Planning Engineered

A bound planner locks you into one layout for a whole year, and that was the exact reason I finally switched to a ring system. Now when a page stops working, I pull it and print a better one, including a fold-out weekly that holds two weeks on a single sheet. The MeePlus binder has quietly become the center of how I plan.

Honest question for the notebook people: are you running a bound notebook or a ring system right now, and has the freedom to move pages actually helped you, or did it just become one more thing to fiddle with?

New one is live: https://youtu.be/SqAzTz6PcXk

2 days ago | [YT] | 0

Planning Engineered

If someone handed you a gift card you had to spend in one stationery shop, what are you getting?

https://youtu.be/hMwGx0aYuAE

1 week ago | [YT] | 1

Planning Engineered

Most fountain pens ship with a nib that's fine for everyone and perfect for no one.

My brass Traveler's Company pen wrote rough out of the box, so I pulled the stock nib and dropped in a Kaweco fine. Some swaps take ten seconds: the whole unit unscrews and a new one threads right in. The Traveler's wasn't one of them. Its nib won't back out on its own, so I had to pull the entire feed, clean it, and reseat it at the exact right depth or it starves for ink.

That's the part nobody mentions when they tell you to just swap the nib. Customizing a pen means making it write the way you actually write, even if that means taking the whole thing apart to get there. I don't take apart every pen I own. But the ones I carry daily, I will.

What's the one pen in your kit you've never bothered to fix, and what's stopped you?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o4YDM...

2 weeks ago | [YT] | 0

Planning Engineered

Today I was playing around with new inserts for my ‪@MeePlus.planner‬! Such a cool and flexible system.

2 weeks ago | [YT] | 7

Planning Engineered

This👌close 🙌

3 weeks ago | [YT] | 4

Planning Engineered

Spent years feeling like I had to pick a side: notebook guy or app guy. Turns out that's the wrong question.

The real split is by job, not loyalty. Anything I need to think through goes in the Hobonichi, slow enough that I actually notice the problem instead of skimming past it. Anything I need to find again in six months goes into the app, because my notebook from March isn't searchable. Bridge inspection notes are handwritten on site. Project schedules live in software. Same week, different tools, zero conflict.

Most people fight this because switching tools feels like admitting the first one failed. It doesn't. It just means the job changed.

Made a full video on where I draw that line and why it took me embarrassingly long to stop overthinking it.

Where's your line, paper or screen, and has switching between them ever caused friction for you?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OPu-n...

3 weeks ago | [YT] | 0

Planning Engineered

New video is live 👇

Most productivity failures aren't tool failures — they're thinking failures. You skip the analog step and dump raw information straight into Obsidian, and now you're organizing chaos instead of knowledge.

This one shows the exact split: pocket notebook + Me Plus planner on the analog side, PLACE + Obsidian on the digital side. Paper is for thinking. Digital is for storage.

https://youtu.be/OPu-nv6_Z7I

Do you run analog and digital in parallel, or have you committed to one side?

3 weeks ago | [YT] | 0

Planning Engineered

Most journaling systems fail before the second week because they're designed for the best version of your morning, not the real one.

The video going up today walks through the system I've landed on after years of trying to make journaling fit around job sites, early mornings, and days where the best you can do is five minutes with a cup of coffee.

Three notebooks earn a spot: the Intentional Day Journal for structured morning reflection, the Monk Manual when a project needs more intentional planning, and a Traveler's Company notebook for the in-between. Each one has a different job. None of them try to do everything.

The technique that actually stuck wasn't a format or a framework. It was accepting that an incomplete entry beats no entry, and that the habit is the point, not the archive.

What's the one journaling habit you've actually kept — and what made it survive past the first month?

https://youtu.be/rTUr5nqzk6k

4 weeks ago | [YT] | 0

Planning Engineered

We are so close to 1000! My birthday is coming up in a few days, can we make it before then?

Thanks for watching, sharing, and commenting! It has been so much fun.

1 month ago | [YT] | 6

Planning Engineered

Most Father's Day gifts end up in a drawer by July.

That's the problem with the category. People grab something that signals "thoughtful" instead of something the recipient will actually pick up every morning for the next ten years. A decent fountain pen does. A notebook he keeps in his back pocket does. Most of the rest is clutter.

So I made a gift guide that's basically the analog EDC I'd buy for my own dad if I didn't already know exactly what he carries. Pens at a few price points, notebooks I've used long enough to have real opinions about, and a couple of smaller things worth more than they cost. Nothing performative. Everything is something I or someone I trust uses daily.

What's the best gift you've ever given or received that you're still using years later? Curious whether it lines up with anything I picked.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Ljii...

1 month ago | [YT] | 0