My day to day diary for 2019

In my last post, I said how I was staying in my Field Notes sized TN from Meadowgate Leather as my everyday carry. I only need a month to view calendar while out and about, but I need a larger diary to plan my days, so am finishing up using my standard sized TN diary (that I've used all year) until the end of December.

For 2019, I'm staying in the Field Notes sized TN and using the A5 Everyday Diary from Box Clever Press.

I can spend a ridiculous amount of time choosing a diary (often time I can't really spare, but hey ho). To work well for me, I need a diary that:

• is about A5 size
• has a week to a view with the days in vertical columns (so I can time-box)
• has equal sized columns for Saturday and Sunday (my life isn't less busy, just because it's a weekend!)
• has the week starting on a Monday (who in their right minds splits the weekend so that it bookends the week? It's a weekend)
• has space to list tasks for the week
• preferably also has space to list Most Important Tasks for each day
• would help me with planning my week/month/year
• preferably is pretty/attractive because I have neither the time nor talent to do it myself but like the look of them
• will lie flat on the desk
• preferably has 2 ribbon markers, but at least one

Not much to ask for, is it?? You can see why I can end up trawling shops and the internet for yonks, trying to find this mythical beast.

Well, this year I have struck gold!! I've got the 2019 A5 Everyday Diary from Box Clever Press.

Short-lived experiment!

Towards the start of October, I was wondering what to use as my diary set-up in 2019. It had been a choice between three TNs (standard, B6 and Field Notes size) or go back to a Filofax. You can see my thoughts about it all here.

I was itching to use my Field Notes size TN, but wasn't sure if I could make it work as wallet, planner and notebook.

Short answer... Nope. Well, not quite as I had thought I would.

I'd bought a fairly cheap diary to fit in it (the teNeues one... see here for the blog post on it), which had a vertical layout. It fitted in okay, though the TN ended up a bit of a chunky monkey with that, a wallet insert and a home-made credit card insert. The teNeues diary started in December, so I thought I would trial it, and see how it went (while I still also had my standard size, vertical layout, Midori TN diary to hand). I could have made it less chunky by removing the cover of the diary, but it wasn't really the chunkiness that made it not work, it was the fact the small diary wasn't big enough for me to plan my days and weeks in.