**Concerns About Planner Making**

It’s about time I stop running away from this issue and seriously think about it. I already have a faint answer in mind, though.

For the past 3 or 4 years, making planners has been a project that stirs my DIY spirit. The inspiration came from discovering a product called the Happy Planner. With a special punch, discs, and a laminator, you can create your own original notebooks and planners. It’s an attractive product.

The Happy Planner uses a mushroom punch, which I had never seen before. The notebook style is also rare in Japan—not like loose-leaf notebooks that are full of holes, but a type where you can easily tear out and rearrange pages. It’s more fun and appealing than the typical ring-bound format.

Another reason I got so hooked on it was that the punch size surprisingly fit perfectly with Japan’s B5 size. For a while, I enjoyed making planners in B5 size to record schedules and memories.

However, one day, I had to go on a business trip for a week, and the thought of not being able to touch my planner for a whole week terrified me. “Terrified” might be an exaggeration, but since I handled and adored it daily, the idea of not touching it for a week felt like quite a burden. So, as a sort of mental stabilizer, I naturally took it with me on the trip.

As you can imagine, I barely used it due to work being so busy. I might have opened it once or twice, but it mostly just became extra baggage, an experience I regret.

This led me into the issue of planner size. Some might think this is a happy, peaceful problem, but ever since, I’ve been lost in the maze of my planner-making dilemma.

Now, I’ve placed more importance on portability, and as a result, I’ve eliminated the disc-bound format and currently stick to bound notebooks. That said, I’m not entirely done with disc-bound notebooks. I still think there’s plenty of room to enjoy them, especially with market potential in Japan. I also believe that disc-bound formats will play an active role in the planners I want to make next year. I’ll share more about my current planner situation another time.

Now, how will I solve this dilemma? The answer is simple: keep making planners, use them, find my own style, and enjoy the process. That’s all. However, as I continue making them, I feel it’s necessary to set some patterns and purposes for my planner-making, so I’ll outline that this time.

**Wishes for the Planner & How to Decide When Making One**
▶︎ Theme and Purpose
I have a habit of dividing things into different themes and categories:
– Crafting, content creation, life admin, AJ studies, memory notebooks
– Budget and expense management, recipes, cleaning plans

▶︎ Where to Use It
– At home, on the desk, in the living room, carrying around, at a café, in bed, while traveling

▶︎ Paper Size and Format (Ring-bound, disc-bound, bound notebook)
– If portability is the focus, thickness and ease of carrying should be considered.
– Bound notebooks don’t allow page swapping but are slim and portable.
– Disc-bound notebooks make it easy to swap pages, but their thickness makes them bulky to carry around.

To make it usable anywhere, it’s probably best to start small. If it’s mainly used at home, then there’s no problem making it bigger. Starting small for portability and easy access seems to be the right choice.

For now, I’m sticking with bound notebooks, but I still use disc-bound notebooks for other purposes. When my enthusiasm for them picks up again, I’ll share more about them. For now, I’m using bound notebooks, which are slimmer and easier to carry, to organize my life.

For some reason, a phrase I heard 10 years ago when giving birth to my son comes to mind:
“It’s the age of giving birth small and raising them big.”