Editing The Pen Addict 391/transcript (section)

== Planner Layout Preferences ==


'''Brad Dowdy:''' No, it's, it's the seven days thing when you say like, that's the layout. Like that's the one. That's what I mean by layout. Yes. But you have to remind me with William Hanna. That's, is that something you had made?

'''Myke Hurley:''' Originally? Yes. But now it's a stock item.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' And what is that item called at William Hanna? Um, it's an insert. Right. Cause they, they have this like ring insert thing, right? Yeah. So this is a, um. Right. 2020 week to page diary. I see it now. A6 dates only. Cool. Yes. So you asked for them to make this for you and then they ended up like just doing it.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Sort of. Um, who I'm working with there knew, like, likes this too, but they never offered it for sale. So he said, let me send you these and then we're just going to make them for sale. But I don't think I directly made them sell that type of thing. Sure, sure, sure, sure. So I think it was in the works. Um, it just wasn't available until recently, like late last year.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Cause that's the whole thing about the William Hanna system is one of those ring systems and you can just add to it.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Right. Yep. So you can get different, different layouts. Like if you like this system, you can get different layouts. I just happened to, it's hard with this type of layout that I like. No one was doing this in an A5 size. They were all doing an A5 slim.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' A5s and A6s, right? Yes. Yes.

'''Myke Hurley:''' These things. So Midori makes this in an A5 slim. Kukuyo, I think makes something similar in an A5 slim. But just all of a sudden I've gotten a few links that Leuchterm now has a weekly planner and notebook that was not out when we started discussing all the planners like in September. Like I don't think this existed until like the past month or so. That has a similar left hand page, right hand page layout per week. The right side page is lined, which I don't like. And the left side page has your five weekdays and then your weekends are split. You know, they're half boxes, which I don't like either because I mean, that's just a personal thing.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' You don't work on the weekend, which is for many people not true.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Right. So like I work on the weekend, so I have tasks on my Saturdays and Sundays.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' I appreciate the way that William Hanna does it, that they're still separated, but they're smaller. Right.

'''Myke Hurley:''' And I can get on board with that at least. Every day is equal, which is how Midori does it, which is why I loved it so much. Yeah. And now I can get it in the wider format, which I like. But this Leuchtturm is a good solution for someone looking like this William Hanna setup is very expensive. Like I don't know that I'd recommend it to everyone. I love it, but, you know, I didn't have to pay for it either. Right. As they sent it to me for free, which I greatly appreciate. And as it turns out, it's kind of perfect for me. Right. I haven't not used it since they sent it to me. Like it's my daily. Yeah.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' I can't imagine making this form factor work for me because I would really struggle with the size of the ring binding. Yeah. I wouldn't be able to use the right page. Like I just wouldn't be able to do that.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Right. Yeah. So I get it.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Just because of the way that I hold a pen and that kind of stuff. Like it's too aggressive.

'''Myke Hurley:''' It does get in the way. Yeah. So like on my left page, I write close to the rings for like family stuff. Right. That's like a narrower column that I run down. And the rings do get in the way of that. Yeah. But it works for me because I don't have much to write for that. So that's my planner. That's a single notebook. There's also a note section in the back. Right. So you can just have blank pages like I have just all like if I really want to expand or lay out something like I have a whole pricing sheet that like I was redoing pricing stuff. Like I'll just open this up and have a blank sheet where I can just, you know, basically have a scratch pad of just like notes and random stuff back there.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' The William Hannah blog is intense. I haven't looked at it. Every day. Like these beautifully. Like basically they write. It's like how you used to do, you know, like I'm going to take a picture of something that I've written and then write it out in text. Yeah. But like every day they have something that's stunningly beautiful. And that's wild. Yep.

'''Myke Hurley:''' They are aggressive over there. It's very good. It's very good. All right. That was door number one. Behind door number two, Myke, we have the theme system journal. So if the William Hannah notebook is my planner, this one is classified as my journal. It happens to be in the name of the product.

'''Myke Hurley:''' And there's no day to day tasks that go in my theme system book. Maybe people use it for that. Maybe they don't. But what I found it useful for is what I think you created it for is reflection. Right. So it's to capture. Okay. What's your overarching idea or theme for the year? And I'm not going to, you know, we're not going to rebroadcast Cortex during this show. So y'all go listen to the Cortex pod to find out more about, you know, the themes and, you know, all that stuff here. Myke's theme for this year and things like that. But I'll let y'all know my theme because I've talked about it before because that's how I use this book. So these essentially the William Hannah and the theme system journal, essentially they go hand in hand. Like I just stack them together, carry them as one because one is during the day and one is at the end of the day. But I do like to kind of refer back to them. So I have stuck with the block headers that I originally went with. So on your daily page, can you, well, you'll do a better job. I don't want to butcher the description of the main page layout, but how would you call it?

'''Brad Dowdy:''' So the main page kind of where you would put the majority of your time into, as it were, like where you're writing out, basically journaling, diarying, they are called the journal pages, just the journal pages.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Gotcha. So on my journal pages, there's four blocks. And the general idea, you can use them for however you want, is I use the top block for what good happened today. Second block for what not so good happened today. Maybe it's bad. Maybe sometimes it's nothing every now and then. I have that too. Sometimes I don't fill it out. Mostly you can fill it out. That's a 90% is of mine are filled. But the middle section is basically for an expansion of the top two blocks and anything else you want to talk about. Like what I call it moments. So like my top blocks is stoked. You know, what made me happy today. My second block is joked. You know, what was ridiculous today. My third block is moments, which is just a daily recap kind of, you know, little expansion, little more room for detail. At the bottom of the moments block, I always write down what pen and ink I'm using. Yep. So that's captured every day. And then the bottom block is what you're looking forward to. So I call mine, let's go. So it's just like the hype block. What are you excited for?

'''Brad Dowdy:''' And it's worth just mentioning like when Brad is saying like that's what he's based like adapted what I do. These boxes are blank. So you can put whatever you want in there, which is the point.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Yep. So I'm kind of like you. I'll do it weekdays only pretty much Monday through Friday days.

'''Myke Hurley:''' And then over the holidays, I slacked on it. And that's okay because I can pick it up at any time. So I've just written page. The last page number I've written in here is 54. So I've made it that many pages in. That's amazing. So I don't know how many more pages I have left to go. Four or six weeks maybe. So I went ahead and ordered a new one because by the time, you know, I'll be getting closer. And, you know, I want to have that ahead of time. So, yeah, that's working for me. Like I enjoy the five to ten minutes it takes me to capture what happened. I enjoy that I get to use my pens. And let me go back and combine this with the William Hanna. It's both of these products are all pen and pencil friendly. I use fountain pens. I use woodcase pencils. I use gel pens, roller balls, markers, sparkle ink. That's key for me that I can use. I use so many different types of pens, right? I'm not stuck on just fountain pens that I need products that are enjoyable to write with everything. That's why I like the Leuch terms so much when I tried, like, the big journal. Because it doesn't matter what pen or pencil I use. I'm going to not be frustrated with how they're working on the page, right? So that's how the theme system is. That's how the William Hanna is. Because one of the hesitancies I had with the theme system journal was the habit tracker section. It's like, I've never done this in my life. Do I really need to track what I've eaten or how much water I've drank? And then the more we talked about it, I realized, well, that's not it at all for me. That's not how I can use it. Yeah, that's not how I have to use this section.

'''Myke Hurley:''' So, and I've shared pictures online. We can find the old Instagram. Yeah, when I've started this up so you can see. So this I have just changed with my yearly theme, which I guess I should say that here. So my yearly theme is ideas. So this is a bigger conversation that I'll kind of allude to as we go through this. But part of the next product I use is helping me with that. So with my year of ideas, I've actually changed some of my habit tracking. So my habit tracking said, love, laugh, create, refresh, read, share, and promote. So most of that's the same. These are the things I want to have done every day. Like I can take the time to do each of these things every day. So I've taken read off because it never really worked out how I wanted to. So I've scratched out read and I've changed read to self-improvement.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Cool.