Would you change your planner for your pen, or your pen for your planner?

[iap]

I am quite OCD and have used the same brands of notebooks, etc for many years. Most of my pens have interchangeable nibs and I have a reasonable selection of inks, so it is generally quick and cheap to find a combination of nib and ink that suits my choice of planner.

 

[I-am-not-really-here]

First, I would try a different ink.  

[ajcoleman]

I have used a Compact size Page per Day Daytimer for years.  And a pencil.

 

(That said, the last couple of years the planner paper has been quite fountain pen friendly. )

[Bo Bo Olson]

I must say as a Ball Point Barbarian, any ball point worked in the company's planner we were given, when I did such.

 

Since retiring, I no longer have nor use a planner.

Moleskine is a well designed ball point planner, one has to use an EF with a dry ink or it bleeds through....from my reading.

 

In I'm accustomed to different ink colors in different widths of nibs....I'd defiantly spend money on a Red&Black (Oxford Optic 90g paper) planner and learn to live with a lesser model planner with a much, much better paper.

Why have shading ink, when it bleeds through Molskine? Shading inks don't shade in EF.

 

 

[collectorofmanythings]

I want my planner to work with the pen I use.

[arcfide]

Now that a number of people have weighed in, my own experience has been that I personally have weighted the planner as very significant in my own choices, leading me to strongly resist using certain pens for planning if I didn't like how they worked in my planner, rather than feeling a desire to switch to a different planner. I did look at other planners, but found that I was too attached to the planner, and therefore was wiling to factor that into my choice of pens to carry around significantly more than I might have expected at first. 

 

Of course, I still am able to find pen and ink that I really like that works in my planner, so I don't completely discard the consideration of being able to use a pen that I like in the planner, but my choice of pens and range of enjoyment with fountain pens is a lot higher than the range of planners I find I enjoy, so that makes one more critical in the decision than the other. 

[JakobS]

Having to plan to use my planner is probably one of the reasons why I don’t use a planner.  Perhaps in old age I will have tiny notes safety pinned to my shirt pocket telling me to be somewhere at some time, use any pen and ink, and any bit of the hundreds(thousands?) of loose fountain pen friendly paper I have sitting around. Good stuff or not, at that point it will be hard to remember what is what anyway!

[Runnin_Ute]

I have been using my Franklin planner since January 1986. Still have all of those prior years. Over the years, I have used pencil, ballpoint, rollerball and fountain pens. As the paper is still reasonably fp friendly I can still use a fountain pen. Although there has been some degradation in recent years. On any given day I will use multiple pens. Not often wider than medium nibs though, but it does happen from time to time. So if I didn't change it over the last 36 years why would I now? I have been a fountain pen user since 1998. So 24 of those 36 years.

[Checklist]

My pens I intend to use regularly, including at work; I'm not going to take them out of regular use for something that will be obsolete at the new year. 

 

ETA: I will not go out and buy a new planner after a subpar experience with a given pen. so long as it is manageable.  However, I will avoid it when buying it for the next year.

[Mech-for-i]

But what if my planner and my pen never even made a pair , yes these days I had most of my plan on my Smartphone , like it or not , good planner / appointment / calendar app on smartphone are just impressively useful and works ..  

[ParramattaPaul]

5 hours ago, Mech-for-i said:

But what if my planner and my pen never even made a pair , yes these days I had most of my plan on my Smartphone , like it or not , good planner / appointment / calendar app on smartphone are just impressively useful and works ..  

Smart phone calendars are definitely convenient and practical to use.  My late wife. who -- by her own admission -- was 'technologically impaired', used her phone to keep track everything we had going on.  While I embrace technology, I've only occasionally used a calendar function on my phone or computers. 

[Vladpu]

I know I keep saying O'm an old man, but ...  I tried using both a ballpoint and a fountain pen for my "planner".  Neither one left a mark on the gorilla glass of my iPhone.

[N1003U]

On 7/28/2021 at 4:10 AM, Runnin_Ute said:

I have been using my Franklin planner since January 1986. Still have all of those prior years. Over the years, I have used pencil, ballpoint, rollerball and fountain pens. As the paper is still reasonably fp friendly I can still use a fountain pen. Although there has been some degradation in recent years. On any given day I will use multiple pens. Not often wider than medium nibs though, but it does happen from time to time. So if I didn't change it over the last 36 years why would I now? I have been a fountain pen user since 1998. So 24 of those 36 years.

I remember those days! I started using the Franklin system in 1987 (along with a cassette tape copy of the time management seminar put on by Hyrum Smith, which was very useful and entertaining). I found the paper quality varied widely over the years. In 2007, I converted to a DayTimer, Two-Pages-Per-Day format, which is, IME, essentially a direct substitute for the classic Franklin format (an excellent format for planning and record-keeping in a compact design), but it is printed on ISO-standard (A5) paper rather ANSI-standard (8.5"x5.5"), which I find easier to deal with on an international basis. I also find the DayTimer paper to be bit thinner and slightly more FP friendly.

 

To answer the OP's question directly, I changed my planner partly to accommodate my growing use of FPs. I would, at this point, never change my pen for a planner. I would sooner go back to Benjamin Franklin's original "little book" design and rule my own pages...

[brokenclay]

On 7/27/2021 at 6:50 PM, JakobS said:

Having to plan to use my planner is probably one of the reasons why I don’t use a planner.  Perhaps in old age I will have tiny notes safety pinned to my shirt pocket telling me to be somewhere at some time, use any pen and ink, and any bit of the hundreds(thousands?) of loose fountain pen friendly paper I have sitting around. Good stuff or not, at that point it will be hard to remember what is what anyway!

 

Many years ago I was a PA for a famous (retired) diplomat who served on many boards and what not. Every morning I placed a 3x5 index card with his schedule, typed, into his breast coat pocket. He never even looked at it himself; whatever meeting or function he was at, another PA would take the card out of his pocket, check where he was supposed to be next, call the car or whatever and physically put him in it to steer him to the next item (after, of course, replacing the card in his pocket for the next functionary).

[ParramattaPaul]

3 minutes ago, brokenclay said:

 

Many years ago I was a PA for a famous (retired) diplomat who served on many boards and what not. Every morning I placed a 3x5 index card with his schedule, typed, into his breast coat pocket. He never even looked at it himself; whatever meeting or function he was at, another PA would take the card out of his pocket, check where he was supposed to be next, call the car or whatever and physically put him in it to steer him to the next item (after, of course, replacing the card in his pocket for the next functionary).

That's funny.  It sounds like the story of the middle-aged absent-minded professor with a barely twenty-something pretty lab assistant who micro-manages his life.

[N1003U]

15 minutes ago, brokenclay said:

 

Many years ago I was a PA for a famous (retired) diplomat who served on many boards and what not. Every morning I placed a 3x5 index card with his schedule, typed, into his breast coat pocket. He never even looked at it himself; whatever meeting or function he was at, another PA would take the card out of his pocket, check where he was supposed to be next, call the car or whatever and physically put him in it to steer him to the next item (after, of course, replacing the card in his pocket for the next functionary).

The very definition of an intelligent planning system. Analog, but still effective.

[arcfide]

35 minutes ago, ParramattaPaul said:

That's funny.  It sounds like the story of the middle-aged absent-minded professor with a barely twenty-something pretty lab assistant who micro-manages his life.

 

It's a funny stereotype, but it's a stereotype for a reason. I worked in Academia and have seen that on more than one occasion. The people who hired for the professor's personal assistants, however, were aware enough that one of the questions on the hiring exam was whether or not the assistant thought that she could adequately predict the future and read the professor's mind ahead of time to anticipate problems and make sure they didn't happen. 

[essayfaire]

I'm with Smug and ridiculopathy here.  I have tried many planners and have one in particular that I have found suits my needs best.  I have tried many pens and have found different ones work best for different tasks - I may use a M or B nibbed pen to map out a chart, and then an EF or F to fill out the chart.  I match the pen to the task, just as I use different spices to cook different proteins.  I would keep the planner and choose a different pen to use with it, and then find something else - essay writing, poetry, mathematical calculations - to give me an excuse to use my favourite pen each day.

[JakobS]

As an academic currently, and an aspiring diplomat, this is all very good news.

 

So choosing the right PA is the most important aspect in a planning system, check!

 

Outside of the chair, there is only one professor affiliated with our department that has a PA, it always has struck me as a bit of an indulgence, but he seemed to be involved in everything, so perhaps he couldn’t manage to keep track of it all, though technology keeps chipping away at such need it seems….

On 7/29/2021 at 4:44 PM, brokenclay said:

 

Many years ago I was a PA for a famous (retired) diplomat who served on many boards and what not. Every morning I placed a 3x5 index card with his schedule, typed, into his breast coat pocket. He never even looked at it himself; whatever meeting or function he was at, another PA would take the card out of his pocket, check where he was supposed to be next, call the car or whatever and physically put him in it to steer him to the next item (after, of course, replacing the card in his pocket for the next functionary).

 

On 7/29/2021 at 5:27 PM, arcfide said:

 

It's a funny stereotype, but it's a stereotype for a reason. I worked in Academia and have seen that on more than one occasion. The people who hired for the professor's personal assistants, however, were aware enough that one of the questions on the hiring exam was whether or not the assistant thought that she could adequately predict the future and read the professor's mind ahead of time to anticipate problems and make sure they didn't happen. 

 

[MHBru]

most of the planners I would even consider are FP compatible so that levels the field a lot.  That being said I was in love with my Quo Vadis Note 21 because of the format of week on one side and notes on the other.  but it's a 17 month planner and I don't see the need for that on an ongoing basis.  For 2022 I searched for a 12 month version  but Quo Vadis didn't have one that i liked.  For 2020.... Same pen.... new planner .. just not for the reason posed in the original post.