Planners & Hobonichi Techo

I've been using the Hobonichi Techo Planner for about 8 years now. I have them all lined up on a bookshelf and sometimes I'll flip through previous years to reflect. It's always fun to see how my ideas formed over time, and to look back on "who I used to be".

The Planner has a page for every day of the year, and for the first few years I used them, I struggled to write something every day. I'd generally only write about big life events or big ideas. I had a lot of empty pages, and looking back on them left me feeling empty.

So I decided to try writing something (anything) every day, even if it was just a single sentence, or even a single word. I let go of trying to write about only important things and filled my pages with doodles, scribbles, and random thoughts. These days, I sometimes find that there's not enough room to hold everything I want to write about! In a way, I think forcing myself to write more helped me learn to notice more. I'm really proud of the fact that I've written something every day since 2021, and because of that, my Techos are some of my most prized possessions.

Maybe you've seen the official Hobonichi Techo App that launched earlier this year. That app features a tool you can use to print images that are perfectly sized to fit the different Techos' grid paper.... but, to use it, you have to pay a $5/month subscription fee. I felt like paying to print precisely-sized images on your own home printer was kind of ridiculous, so I built my own (free, open-source) photo-printing app called memori. It runs completely in your web browser and supports every Techo's grid size, plus other planners too. I've been using it to print a photo from each day, which I glue down on the calendar pages. It's also great for printing images to pad out empty space, and for making stickers! Maybe others here will get some use out of it too! \^w^/