Diaries that do and don’t work for me

I wrote a post last week on Konmari-ing the memories. Please make me happy and go have a read.

So when I was busy looking through all my stuff, I found my stash of diaries.

Here they all are – 2008 to 2016. I used the top 2016 one last year as it was an 18-month diary. By the way, I’m really not in love with 18-month diaries. It feels kind-of “off” to me to not start the year in January.

Diaries 2008 – 2015

Then I started paging through the diaries to see which format resulted in an empty-ish one and which ones were thoroughly used.

My birthday, 2008. The daily style was my least favourite format but I did write down my frogs daily, and of course my appointments.

I think this one was from my birthday week in 2003

My favourite type of planning is weekly planning so although this slimline diary is small, it had the right paper (smooth and easy for the pen to glide across), just enough space and I used it very well.

However, the diaries that clearly work best for me are the Moleskine and Legami weekly view diaries. See 2011 – 2014. There are a ton of pictures here.

These have days of the week on the left page and notebook paper on the right. Absolutely perfect. My brain thinks in terms of a week at a time, so I can make my list of everything I want to get done on the right (still only about 12 things max)

I don’t need a page a day and, in fact, it feels wasteful to have all that unused space daily.

Something I did notice was that the diary needs to have enough space to write. The little diary I used for 2012 was too small, the last pic above was a good size but my absolute best is the size just a teensy bit narrower than A5, 2011, 2013 and 2014 above.

Now that I’ve written this post, I think I’ve just talked myself into buying another Legami for next year. It honestly is my favourite type of diary, and the bright colours make me happy.

Have you figured out your favourite style and size of diary? Do you still use paper?

PS There’s a whole community out there using paper planners again. Next week I’m going to start blogging about my foray into bullet journalling. If you have questions, let me know in the comments.

PPS not sponsored, although I wouldn’t mind!