My Life Changed. So My Planner Had to Change, Too.

A person's hand holding an open Traveler's Notebook. The right side is decorated with several colorful stickers. The left side has a tan cardstock pocket insert.

For seven years, I was a Leuchtturm1917 loyalist, happily bullet-journaling my way through a single dot-grid A5 notebook each year.

It was an intimate and fulfilling relationship. During that time, I was a free-floater, writing novels, freelancing, traveling, and living abroad. The free-form nature of the bullet-journal system — essentially a flexible, DIY planner system that you create as you go — matched the free-form nature of my life.

But then something happened. I got a sort of reverse seven-year itch. I moved back to the States. I took a full-time job. I signed a lease instead of a sublet. I upended my life by settling down.

As I slowly stitched myself to routine, I found that I could no longer ride out my life week-by-week. Meetings and due dates piled up weeks in advance; I arranged vacation months ahead. Every time I opened my beloved bullet journal, I had a subtle stomach-drop feeling. I once loved spending each Sunday night planning my upcoming week with a newly designed spread, but now it was a time suck, a vestigial to-do that tied me to a time frame useless for organizing my actual life.

As the new year approached, I guiltily scoured the planet for a planner setup that would play nice with my new life, but the options frightened me. I felt stifled by all the standard weekly planners on the market, every page dictated by a pre-determined layout someone else had created.

Like the lit-degree-carrying overthinker I am, I worried that this was a metaphor. Such a planner left no room for vacation travel logs, sketches, impromptu page-long lists of future craft projects — all of the lovely things that I wanted to make up the whole of my life. Was there really no middle ground, no space to combine the me I had been with the me I was becoming?

As I searched, the modular Traveler’s Company Traveler’s Notebook came up again and again (it’s a pick in our guide to paper planners, and it has a loyal following among some of the staff). But I kept dismissing it. I didn’t think I’d like the strange tall and narrow proportion, a little larger than an airline ticket. But despite my misgivings, I had to admit I was drawn to it. The notebook had a sleek, sophisticated leather cover and interchangeable inserts made from lovely paper by Midori, a Japanese brand beloved by stationery aficionados for its resistance to bleeding and feathering. (Midori also makes one of our favorite notebooks.)

Top pick

This planner is a cross between a simple calendar and a beautiful journal. And you can fill it with a range of inserts for any type of planning.



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