Editing The Pen Addict 517/transcript (section)

== Daily Planner Usage ==


'''Brad:''' Like, on YouTube? I have a link. I have a link to the video, y'all. This is a legitimate question. I have a link to one of April's videos we'll put in the show notes, which y'all can check.

'''April:''' Yeah.

'''Brad:''' So let me know. I need a number.

'''April:''' Okay. So in that video, it was 10 for 2022. But I have to be honest and say I probably dropped it to 8 right now.

'''Brad:''' Oh, just 8.

'''April:''' Just 8. I keep 8 on a daily basis. But then again, like, I feel like we have to, like, add some justifiers and, like, you know, explanation.

'''Brad:''' Walk us through this. Walk us through the 8 as best as you can. You don't have to go into, like, crazy detail. But give me an idea of what a day of 8 journals and planners looks like.

'''April:''' I know. Some of them are planners. Some of them are notebook. Some of them are journals. So I don't, like, spend 8 hours a day on each, like, on all 8 journals, right? My planner probably takes up 2 to 5 minutes of my day. And so I have, like, my plotters as my planner. I have a plotter Bible size as my everyday scheduler. I have the 8-5 plotter as, like, a work planner, which I use for all things that's related to what I do now, my job. And then I have a narrow-sized plotter for keeping track of my expenses. So finance, investments, all that stuff goes in there. So that's three. And those are what I consider the schedulers. So I don't use them, like, you know, an hour a day. Those take up bits and pieces of my day.

'''Brad:''' It's like a small little fixed-use time frame, and then you're done.

'''April:''' Exactly. And so on the more time-consuming part are my journals, diaries. So my Hobonichi, obviously. That one's my, like I said, my ride or die. The only thing I actually spend 20 to 30 minutes a day in, if I can. I usually catch up, too. I don't really journal in it every day, some weeks. I use the weekend to catch up on 2 to 3 pages. That's totally fine. I have a Chinese diary that I was trying to do this year to really, you know, I see CY writes in amazing Chinese, and I'm like, my mother tongue is, like, falling off. Like, I need to write, like, I want to have better penmanship with my Chinese. So I have a journal for that. It's the Hour's Diary, the Hour Studio Diary, also by Hank's Diary. So that guy I mentioned earlier that I queued up in line for.

'''Brad:''' Oh, wow.

'''April:''' So that one. And then I have a Thinking of You journal, which is also by a Taiwanese creator. It's this elegant collage journal. So that niche section in the stationery world where they collage stuff and put things together. So it looks very aesthetics and beautiful. That's my Thinking of You journal. So I call it, like, kind of my decorative and also planning some stuff for the stationery podcast journal. So multiple purposes. For purposes, I have the Traverse Notebook, obviously, for when I travel. And actually, what travel is a broad term for what I do. It's kind of like if I go out to get coffee or do some cafe journaling, that's traveling.

'''Brad:''' Yeah, I think that's great. Yeah.

'''April:''' Within the city, within, like, my blog, like, I go out with Cookie, go on this extra long walk, my dog, Cookie, on this long walk. That's my travel journal right there. And then what's my last one? Huh. Within my weeks.

'''Speaker 02:''' Oh, no.

'''April:''' I'm looking around. I'm like, what's my last one that I've been keeping an eye on?

'''Brad:''' This is an emergency situation.

'''April:''' I know. I need to pull out my YouTube video and, like, look at the list I had on there. But, yeah. No. But these are basically my week. I can't say it's like a day, but it's kind of like my week.

'''Speaker 02:''' Oh, my five-year techo. My five-year Hobonichi techo. Which, okay, I'm not using that. I'm using Seven Planners this year.

'''Brad:''' So, okay. Let me, I was going to ask you a specific question about the five-year planner. You're not currently using it because everyone, you know, that follows me on my stream, the way that I write and the way that I think about things, they're like, you need a three-year or a five-year. Just do it. Just do it. And I'm like, I'm super tentative, right? Because I have, I don't really, I basically have two kind of writing outlets. Like, I have my planner, my Hobonichi Cousin A5. And then I just have a journal, just like a notebook that kind of everything else can go into.

'''April:''' Yeah. Yeah.

'''Brad:''' And it's not really segmented up more than that. And I was like, well, that would be a third thing. And then I start thinking about redundancy. And I don't know. So how long had you used like one of the three-year or five-year journals? Have you been successful with that? Obviously, you say you're not using it now. Give me some thoughts on that.

'''April:''' I'm on the third year of my five-year journal. So that's the third year of my five-year TEDx show. And I always start strong. And then like you said, it's the redundancy. Like, I just feel like I'm copying the same thing from one journal to the other. And I didn't want to do that. And so I kind of like turned it to like my milestone journal. Like if anything super significant comes up during this year, then I'll put in my five-year TEDx show. So I'm really not touching it on a daily basis. I only write on it like once a month or like once every two months maybe. But I'm on my third year. And so I was like, maybe I can go back to it again in 2023. Who knows?

'''Brad:''' Can you explain the idea? And you mentioned it a minute ago about using your planner or your journal from a catching up perspective as opposed to pressuring yourself to do it every day? Because once I realized it was okay to catch up, it just it opened up everything for me. So tell me about that.

'''April:''' I know. Planning, journaling, writing, whatever you want to call this hobby. It's supposed to be for fun. Like if you are catching up, it's a chore. Then why are you doing a second job at night? You know, like seriously, I love catching up in my journal because it gives me like a big chunk of time I can do on the weekend. That's kind of like my hobby time. And, you know, the Hobonichi has a day a page. So if you accidentally skip one or two, a lot of people have that like blank page syndrome or fear like, oh, no, it's staring back at me. So I do this thing where I like actually take quick notes in the front. I use the Hobonichi Cousin. So it has like weekly section. So I kind of write down bullet points of the log of basically what went down that day. And then in my catch ups, I get to go back and really spend more time choosing the right paper or the right sticker or the right place in the right washi tape. And then it became like an art playing section. And like, so it's really, really nice for me. I love catching up. I love saying that I'm about to catch up in my journals because that means it's fun time.

'''Brad:''' Yeah, I think that's a good perspective to have, right? Like these journals or planners that we all keep, it should not be pressure, right? We're doing this to relieve the pressure. If you're putting your pressure on yourself, like I always put pressure on myself. Well, today is this date. And if I don't do something on this date, I failed. And I used to think that way. And once I got over that and realized that it's okay to catch up or it's okay to skip a day here and there, as long as it's not regular, you know, that it just freed me up to actually enjoy grabbing this notebook and doing something I like to do. So yeah, I think that's a really good perspective to have.

'''April:''' Yeah, exactly.

'''Brad:''' In the bigger picture of catching up, I've noticed like on your YouTube channel, you will do basically an annual or a twice a year review of what you're doing. Can you tell me about like the techo-kaigi? Is that the proper pronunciation?

'''April:''' Techo-kaigi.

'''Brad:''' Kaigi. Yeah.

'''April:''' Techo-kaigi is a Japanese word. And I think it's the station community or the journaling community in Japan made it up or they use, kaigi means meeting. So if you are having a meeting about anything, you put like the noun in front of it. So techo means planners or journals or notebooks. So it's just us who are really obsessed with like owning multiple books, having a sit down and a talking to with ourselves about what I'm planning to use for next year, what I did or do not like this year, you know, what I want to improve on this year. So techo-kaigi, I do that in November right before the new year. And I also do one in the middle of the year to kind of like reflect, like my number went down from like 10 to 7, right? So why did that happen? So techo-kaigi is super fun though, because you think of possibilities for each book you own, because we are all chronic notebook owners and we have multiple. So it's fun to do that. And to really kind of like think about how you want to be intentional about your stuff. And I think that's much better than just like buying stuff and then putting them into a shelf. And then I think I'll use it for something the other day and then like never go back to it. So techo-kaigi is really, really fun. And I recommend it for anyone who wants to think intentionally about anything you own. You can have a pen-kaigi. You can have a washi tape de-stache-kaigi.

'''Brad:''' Yeah. That kind of stuff. Maybe that's kind of what I'm doing with the kind of thinning out how many fountain pens I own.

'''April:''' Didn't you just buy that case and then you're doing the whole like kind of pick?