My brother James and I both have ADHD, and we’ve spent a lot of our lives looking for systems to help us manage it. Every ADHD person’s system has to, by definition, be unique to them.

One of the first I remember was attending a Stanley Covey time management class. We left it with a suggested system and shiny new planner books.

Neither of us have used that system in years, if not a decade. But it did begin our love affair with paper planners and notebooks that we share to this day. We do love using online and digital tools, but we’ve always enjoyed the act of writing things down. Your phone can distract you – your paper notebook never will.

We’ve both cycled through different versions. I was a Moleskine aficionado for a while, while James built his own custom-made one. For a while, I was using Cal Newport’s Time Block Planner, but that was prohibitively expensive (a new planner every three months? Nah.)

At the beginning of the year, James gave me the greatest notebook/planner I’ve ever had, and I struggle to imagine ever letting it go.

Meet the Hobonichi Techo

This is my Hobonichi Techo.

And this is Techo Mask, a spirit of potential that resides in all Hobonichi Techo planners.

In this picture, he’s about to break into a small boy’s bedroom and take him on a wondrous journey around the world, teaching him what his planner can do. He will also meet a wizard and fight a robot.

I want to be very clear, I didn’t make anything I just wrote up. It will make slightly more sense once you learn who’s behind all this.

Moving on.

The Basics

The Hobonichi Techo is manufactured by Hobonichi, a company founded by Shigesato Itoi. Itoi is a legendary copywriter in Japan and the creator of my favorite video game ever, Earthbound.

Which, if you’ve ever played Earthbound, explains a lot about the “Tech Mask” thing. If you haven’t, I will leave you with this screenshot.

It won’t explain anything, but it will give you an idea of the guy’s vibe.

The Techo is the size of A6 Paper (4.1 inches by 5.8 inches). There’s a page for each day of the year, along monthly calendars, free draw/note space at the back, and various reference materials.

The best reference material, incidentally, is a two-page spread about the different kinds of Japanese noodles.

The paper is called “Tomoe River”, which is designed to hold ink incredibly well with no bleed through. Despite being, and I am only slightly exaggerating, a handful of molecules thick.

I tested it out with my favorite fountain pen, and you cannot see it through the other side.

The book uses a thread stitch binding that allows it to lay flat for hours totally on its own without any weights, then close back up and – I still can’t quite believe this – stay closed.

Anyone who’s owned a non-spiral-bound notebook at all knows that’s a miracle worthy of sainthood.

A planner that goes with you

All this physical awesomeness combines to create one of my favorite things about the Techo: it’s the first planner I actually regularly take with me.

The fact that it just stays open means I can leave it on my desk when I’m working. The fact that it’s literally small enough to put into a shirt pocket means it always goes with me.

No other notebook or planner I’ve owned had this level of portability. Most of them are big, weighty things that have to live on a desk or in a bag. Which, like, if you spend most of your time between two indoor offices, is great. But if you’re on the move at all, even within your own office, is a huge pain.

I like to take notes the moment I think of them – my ADHD means that I can’t always rely on my short-term memory to store something between when I have the thought and when I can get to my desk. Other times, I have to reference or even change my to-do list for the day, which again, won’t wait for me to get home.

The Techo goes anywhere with me, even if I don’t want to (or can’t) bring a bag.

Page design makes the difference

I’ve already explained how great the physical construction of the pages are – they hold ink remarkably well. What’s also wonderful about them is the design. Every two pages is two days alongside a quote from some Japanese luminary or from Itoi’s own storied blog.

(The blog is a topic in and of itself for a later date. Let’s just say it’s wild to me that the creation of Earthbound isn’t what Itoi is most famous for in Japan.)

Aside from the date, the quote, the entire page is divided into 3.7 mm graph paper squares, and I’m just going to let the Techo marketing team explain what makes those great:

“After much trial and error, our echo pages have 3.7mm squares, which are the perfect size to either write within the lines, or ignore the lines and write outside them. The graph paper design makes it easy to draw charts and graphs, and the lines can provide a guide for pasting in papers or photographs totally straight.”

As someone with notoriously messy and overly large handwriting, I LOVE the graph design. It really is the perfect size to corral my messy handwriting into something compact and legible-ish.

In the past, that had been my struggle with smaller notebooks and planners. Portable? Yes. Also – so small they were functionally useless to me. The Techo’s page design helps me make use of the space.

But there’s something much more important in that ad copy, and it ties directly into what makes the Hobonichi Tech the greatest notebook and planner I’ve ever had.

Write within the lines, or ignore them and write outside.

The Techo isn’t REALLY marketed as a planner, or even a notebook. It’s marketed as a “Life book”. The designers want you to do whatever you want with it.

There’s a suggestion for time on the left – a single “12” that implies you can Time Block Plan per Cal Newport’s system. There’s a fork and a knife at the bottom to imply conversations to have at dinner.

But you can, quite genuinely, do whatever you want or need with it. It’s just enough structure to help you, but not so much you’re locked in.

I’ve used it to write on my to-do list on more free-form days. I’ve time-blocked busier ones. It’s my go-to at-hand notebook for when I need to scribble down ideas and thoughts.

I take it with me to meetings and fill up the entire page with notes.

It’s whatever I want it to be or need it to be. But it is also contained. I only get so much space on any given day, and while I will allow myself to go back in time to fill out thoughts, I will not go forward. Past me has already given me this free space, but I will not be a thief of future me.

That limitation forces me to be judicious about what I write down. If I find myself working with bigger ideas, I know I actually need to grab my composition notebook from home, so I’ll write enough to stick the moment in my head. No fat here, only bone.

Conclusion

At the top, I mentioned that an ADHDers system is inevitably unique to them. In truth, every person’s system must be unique to them. There’s barely such a thing as one size fits two, much less one size fits all.

But I gotta be honest, I think the Techo pretty close.

And I’m just not saying that because Techo Mask is looming creepily over my shoulder.

See you next time, space cowfolk.