August feels special to me, I get the sudden urge to sharpen every pencil I own. I left school and university a long time ago but I still feel it every year. The promise of a new notebook and a freshly sharpened pencil is intoxicating. September feels like a little mid-year new year.
If you're heading off to university this autumn, or packing someone else off, there's a moment coming where the reading list lands and three modules, a part time job, a society, a house share and some sort of social life all need to live somewhere. Your phone can hold all of that, but is it the best place for it?
Why write it down at all
Your phone is already where your deadlines are but it's also where the group chat is and notifications and everything else built to pull your attention sideways. Opening a calendar app to check one thing has a habit of turning into twenty minutes of scrolling.
A planner only does one job - open it, your week is there and nothing on the page is trying to take your attention somewhere else. You can see how full it actually is, which is the bit that really counts in October when three deadlines start creeping towards the same Friday.
Writing by hand slows you down too in a mindful way. You can't copy and paste a to do list into a notebook, so you have to decide what's actually worth writing.
Weekly planner or daily planner?
This is the question I get asked most, and it really does depend on your schedule.
A weekly planner gives you the overview
A weekly planner lays a full week across a spread, with space for your priorities, a to do list and notes. You can see Monday and Sunday at the same time.
Go weekly if:
- your timetable stays fairly steady week to week
- you want to see how the whole week balances before committing to anything
- you're juggling a few big things rather than lots of small ones
- you want a light framework, instead of a lot of structure
- you'd rather write less and think more
For most students this is the natural starting point. Lectures and seminars repeat on a rhythm, so what you need is somewhere to see the shape of the week and work out where the reading's going to fit.
Our planners have 144 pages and open with monthly calendar spreads before the week to view pages, so you can map out a whole term and then break it down.
A daily planner gives you the detail
A daily planner gives every day its own full page, with room for a schedule, a to do list and three daily priorities.
Go daily if:
- your days are long, varied and packed
- you're on a course with labs, placements, studio time or clinical hours
- you're working alongside your studies and the shifts move around
- you plan by the hour rather than by the day
- you want somewhere to think on paper as well as plan, and a week to view never quite gives you the room
Ours run to 240 pages, starting with a yearly calendar, then monthly planning spreads, then the day per page layouts, with lined and dot grid pages at the back for anything that doesn't belong in a box.
Still not sure?
Start weekly. It asks less of you, and if you're running out of room by November, you'll know a daily planner is yours next year.
Undated pages, which matter more than you'd expect
Every one of our planners is undated, and for the academic year that changes things.
Most dated diaries run January to December, which is a funny fit for a life that runs September to June. Academic year diaries do exist, but you have to buy one at the right moment, and then never take a break from it.
Undated pages mean you start whenever you like. Arrive in the middle of September and start there. Put it down over Christmas without watching a fortnight of empty pages slide past. Pick it up again in January exactly where you left it. Nothing goes to waste, and there's no guilt printed into the paper.
Why a notebook as well
Your planner is for what you've said you'll do. Everything else, the lecture notes, the essay plans, the half formed idea you had on the bus, wants somewhere else to go.
If all of that ends up in the same book as your timetable you lose the thing a planner is actually good for, which is clarity.
Our notebooks have 192 plain pages. Plain rather than lined is deliberate, it takes mind maps, diagrams, sketches and messy first drafts as happily as neat notes, so it works whatever you're studying. The paper is smooth 100gsm with very little show through, so fineliners, highlighters and fountain pens all behave, and you get both sides of every page.
There are pocket notebooks too, small enough to live in a coat pocket or the front of your bag. Good for the things you need to write down while standing up, which turns out to be most of them.
What makes them special?
Our planners are lay flat bound, so they sit open on a desk without a hand pinning them down. You get the whole page, right into the margins, and if you write left handed you'll notice straight away that there's no spine digging into your wrist.
They're A5 size paper, so they slide into a bag next to a laptop without weighing you down. The covers are 250gsm textured card, printed from artwork I painted by hand in my London studio, and everything is printed and bound here in the UK by a family run bookbinder.
The papers come from certified, responsibly managed forests, and your order arrives in recyclable cardboard with no plastic.
The back to school edit
If you're putting a set together, I'd start here:
- A weekly planner: Painted Waves, Dream Quilt, Pinstripe, Nurture Botanical or Studio Abstract
- Or a daily planner if your days need the space: Colour Study, Rhythm Monochrome or Summer Stripe
- An A5 notebook for lectures and everything else
- A pocket notebook for your bag
A planner and a notebook is the pairing I'd start with to get that 'my life is sorted' feeling.
Flexible with your plans
Nobody keeps a perfect planner. There'll be a week in November where you write nothing down at all and the pages just sit there waiting for you. That's fine, and it's the point of the undated pages.
But something beautiful on your desk, something you actually want to open, is what turns a system into a habit. That's why I make them the way I do.