in my day and in my week where I am not very good at that if left to my own devices.
Rob:Yeah. Absolutely. And, I bought a, stamp a while back. You know those ones where you can sort of rotate the label, and it says things like shipped or approved or financed and all these different things. And I bought one ages ago, and they were originally for the shipping forecast, which I've sort of stopped kind of doing.
Rob:Yeah. But shipping the book and wrapping it, I actually started to stamp each one and say when I sort of shipped it Yeah. And didn't need to. Added absolutely nothing. The post office don't require you to put that on.
Rob:And, frankly, it's a pain actually because I usually put it on upside down or I've got the date in the wrong order or something. So I have to sort of, you know, adjust and adapt. I don't have to do it. Adds an extra maybe 2 or 3 minutes to each parcel, but it's worth it because it brings me joy. Yeah.
Rob:Maybe the people that receive it look at it and go, isn't that nice? Or maybe they go, what the heck does that mean? What's what's this guy doing?
Helen:So many of these, things that you see on Instagram or whatever, that they're doing unboxing, unwrapping. Hey, I've got Yeah. A parcel from this company. And they've got, oh, look, I've got a couple of stickers in here, and I've got a nice little pen, and I've got there's always these a few extras. I mean, Etsy is really good at this but but it's not just them.
Helen:All sorts of companies do this. I used to get t shirts from a company that used to stick a tiny pack of haribots in there. And it was a joy. Every time you open this t shirt because you bought a new t shirt, it's like, oh, Haribos. And it was something massively expensive.
Helen:And the Haribos didn't cost them almost anything. But the joy element is just amazing. And I think that that's part of it where somebody thinks, oh, somebody's taking some time here. They've thought about their customer here or they've thought about the process or what they're doing or it's extra thought. Somebody cared about this before I got it and wanted it and cared about it.
Helen:Somebody else wanted it and cared about it too.
Rob:I like that. A 100%. Remember, we interviewed Amy from Mark and Fold.
Helen:Oh, yes.
Rob:And when we ordered our Mark and Fold items, you know, a while before Amy came on the show, I remember opening the package and just being like, wow. So much care and attention had been put into the packaging. And the way it was folded and wrapped and the things that were inside, it was just beautiful.
Helen:It was beautiful. And, yes, and it felt really I mean, it's not cheap stuff. I mean, it was quite expensive, but it was a luxury item.
Rob:Yeah.
Helen:But it's a quality item. And the thing was when you open it, it felt like that.
Rob:Yeah. Makes sense. And
Helen:the tissue paper and the
Rob:stickers and the handwritten notes and all of those things
Helen:make a big difference to that experience. You're already excited to be getting a thing that you wanted enough to part with your cash for. Making it feel special because you gifted it to somebody, even though they've paid you for it. You've loved it and they've got it now and they're gonna love it. That's just I think that's a really nice connection.
Rob:Absolutely. Absolutely. I have one last question about your habaneci, Helen, and then we can, we can close out the show. Do you keep I mean, this is only your 1st year of it, but you're coming up to the end of the year. Well, I suppose there's 2 questions wrapped into 1.
Rob:Do you create or buy a new Hobonichi each year? And do you keep the previous one? And if so, for how long?
Helen:So I will keep this Hobonichi that I'm just finishing now. It is the first one I've used. I will put it with all the bullet journals that I've completed and never look at, not ever. The only time I look in a past one is where I have a particular In a bullet journal previously, I created a page for new starters and then it had a nice little table for every new starter I needed to set them up on all of these pieces of kit basically. And it was a nice tick list for me to go through and do that.
Helen:And it was really good because I kept going back to that. I kept using that for 2 years after the end of the bullet journal. So that's the only one I ever revisited. The rest of them go away. I never look at them again but I'm not prepared to throw them away because of they represent a part of my time.
Helen:I don't know that they're valuable. I don't think they're valuable to anybody to look at. One thing I didn't say about the Hobonichi and I do think this is worth mentioning is I've had to go out Bye. I've had to find ways of being able to flip quickly between what is my current day, my current month, my current week. So flipping between those requires you sort of group pages together kind of semi permanently.
Helen:Mhmm. So I've got these stupid little clips. I've been trying several of them. I've tried, you know, just like bulldog clips and such like, but they mark the paper. The paper's really fine and it's so that's so I've got various paper clips and, one clip looks like a cat and another one is just a big fat ugly bulldog clip.
Helen:And then I've got another one which is one of those, bands for holding a pen onto a notebook. I've repurposed it Oh yeah. Just a band for holding pages together. And that was something I hadn't at all thought about. And that's my big irritation with it is the fact that I can't find a nice clip that I don't hate.
Helen:But it it makes things like you can't put this one of the things they sell is all these little tags so you can mark weekly, daily, monthly. So you could flip easily between those sections. But you wanna group the sections together so you're only looking when you flip to weekly, you're only seeing this week. You don't care about the other weeks mostly. Mhmm.
Helen:And by putting those tags on, I can't now use bulldog clips on those sites where the tags are. It's very irritating.
Rob:I I don't tend to have this problem with Todoist. It just sort of shows me everything.
Helen:I used to
Rob:do it. Yeah. I mean, it's I I I see the problem that you have, and, actually, I think that would be a little bit frustrating, but it does give you a new side interest in paper clips and various fascinating devices, which I think is fascinating in itself. You know? And, you know, I think we did a didn't we do a stationery episode?
Rob:It could well have been a Desert Island one or the underrated stationery.
Helen:Like the humble paper clip, didn't I?
Rob:Yeah. The paper clip is just
Helen:I do love a paper clip.
Rob:Exactly. It's got a place, hasn't it? I mean, that thing is is useful even, like, you know, getting SIM cards out of phones and stuff. You know? It's got a a 1000000 uses.
Helen:Half a 1000000 uses. Yep. I love the paper clips.
Rob:So I do envy you over time with your Hobonichi, and I don't know whether you've had this. And the reason I was asking is I I like the idea of having a shelf full of my old journals and notebooks. But because I buy a different notebook all the time, there's no consistency in the look of that, and that really annoys me. I don't know whether you have that same thing. But when I look at people like, for example, Ryan Holiday or Austin Cleone and and they show pictures of their journals and diaries, they've essentially bought the same one over and over and over for decades.
Rob:And so everything's the same notebook, but just different years.
Helen:But you know why that is, Rob? That's because the purpose of their notebook is not the stationary element. The purpose of their notebook is a place that adequately holds their information. They're not interested in discovering new. They like the same old same old because it fits exactly what they do.
Helen:Yeah. They're using it for knowledge. I don't think it matters. I think the reason that you keep your notebooks and that makes much more sense than me is because you journal. My notebooks are a list of things that I wanted to do and sometimes I tick them off as done.
Helen:Yay. Yeah. There's very little, there's a little bit. There's very little other than a record of my life. It's not like there's anything about how I felt, what I was thinking, what's gone well, what's not gone well.
Helen:There's none of that. I've tried some reflection y pieces, and I just don't give enough of a damn, to be honest. And I should.
Rob:I I don't think anyone would wanna read mine. There's a there's a TV show from the nineties called 1 Foot in the Grave. Do you remember that?
Helen:Yes. I do.
Rob:But mine read pretty much like the main character, Victor Meldrew, who just knows and complains about everything. So, yeah, I'm not too sure there's much value other than, you know, well, maybe some comedy factor in there. So, Helen, anything else to add before we, we close this episode out?
Helen:No. I would recommend a Homenici, but I would say that you really it's like it's like an entry drug, and there are you're gonna go down the route of covers and covers on covers. And no, I'm not joking. You need clips and you need, dividers and you need, I don't know, a 1,000 things that you don't actually need, but all bring joy, if you're a stationary freak, of my particular genre. And I am very much enjoying it.
Helen:So, you know That's
Rob:great. That's great. It's like a little ecosystem of Hobonichi stuff, isn't it, that that lives together? Alright. Cool.
Rob:Well, thank you, Helen. It sounds like it's going really well, and we'll include links in the show notes for everything that we've talked about. And we just wanna say thank you so much again for listening and for subscribing to the newsletter. If you haven't already subscribed, you can head to stationeryfreaks.com where you'll find links to the newsletter and all of the previous casts that we often mention in our episodes. And with that, it's a chance to say thank you and goodbye from me.
Helen:And from me. Goodbye.
Rob:See you in the next one. Bye bye.
