As a recovered stationery fiend who used to live across the street from a stationery store in Japan, I have transitioned from a maximalist, deco-heavy style across multiple journals to a purely functional layout in a singular Hobonichi Weeks. In today’s post, I wanted to share some thoughts about and photos of current and past layouts. There are several elements that have been consistent since 2024 to present. My handwriting has stayed super messy because I never really take photos of my weeks (except for today) as these logs are generally just for me to record memories. I also haven’t cared about color coordinating my pens to my layout anymore for the same reason, so I’ve ended up using whatever pen is around me at the time even if that means using multiple different ink colors on a spread, making it look messy. Additionally, I’ve always written out daily summaries on the right side of the layout. This is because I’ve needed enough context to jog my memory and backfill my monthly layouts with a brief memory per square. I’ve also gotten a ton of use out of my 天気 (weather) stamp from stamp marche in Japan, which is designed to fit exactly within the daily entry height. It’s surprisingly interesting to compare what weather was like in years past in different places. One thing that is not pictured in any of these spreads is that I’ve consistently colored in the date box on the right side with mildliner highlighter if the day was surprisingly and particularly notable (ex: the day we put in an offer on our home), so it’s easy to flip through, see that unique marking, and recall a particularly important memory. I highly recommend doing something like this, so you can recall special days too. In 2024, I was only interested in tracking daily to-do lists on the right side of my layout, and I didn’t care if I filled up the page fully or not, which irks me looking back at it. I didn’t have a ton going on because I was on medical leave from work at the time due to burnout, so I guess I can’t be that hard on myself for not filling out the right side fully. There’s not much to say about this layout as it’s quite basic with only two things going on. In 2025, daily tasks migrated over to the left side to accommodate two new layout elements: A food log and an Urgent / Not Urgent list. It bothers me to look back on this week and see so much unused space on the right side. I hate blank pages, and the weeks size isn’t large enough to be difficult to fill. The Urgent and Not Urgent lists were an attempt at pushing myself to get stuff done despite feeling depressed. I don’t think it worked out well given we didn’t purchase a rice cooker until a few months ago. Plus, that section doesn’t have a definitive height, rendering the rest of the page a gamble in terms of not leaving enough space for it. I probably should have gone with a Top Three Priorities for the week type of list instead of a bullet journal-y vibe here. That way I could control the height of that list and confidently use the rest of the right notes page for miscellaneous brain dumps etc. It’s clear I didn’t care enough to even fill out my food log even though this was the first week I tried to track that information in 2025 because I had started my new job recently and wanted to better prep for working from home daily. I kept that up for a few more weeks, but abandoned the idea. I think I could reuse this element in 2026 since I do have a specific 2026 goal around meal planning, and it might facilitate that better than my current strategy, which I’ll get into later on. This year, I’ve been using the notes section on the right side for taking notes on anything. In this photo, I took notes on a YouTube video that ended up turning into a blog post in addition to notes on meal planning ideas. It’s generally quite easy to fill this section as I often feel drawn to writing in my journal even if it’s just to get thoughts out of my head as seen here. Sometimes a sticker ends up in the bottom right corner as well, but I try not to add one too often lest I create a persistent lump to write over on the left side. I used to love a chonky journal full of ephemera and stickers, but they always become impossible to write neatly in by the end of the year due to the hills and valleys of past entries with stickers and ephemera. Compared to the fountain pen I used in 2024, I now write more often with 0.5mm Zebra Sarasa Clip pens, which makes my handwriting marginally neater. These pens do smudge under mildliners, so they’re not the best, but they dry pretty quickly if you’re just writing with them. I also started tracking daily habits this year, inspired by Chai Overdose’s Hobonichi Weeks tracker on Instagram. My two 2026 goals are to 1) use my peloton subscription daily and 2) meal plan, grocery shop, and eat at least one recipe per week. The daily habits that I’m tracking are derived from those goals specifically, so this aspect of my layout has been a permanent fixture all year long and helped me stay somewhat on track with these goals. Overall, I’m satisfied with where my journal layout is now, but I think I should incorporate the meal tracking element from 2025 as I’ve been slacking on cooking lately. In the spirit of setting implementation intentions and identifying high priorities for myself, I also want to plan out my workouts for the week, so I follow through more there as well. I want to set a goal of at least three 20-minute peloton rides to start ramping myself back up to daily cardio. I’ll report back later in the month on how effective these changes have been.