Posts filed under Planner Reviews

Paperian One Month Goal Tracker Review

Paperian One Month Goal Tracker Review

(Sarah Read is an author, editor, yarn artist, and pen/paper/ink addict. You can find more about her at her website and on Twitter. And her latest book, The Atropine Tree, is now available!)

Hey, got any new goals? Need to track them? Is one of your goals to not spend ten hours a week designing your own habit trackers? Well, then! Take a look at the Paperian One Month Goal Tracker sheets. They come in three different formats: a grid, numbered shapes in a flowchart to fill in, and a numbered list. My brain loves grids, so that's what I got to try.

The pack contains twelve cards to get you through the year, six on a cream color and six on a tea color. The cardstock has an antiqued look to it that I like. They remind me a bit of vintage library catalog cards. There are lines to write your goals and wee rectangles to mark off every day of the month.

The cardstock is good quality and the cards are sturdy with rounded corners. They're sized well to use as a bookmark or put inside planners. But best of all, they do well with every kind of ink I tried on them. Everything from pencil to Sharpie to fountain pen worked like a dream.

Paperian One Month Goal Tracker Writing

I really like the modular format of these. It is, after all, just a card. Change your mind? Fresh card! Come up with a new goal mid-year? Fresh card! Want to keep track of your progress forever? Paste it in your journal! Want to forget this ever happened? Toss the card!

The twelve-pack of trackers is only $4.40 at Jetpens, which is a fabulously good deal. I would have expected the price to be higher, given the quality. I can think of all kinds of uses for them beyond standard habit tracking, as well. How about a color-coded temperature tracker for the year? An ink of the day square? Health notes, bar charts, etc... tons of uses.

I think I'll be using lots of these, and might even try the other formats to see what ways I can use those, too. I do, after all, have a lot of habits to be tracking. Some of them are even good.

(JetPens provided this product at no charge to The Pen Addict for review purposes.)


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Paperian One Month Goal Tracker Label
Posted on January 9, 2025 and filed under Paperion, Planner Reviews.

Planner Time!

(Sarah Read is an author, editor, yarn artist, and pen/paper/ink addict. You can find more about her at her website and on Twitter. And her latest book, The Atropine Tree, is now available!)

I had a delightful revelation last week. While I knew my new Hobonichi Cousin planner started in December of 2024 (at least on the monthly pages), I hadn't looked closely enough. Because December starts at the end of the week, there are actually a few days of November in there! Which means I can actually start using my new planner on Monday! I was thrilled. It's the little things.

As I gleefully prepared for the annual planner switch, a second feeling set in. Just a very small sad one. And I realized I was also a little blue to let go of the planner that's been my constant companion of 2024.

Maybe that's weird, but I'll own it.

Another thing that's weird is that I did not switch planners mid-year this year. I'm fairly notorious for giving up on a planner and swapping to a different style. But usually my year starts with me resisting the hypnotic pull of a Hobonichi, buying something else, and then buying a Hobonichi in April when the academic year versions come out. In 2024 I just started with the Hobonichi and saved myself the trouble. This wee planner has been with me through what one refers to as a Very Bad Year. We're buds, now.

I was tempted to switch early in the year, anyway, but only because I'd bought a Hobonichi Weeks (which is my favorite layout for planners), and then got a new extremely busy job, and found the Weeks to be a little small for all the plans I had to plan.

For 2025, I got the Cousin, hoping that the extra space will serve me well--though I still prefer the weekly spreads. If there was an A5 Hobonichi with the Weeks layout, I'd be in heaven. "But Sarah," you say, "There are other planners that are A5 with a weekly layout!" I KNOW. I buy them every autumn, start them in January, and then buy a Hobonichi in April. It has happened more than once.

The daily pages in the Cousin are going to be perfect for meeting notes, looooong to-do lists, and brainstorms, which is going to help me at work a lot. I've been doing all that in a second notebook, carrying both that and my planner with me around like Linus with his security blanket--so combining those into one tool will be lovely. I will lose the "Oh crap--that's tomorrow!" reminder feature of the weekly pages, so I'll have to keep the habit of scanning the monthly calendar every day, or flipping through the daily pages, or both. I cannot live one day at a time, as much as I would love to.

Today I transferred my ongoing task list to the new planner, moved my goofy bookmarks and made sure there weren't any notes I needed to move forward, then I tucked away my 2024 Weeks on my shelf-o-planners. Most of the planners on that shelf are half-empty. But 2024 has been a very full year, and while not every memory in that book is a happy one, I'm happy to have them all there.


Enjoy reading The Pen Addict? Then consider becoming a member to receive additional weekly content, giveaways, and discounts in The Pen Addict shop. Plus, you support me and the site directly, for which I am very grateful.

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Posted on November 21, 2024 and filed under Planner Reviews, Hobonichi.

YOSEKALAB Two-Month Weekly Planner Review

(Kimberly (she/her) took the express train down the fountain pen/stationery rabbit hole and doesn't want to be rescued. She can be found on Instagram @allthehobbies because there really are many, many hobbies!.)

With the 2025 planner season coming up, I thought it would be cool to walk through the planner that Yoseka released last year. The YOSEKALAB Two-Month Weekly Planner was designed by two of Yoseka’s employees, Amy Hong and Bethany Wu, who wanted to make something to help folks figure out what planner works best for them. The result is a single planner that has a variety of formats commonly found in other planners so that users could try out different formats before committing to a yearlong planner.

Green stamp not included, but I couldn’t resist stamping mine with the Yoseka partner shop stamp from Traveler’s Company when I was at the store.

The YOSEKALAB Two-Month Weekly Planner is a B6-sized soft cover planner that is made with 68gsm Tomoe River paper, and contains 32 pages of 10 different monthly and weekly spreads as well as some grid memo sheets in the front and back. Also included is an insert with a listing of the different layouts as well as a VERY handy chart of which products use which format(s). I particularly like that there are two 2-page spreads for most of the layouts, so that you can try it more than once to see if it works for you, or for you to use each spread in different ways.

B6 isn’t a super common size, but it is in between A5 and A6, so it will give you a good idea as to whether a format will work for you in a larger or smaller notebook. The handy chart also tells you what sizes different planners are offered in, which is extra helpful. Most of the time, planners will have pre-printed month/day/date but since the Yoseka Planner is meant for folks to try at any time in any year, there is space for users to write the month/day. Lastly, since I am a Bullet Journal follower (more or less), I don’t really use traditional planners, so the pictures don’t have any planning content because I plan on actually using this if my needs change.

Typical monthly layout that you’d see in many planners, though not all of them will have extra space.

Vertical Gantt layout where you can write on either/both sides of the Gantt-style calendar, which is handy for noting/tracking different projects.

Horizontal Gantt layout is an ideal layout for tracking or logging habits, projects, etc.

Vertical Schedule with dot markings in 3 hour increments, and space below for comments, to-do, etc. This format is great for folks who need to plan specific hours for their work, school, or anything else. I don’t plan my time from 12am to 6am (or really from 9pm onwards) but you could always use that space for decorations or other notes.

Horizontal Schedule with Memo on the right. This is the layout that I’m currently using in my Traveler’s Notebook for daily short form journaling on the left and “highlights” on the right.

Vertical Schedule with Memo. If I had found this format 7+ years ago, I might have never discovered Bullet Journaling and eventually Fountain Pens!! While I no longer need this format, I have several BuJo’s worth of self-made weekly spreads that look like this (though mine had a “taller” top section). I used the bottom for notes and tasks that didn’t have to be done on any specific day but had to be tackled that week.

Horizontal Quadrant. This is a fairly common weekly format, and was mostly what I found when looking for planners back in the day. It is divided horizontally into 8 sections, with the bottom right section empty for notes, to-do, etc.

Vertical Quadrant Divided. These Vertical Quadrant formats are similar in that they are divided vertically into 8 sections, with an extra section in the upper left for notes, etc.

Vertical Quadrant Memo. This format is great for folks who want to add a visual element for each day, whether it be a photograph or sketch.

Looking through all of these formats, if I needed a planner, I think I would pick either the Vertical Schedule or Vertical with Memo, but knowing that I could try out a bunch of formats before making a purchase will be super useful.

The YOSEKALAB Two-Month Weekly Planner is available online or in their Brooklyn, NY store for $9.50, which is a bargain, especially when the alternative is ending up with the wrong planner.

(Disclaimer: I purchased this notebook at regular price (and NY sales tax) from their store earlier this year.)


Enjoy reading The Pen Addict? Then consider becoming a member to receive additional weekly content, giveaways, and discounts in The Pen Addict shop. Plus, you support me and the site directly, for which I am very grateful.

Membership starts at just $5/month, with a discounted annual option available. To find out more about membership click here and join us!

Posted on August 16, 2024 and filed under Yoseka, Planner Reviews.