Editing The Pen Addict 478/transcript (section)

== Planner Recommendations ==


'''Myke:''' And what you're saying is they need to strip it for parts. Strip it for parts. So, it's good for now. Strip it for parts. You know, like, I think, for me, I think the thing, I feel like you could have shown me this pen and been like, hey, do you remember this one from last year? And I would probably say yes.

'''Brad:''' Yeah. I think that kind of puts a point on it. Yeah.

'''Myke:''' You could very easily trick me that this was last year's special edition. Mm-hmm. So, I think that's the issue that they have now.

'''Brad:''' Yeah. It's just. And like Rich Dix is saying in the chat, if it was cheaper, we would love them more. Yeah. I mean, we used to get these for, like, $140, $150.

'''Myke:''' Yeah. I mean, I remember when it was around that. Because I remember $150 or one, you know, like, something less than $200. I remember it being, like, a big deal for me because it's the most I'd ever spent on a pen, right? Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. But now the price keeps going up. And I don't really know if it warrants that anymore.

'''Brad:''' Yeah. So, like I said, it's good. They will sell out completely. I don't think it's that outrageously priced. I think that's just the way the market is these days. I'm not going to. I will get into Sailor more about their pricing than I will about Pilot on this LE. But, I mean, it's getting up there. That's for sure. So, anyway, I think it's just time. I think we're both in agreement. It needs to be freshened up if you're going to continue moving forward with the Vanishing Point as an anchor product in your product line.

'''Myke:''' Mm-hmm.

'''Brad:''' Speaking of anchors, like the Zebra Sarasa R might be a boat anchor. I don't say that happily. I reviewed them recently on the blog. And they're fine. And what the Sarasa R is one of the new, again, marketing-focused pens like the Uni Ball 1, where both Uni and Zebra have decided that we, as consumers and stationary fans, need a gel pen that's jellier. It needs to be, have more jelly brightness in its colors. And they're saying, Uni Ball saying the pigmentation is richer. And Zebra saying we have 27% more color density. And I'm just going, gel pens and colors are cool. They all look kind of good. These don't seem special. So, I just wanted to point that out. If you like the Zebra Sarasas and gel ink pens, the Zebra Sarasa R is a good one. You're going to be fine with the Zebra Sarasa clip. If you like the Uni Ball pens, the one's a good pen. I love the design of the one. I love the design of the Sarasa R. The Uni Ball RT1 or the Signo DX. They're just, they're going to be as good, if not better. And this is pretty much marketing.

'''Myke:''' I prefer the design of the Uni Ball one. I think that that's a very slick looking pen.

'''Brad:''' It's awesome. I like, out of these two pens, with these two high color pigmentation ink formulations, which is what they're selling, the Zebra Sarasa R is a better writer than the Uni Ball one. I love that Uni Ball one barrel, though. So, anyway, I just wanted to bring this up. I, this is like a, I appreciate like the marketing and the R&D that goes into like trying new things. Like, I always want companies to try new things. But this is, I don't think these high pigmented color versions of existing pens are going to like really move the needle forward. Like, I don't think they're going to like really stick the landing. Like, they'll exist for a little bit. And then they'll just kind of fade away when the next whatever marketing thing they want to do that R&D comes up with. So, they're not enough to move the needle past what's already really good pens, right? Each of them are fighting against themselves in what are really, really good gelling pens. They're having to beat themselves. And it turns out, to me, they're just cannibalizing themselves. Like, well, it's not that much better. So, we'll see. I just wanted to point that out. So, that review is up. People have been asking me about it. Asking me about the 1 and the R. Like, do they make a difference?

'''Brad:''' Maybe. But the trade-off is worst performance. And that's these two pens in a nutshell.

'''Myke:''' Worst performance how?

'''Brad:''' The ink goes on the page wider. And it's a little spreadier. And it oftentimes bleeds. And it just doesn't feel great when you write with it. That's more for the 1 in the feel. The Zebra Sarasa R actually feels normal. The Uniball 1 feels almost glossy when you're writing with it. It's weird. It's hard to explain. It doesn't feel like a traditional pen. Where the Zebra Sarasa R feels exactly like the Zebra Sarasa clip to me just from a writing perspective. But the ink performance is worse than their standard gels, if you can believe that, on both of these pens. Hmm.

'''Myke:''' And you reckon it's something to do with the formulation? Like, why do you think that's... It's got to be. Okay. Yeah.

'''Brad:''' It's got to be the manipulation of the formulation, which I can't really speak on. They're both saying... One's saying saturated. And one's saying denser. So, same idea, right? Right. And whatever that change is, is making the ink not as universally good as their standard gel ink pens. Okay. That's it in a nutshell.

'''Myke:''' This review was particularly full of puns.

'''Brad:''' I didn't notice that. I mean, the one I noticed. The second one, I did not notice. I guess that's just how ingrained... Pens are punny to begin with. Mm-hmm. Right? Like, you just can't help it. And sometimes, like, it's obvious and I notice it. Sometimes it just happens because I've done it so long. And it's just like, oh, well, I guess that was a thing I didn't even notice I said.

'''Myke:''' You said on paper, figuratively, not literally. We'll get to that in a moment. Yep. Okay. And does the 27% more color density make a big difference on the page? Not in my book.

'''Brad:''' That was a great one. That I had no idea. That's good, right? That was, like, legitimately good. I had... Until you put that in there, that did not register with me when I wrote it.

'''Myke:''' It's a great quote that you had literally zero to do with. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yep. But it's good writing. You should embrace that. It's good.

'''Brad:''' I'll work on that. Yeah.

'''Brad:''' All right, Myke. Let's try to spend some of my money. I'm going. I'm going right now. What do you got for me?

'''Myke:''' I'm going to talk about our friends over at Pen Chalet. They have everything you're looking for, from the very best rollerballs, fountain pens, ballpoints, to mechanical pencils, to pen holders, refills, converters, carrying cases, inks, and so, so much more. Pen Chalet are constantly adding new products to their site. Come on over! What's happening over there?

'''Brad:''' I opened up the link. All right, keep going.

'''Myke:''' My word, you scared me, Brad. There must be a good deal over there at Pen Chalet today. They have a very fast and reliable customer service. Oh, I'm freaked out now. You know you do that thing when your adrenaline goes? That's where I am at right now. Sorry, sorry, mate. Maybe it's just because I'm so excited about Pen Chalet. Pen Chalet. They're always adding limited edition pens, accessories, everything that you're going to want, they've got over there, over at Pen Chalet. They sell internationally with great shipping rates, and they do free shipping on orders of over $50 in the United States. Pen Chalet has low prices on high-quality pens and offers a 100% satisfaction guarantee. So go to penchalet.com, that's P-E-N-C-H-A-L-E-T.com, and click the podcast link at the top of the website. You want to enter the password penaddict? This will get you a code that you need to save 10% on anything at any time at Pen Chalet, as well as these apparently incredible special offers.

'''Brad:''' I haven't gotten past the first one, because the Scribo Puma fountain pen is something that has been on my radar for, I don't know, I would say a long time, but they haven't been around that long since they launched. Wow, that is a good price. So the issue with this pen is, number one, myself, and I'm including myself in this commentary, not a lot of people know about Scribo, right? They're a relatively new company, and they start on the high end of the writing spectrum, right? They're not ramping you up like a lot of companies will start you at the lower ends, then say, hey, here's our medium range, and hey, here's our high-end pens. They start straight at, hey, everything we do is a high-end pen, right? So the Scribo Feel was a model that came out at least a year ago and was well-received, well-loved, a lot of Omos design ideas here. And then they came out with a second model, which I saw on the list today. It's called the Scribo Puma. And what this pen is, is their simple, basic pen. Smaller, straightforward shapes, you know, standard cigar shape, standard clip, really nice acrylics. And guess what, Myke? Very expensive, right? So I'm a fan of the Edison Perlette. But it's a smaller acrylic barrel pen. And it costs about a third or a half of what the Scribo Puma costs. With a steel nib. Now, these Pumas have 14-karat gold nibs. Flex nibs, even, I think. And I love the design. This is like my design. You want to know why I like Nakaya? Nakaya, well, you look at one of these Scribo pens and say, boy, that's a great design, but it's too expensive. And, like, that's a lot of the Nakaya thing, too. So, like, this pen really speaks to me. But I've never even considered ordering one, because I thought they were just too much money, too expensive. And, yeah. Thanks, Ron. Ron went and he did a thing. There's some colors. He did a thing.

'''Myke:''' Like, what's the name? I need to find the name of this color. It's like a really pale blue. Mm-hmm. Do you know the name of that color?

'''Brad:''' Yes. I just had the whole page up, and I accidentally closed it. Hang on. I will get it for you. There we go. But, yeah, there's, like, two solid colors and two, like, acrylic kind of marbly colors. So, the solid color is what? Altrove? No, that's burgundy. Ratio.

'''Myke:''' Mm.

'''Brad:''' The solid color one or the acrylic one? Oof. So, Altrove.

'''Brad:''' Yeah, it's hard to get the name. Is it Utopia? Which one? The blue one? Yeah. The blue one is...

'''Brad:''' Ooh, I think it's Liev. Liev. Liev. Okay. Gray blue? I don't know.

'''Myke:''' Yes, that one. Liev. Liev. Liev. I wouldn't call that gray blue. I don't know why it's called gray blue. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That is a good-looking color. So, it's nice pens. I can see why you freaked out, considering that price is really good.

'''Brad:''' You know what, Myke? They have some other good stuff on this list, like the Pilot Knight rollerballs, which I need to try. This is, like...

'''Myke:''' Our friend Danetto's back again?

'''Brad:''' Our friend Danetto, yeah. But the Pilot Knight ballpoint is, like, this vanishing point, if we turned it... Not the... The vanishing point does have rollerballs and ballpoints, but the Pilot Knight is, like, the low-end pretend vanishing point, and it's, like, 15 bucks. It's, like, crazy. Like, if people want, like, a good writing pen, you know, just... That's not a fountain pen, something they can just throw around and mess around with, that's the ticket. Then they also have some of the Platinum Presidents down there, which I know some people like that shape and feel of the Platinum President over the 3776, which you don't often see those on. Not my President. So, yeah. All right. So, I got some looking to do after this show, and we'll see. We'll see what's up.

'''Myke:''' Penchalet.com. P-E-N-C-H-A-L-E-T.com. Click the podcast. Link at the top of the website. Use the password, PenAddict. Our thanks to Penchalet for the support of this show. Relay FM.

'''Brad:''' All right. I want to do a little quick 101 planner talk, because it's that time of the year, Myke, where all the 2022 planners starting to come out. Don't I know it. Don't you know it. And I'm going to talk to you about planners, too. Yeah. But I really... Now, I'm starting to get questions, right, about planners. What should I buy? What should I do? Things like that. And it's impossible to cover everything going on in the world of planners. They're very particular. And it's really close to, like, what's going on in the world of pens. There's so many planners. There's so many pens. There's so many different options that fit your needs. Mm-hmm. So I want to kind of lay out some basics here that if you're considering buying a planner for the first time or considering changing what you already use, here's a couple things to consider. Right? So I want to start with you, Myke. And because you're not a traditional planner user, you have digital planning, which we're going to talk about some in here. And then you have daily writing in the theme system, which would not fall under the planner category in my mind. Is that fair?

'''Myke:''' Sure. I'm a digital planner and a paper journaler.

'''Brad:''' Yes. So that's exactly how I would put it to. So what I want to talk about is the people who want to take that digital planning style and move it onto paper or have it complimentary like I do.

'''Myke:''' Right.

'''Brad:''' So that's the first question you have to ask yourself is, do I actually need a planner? Am I buying this stationery as a lot of us do just because it looks cool and I've heard nice things about it and, you know, I just want to try it out? Well, planners are kind of hard to do that with because they're a commitment. Like if you buy a pen and you don't use it 24 seven, well, it can sit there and you can pick it up again when you need it. Planners don't work that way. Planners you have to use at least on the daily, maybe on the week, depending on how you set things up. So they're more of a commitment. Do you need that commitment? Are you happy with your digital setup? Are you happy with your blank notebook or your note card, whatever you use on your desk to keep track of what you do? Who knows? So ask yourself that question first. Then if you need a planner, if you think, hey, maybe this paper planner would work. That's when like the real questions start to happen. How simple do you need it or how complex do you need it? Because let me tell you, you can get every single bit of every single thing that you want with that. So, you know, do you need just a starter type of planner? An open layout planner, right? Just some general days and dates like Steyology or Hobonichi. They're essentially, you know, kind of one blank page per day and you can do whatever you want with it. You can integrate a bullet journal style, you know, to help you lay out your days. You can just have it more as a task list to do list. You can have it as part tasks, part journaling. You can have it all journaling. You know, that's the simple layouts. Then you can go all the way on the other end to something like a Jibun Techo where you have a two page spread of a seven day week where each day is vertical and each column is separated into 30 minute sections for a 24 hour day, right? Can you imagine filling that out? And I've seen some of those filled out and they're amazing looking, but wow, that's an intense commitment to your scheduling. And like that's only part of what the Jibun Techo does and part of why it's popular. So think about doing some research and how I would do it and how I did do it when I was looking to change is I sketched out my own layout. I just took a blank notebook and said, what would my perfect layout look like? Okay. So I get out this page and I'd lay it out how I wanted to. For me, it was like an hour column down the left hand side broken up into 30 minutes, but not for a 24 hour block from like a 6 a.m. to 10 p.m. type of thing. Um, and then on the same page on the, that would be on the left half of the page. Then on the right half of the page would just be essentially an open column for notes. And I would sketch that out for a couple of days, try it, modify it, change the layout and say, okay, this is my idea of what would work for me. Does this layout exist? And in my case, it did. I mean, I knew that ahead of time, but I wanted to write my own or sketch my own just to see if there was something I was missing or to see if something I wanted different. And it turns out that like the layout I like, I wouldn't say it's super common, but you can find it like it's reasonably common. So do that, you know, do you need an hour, you know, hour by hour column on your page or not? Do you need check boxes on your page or not? You know, what is your single page layout? Do you need your whole week over a two page spread? That's how I used to do it, right? I would have smaller blocks for individual days down the left side. Left side would be seven days horizontally, not vertically, like in the Jibun Techo. And then the right page would be for notes for the entire week. And then I can, I move that into a page, one page per day with time slots and notes. So you got to play around with this stuff. So that's what I suggest. Figure out what features you have to have. Figure out what's unnecessarily unnecessary and figure out like what's extra. Like some notebooks have, you know, big swaths of open note space, right? You can go, like I've said, the Jibun Techo to me is like one of the most high maintenance type of planners where they're very detail oriented. And then you can go all the way to the other side of the ledger and stay in the planner, planner realm with the Hobonichi Techo Day Free is what they call it. It's essentially has your monthly calendars in the front for the year, like the two space, two page spread calendar page, and then like 150 notebook pages, you know, journaling pages. I don't know the exact page count. So like you can get all of these things. That's like just a big open layout type of thing. So I got an email that kind of prompted this. And this is what you want to think about when you're looking at planners and how myself and other people in the community can help you kind of narrow down your ideas because it's always, layouts are always changing. What you might have used from Leuchtturm for five years might not be available anymore, right? They might have changed the layout some and now you're looking for something else. So I got, someone's looking to switch planners and they gave me the very basics of what they need. And I like this. So this is from Marty. It says, I want A5, which is the size of the notebook. That's one thing I didn't talk about. These come in all different sizes.

'''Myke:''' Mostly A5 though, right? I feel like it seems to be a pretty standardized.

'''Brad:''' Yep. A5 and then B6 is pretty common, which is slightly smaller. And square, maybe not square. That's probably the wrong term, but a little bit smaller than A5. And then a lot of the Japanese brands will do like the A5 slim where it's a little tall and narrow. So, but like Marty says.

'''Myke:''' We love non-standard size in our own.

'''Brad:''' I like, they pretty much made, they all ganged up to decide that A5 slim is a thing. So Marty says, I want A5. I want one page per day. That means like when you open your notebook, you have two pages facing you. But on one page, say on the left page is today. And then the right page is tomorrow. And then you turn the page and it's the day after that. It's on and on. So that's what one page per day with our stickers along the left side. So like, you know, just our timestamps printed on there. Kind of like, kind of like mine is honestly what he's saying. And then to-dos along the right side of the page. So maybe a more lined approach on the right side of the page for a to-do list type of writing as opposed to me having an open page where I can do whatever I want. I can create my own to-do list.