Are you feeling lost, unmotivated, and overwhelmed? Do you keep procrastinating even though you know it only increases your anxiety? I know that I was. At the peak of my anxiety and frustration, I knew that I needed some sort of system to put in place to make sense of things and get my life back on track. The system that works best for me is journaling in my Hobonichi Techo Cousin planner.

Why the Hobonichi Cousin?

Before I began researching new planners, my experience was limited to the ones provided by my public schools or those made by Blue Sky. These are fine, but rather limited in what you can do with them. My eyes were opened by JetPens’ stock of Japanese planners.

With so many to choose from, why the Hobonichi? The primary that I chose to buy it, and chose to continue using it, is because of its (structured) freedom.

The Hobonichi Cousin has four distinct sections – the habit tracker & monthly, weekly, and daily spreads – so you have some guidance for what to put where. However, the pages are blank enough where you can be creative and do what you want to do with each of them. If you are attracted to bullet journaling but feel that it is too hard to fill a blank page on your own, the structure that the Hobonichi provides is perfect.

The Habit Tracker & Monthly Spread: Reach Your Goals & Organize

The first section of the Hobonichi Techo is the habit tracker. Here you can list up to ten habits to keep track of daily. Visualizing progress of your habits is an important step to making them a reality, but there is much more that goes into habit formation than that. My next post will dive deeper into how to create systems to make your a consistent part of your life, so stay tuned!

The monthly spread is the most straightforward section in my own Hobonichi. You can use it to organize every event and appointment you must attend to so that everything for the month can be seen at-a-glance. As I explain in my video, I do not use it as much as the other sections, but it is still an excellent tool for organizing your time.

The Weekly Spread: Time Management

The weekly section of the Hobonichi Cousin shows every single hour of every single day, which makes it the perfect tool for time management. Balance between work and wellness was one of the main problems contributing to my anxiety, so having time blocking every minute of your day can be helpful in figuring out where you need to reallocate how you spend your time.

On this spread you can also add a weekly to-do list, create art in the margins, or track your mood. I like to use the bottom three hours of each day to track my mood with a cute sticker and a short summary of the day.

The Daily Page: Journaling for Wellness & Creativity

By far my favorite part of the Hobonichi Cousin is the daily page. Each day has a blank grid-line paper for you to write anything you want. There are countless videos and articles about the benefits of daily journaling (and the benefits will vary from person to person) but for me it is a sort of therapy to fill out the page at the end of every day. This page is a space solely for you – so do what speaks to you and makes you happy.

Besides the wellness befits, there is also ample space for you to keep daily to-do lists. I have another video on the power of lists so check it out if you would like to learn more. Helpful tip: even if your to-do list has multiple items (as it often will), highlight the item that you most want to get done and be sure to do that task first. That way, even if you can’t get to everything, you still make progress.

---

There are so many reasons why I love this planner that one blog post is not enough. To hear more about the Hobonichi Cousin, journaling, habits, and wellness follow my blog and subscribe to my YouTube channel.

If you would like to see what other Hobonichi Cousin owners do with their planners, join my Facebook group. Do you have a Hobonichi Cousin, or any questions about how to use it? Please leave a comment below!