Tag: Techo

How to Set Monthly Goals

April 4th, 2021
At the end of every month I open my Hobonichi Cousin planner and assess how my month went in regards to habits, scheduling, and my month’s goals. Yes, dates (and time in general) are a fabrication of mankind and may seem arbitrary – but there is a lot of power in making a fresh start every month.

In this post I will break down my process for mapping out my monthly goals and how you can follow those steps to become a better and more balanced you.

The Three-Step Process: Reflect, Ideate, & Create

When I was researching different methods of goal creation, I came across this wonderful video by struthless. From his process for creating goals for a new year, I created an abridged version for a month-to-month plan. I still suggest you check out his video (and his entire channel) if you want to know more or go more in-depth with your plan.

Step One: Reflect

Before you can plan how to make this month better than the last, you need to first see what went well and what went poorly in the last. Ask yourself (and write out your thoughts about) these three questions:
1. What excited me?
2. What drained me of energy?
3. What did I learn?
My thinking process (yes, it is messy – but that’s me!) looked something like this:

Step Two: Ideate the Perfect Month

Next, assess two or three actions in each category that you could take to make you month better in these ten categories:
1. Personal Life & Family
2. Work, Studies, Profession
3. Belongings
4. Relaxation, Hobbies, Creativity
5. Friends & Community
6. Health & Fitness
7. Intellectual
8. Emotional & Spiritual
9. Finances
10. Bucket List
While you are typically thinking of all of these aspects in them back of your mind, specifically writing them out on paper makes the action plan much more clear and in-reach.

After all of your thoughts are written out, write these questions (warning: things are about to get introspective):
1. Why do you want this?
2. Who do you have to be to do these things?
3. What would you have to say no to?
4. What would you have to say yes to?
5. How will you persevere through hardship?
6. Why do you deserve this?
Again, here is my messy thought process:

Step Three: Create Goals & Habits

Finally, see which of these actions you would like to pursue the most and make them into habits. The Hobonichi Cousin has 10 slots in its habit tracker, but if you are new to habit tracking I would suggest you start with no more than six and work up from there. Here are the habits that I decided to go with:

For clarification: social is spending at least 30 minutes with a friend (virtual or otherwise) and the hearts are spending meaningful time with my husband (like doing something other than eating and watching TV together).

I also like to pick three major goals and map them out on the daily page that begins each month in my Hobonichi. This month I chose to focus on friends, finding my creative identity, and giving myself time for inner awareness.

To see my entire monthly planning process, check out my Plan With Me video for April:

I hope that you gained some insight on planning your monthly goals from this post! If you would like to learn more about productivity, habits, wellness, and creativity follow my blog and subscribe to my YouTube channel. If you are a fan of the Hobonichi, I also have a Facebook group where members share how they use their planners and journals.

Do you have another way of creating monthly goals? Let me know in the comments!
Organize Your Life with the Hobonichi Cousin Planner

March 24th, 2021

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!