The year is only 2/3 of the way over, but planner companies have already begun the hype cycle for 2027. Corporate has asked me to post about planners to capitalize on current trends.

I haven't posted anything about my planner since my 2024 Traveler's Notebook update. At the time, I was using a shitty hand-bound book with dot grid paper where I had to measure and date everything myself. Unsurprisingly, this got tedious really quickly. I've been buying planners since then, and the time/sanity saved have been well worth the expense.

My 2025 planner was a Hobonichi Weeks because I had used the layout as the basis for my homemade planner to begin with. It's too small for the TN cover, but it still fits if you don't mind wiggle room. (I was surprised at the relative lack of data about this.) I bought the Weeks Mega with extra pages in the back... I didn't even come close to using them. I had plans to turn my planner to be a catch-all memory book, but I found that I liked sticking and writing everything in the dated pages instead of the back pages.

I liked the Weeks enough to buy it again, but I had a hard time getting one for 2026. It felt like they were selling out much faster than they were before, and I didn't care enough to keep up with restocks. I ended up moving into a Sterling Ink horizontal common planner instead. The horizontal layout is the same format as the Weeks, and it came in the correct size for a standard TN (called the N1), so more room to write and no weird wiggle room in the cover! I got mine pretty "late" in November, so I had to get it with gold page edges that I hate. They get glitter everywhere. But it's fine.

Sterling Ink just announced that they're going to release their core planner with only 23 blank pages in the N1 size. I'm going to get that so I don't feel bad about leaving so many pages blank... I still like the feel of a Hobonichi planner better because Sterling Ink planners are floppy softcover and don't come in nearly as many color options, but it would be really hard to give up the larger size now.