TRAVELER'S Company Notebook Refill 005 [Free Diary Daily]

If free choice is your preference, and you like to work at the daily level in your TN, this is a great option. Free text box in the page header, useful for (say) month/year, then checkboxes for the day, and a numbered day ready printed from 1-31. Paper quality is typically excellent (and fountain pen friendly) as always from TRC, and a nice shade of cream. This insert is on my regular re-order list, tells you something perhaps, would certainly recommend.

If you don't need or want pre-printed dates/months in your planner, this might the best solution for you. Some so-called free diaries, or undated diaries, have nothing but the bare days of the week pre-printed, you need to add everything else yourself by hand. The Traveler's Notebook Free Diary gives you a page per day, with each page numbered from 1-31. Each page also has checkboxes for Mon-Sun and an eighth for 'Special'. A fillable text box allows you to enter the Month name and (if you like) the Year (or anything else you want I guess, but Month/Year seems a sensible choice). In my system, this is all I need to identify where I am in the Month/Year, and what the day is. If I skip a day, no problem. The writing surface is the Traveler's graph grid at 5mm, which I guess you either like or you don't; for me it is light enough so I can see to keep my writing straight, but pale enough so when you look at a page of handwriting, you see the writing, not the graph lines. The paper is the rightly-famed Midori MD, a delight to write upon. Each insert is enough for two months, so at £5.99 a pop, it's not the cheapest option for your diary/planner, but it's a system I like very much and see no reason to go back to a less flexible option on lower quality paper. In the interests of transparency, I am a big Traveler's Company fan, and am more likely to see good than bad in their stuff, but I've used pretty much all of the competition's offerings, and this is the one I keep coming back to.

I love traveler’s company products, always the highest quality! Journal Shop always dispatch with care.

As always with MTN products, the paper quality is excellent, taking a fairly wet ink with no feathering, bleeding or strike through to the other side of the page. Excellent quality, and if you want a bit of structure in a page-a-day diary, here you go!

The first page and the middle page are the monthly plan. There is a white central column and a shaded right hand column. I write the major events, appointments, birthdays etc in the centre column. I have divided the shaded column into six using the lines from the grid on the page behind. These are labelled at the top Water Greenhouse, Blog, Tidy Desk etc and are my daily reminders of the things which should be routine or which I am trying to make into daily habits. I just put a mark in each for each day when the task is done. The line of dots is quite motivating! Then for the daily page I make check boxes for non-routine jobs. I do this the night before, not days in advance, and I do it by referring to the monthly overview. I carry forward anything from the day before. This takes maybe one third of the page, maximum, in two columns. No more then 20 items. Below that is space where I write about any phone calls from the checklist above, who I spoke to, when I will ring them back (and then that DOES go forward immediately to the correct day as a note). At one side I write a vertical line with marks using the grid, just one square wide on each side. The line is 12 boxes long. This is is where I track my plan for the day (on the left of the line) and what actually happened (on the right). Some days are spent on paperwork, or computer stuff, some are planned for other tasks. It's a useful way to remind myself that I should get up and do X now. The bottom third is my food record (trying to lose a few kilos) and for that I turn the page at 90 degrees and just list it. The very bottom line is my bank balance, daily. I run a business and I need to check every day. Some of these things I was doing before in an ordinary squared notebook so they aren't new, but the freeform nature of the 005 has allowed me to bring them all together.

Having bought an assortment of inserts, I shouldn't have bothered because this is all you need. Gridlines and a box at the top for the date etc. When you buy the Midori TN, it comes with a blank insert but in my opinion it should come with this instead because it is a good all rounder.