My Obsession Finding the Perfect Daily Planner

Who doesn’t love leather planners!

Do you plan your appointments, tasks or activities in a certain type of journal, planner or digital app?

I am obsessed with finding the perfect “thing” for my daily planning.  I’ve tried all different types, sizes and formats.  I keep going back Bullet Journaling.  The only problem is the method of Bullet journaling is done in a stapled centre type of booklet and it doesn’t allow for easy future planning. I’ve tried and tried and tried, using digital calendars such as the calendars built into Outlook and Google and I just can’t do it.  I need to feel the paper under my hand as I write things out.  Task planning is much easier using digital tools, but “I don’t like it”.

Here is my latest experiment.  I’d like to introduce you the Arc system.  It’s been at Staples for a little while and thought I’d try it out before writing about it.  What drew me to this was the ability to add and remove pages without “tearing” anything.

Left setup has large discs, right setup has small discs.

The Arc system can be customized any way you want.  The pages can be individually taken out, moved to another area and replaced.  The binding is these little discs and I couldn’t get over how affordable this was.

Here are some pictures of the journal and then I bought some larger discs and added paper so you can see the size difference.

Arc Journal – Large Discs

What I found is…. I was able to move the paper from the small discs to the large discs 4 times without the paper being damaged.  The key is to only move a few sheets at a time.  But… unless you have alot of paper, pockets and inserts, the large discs were too large for me at the moment… the book, although very stable, was ackward to work with because the discs were so large.  The smaller journal was better with a full refill set added.

In saying that, I will pickup the hardcover/leather journal which has inside pockets, tabs and on that one, I’ll see if there is a difference in stability.  The journal by itself is useable right away.  Then you can customize it by adding other things to it and if it starts to get really full, that’s when the larger discs come in handy.

My only “hmmmm” moment was the price of the paper, it’s a high, but it’s a much thicker stock than regular paper.  I purchased the Arc hole punch and was able to make my own little index tabs, punched my own paper with pre-printed lines and a book mark.  The Arc poly covers I will use for my outdoor sketching journal.  Being a poly cover, it won’t get damaged.  I wasn’t able to find the dated planner inserts at all, but with the Arc punch, I could make my own.

It’s all about experimenting, trying to find the best type of journal to plan your daily tasks in.

I’d love to know what you use or how you plan your daily tasks or activities.