My 2026 techo kaigi
Three notebooks for the year
I romanticize the hell out of notebooks. I so want to be the person that comes up with 1,001 brilliant ideas in their pocket, leather-bound, beaten up journal and then proceeds to become a best-selling author that never has to work a day in her life ever again.
But until then. I have a notebook/journal setup that is working for me and thought I’d share my setup for the year.
#1 - Journal
This is a Galen Leather leather-bound 400-page Tomoe River blank notebook. The leather is really nice but tbh kinda overkill so when I ordered some extras, I went for the regular paper-bound ones instead. I pair it every morning with a Lamy Safari fine nib filled with Diamine Oxford Blue. It’s a dark blue that just sort of matches the pen and I haven’t felt the need to change it. I fill up two pages every morning - a practice I’ve had since 2020 - and just brain vomit whatever is on my mind. It helps to be aware of my thoughts first thing in the morning and doing this has helped me work through some serious stuff.
Not every day has serious stuff though. I’d say even more days are not serious than serious. But I keep up this practice because it helps keep the muscles of writing out my thoughts and feelings active, so that when I need to absolutely emotionally convulse, I already know how to do it and can just write. I recently did a declutter and counted nine of these filled in the past five years. Each one lasts me about half a year. 400 pages, roughly 200 entries. The maths checks out.
#2 - Planner
This is an A5 Plotter Leather ring binder system and tbh I’m still figuring this one out. In my corporate job, I had the full analog setup. The Alastair method for to-dos, meeting notes, everything. I relied on this a lot because I couldn’t access my personal calendar from my work computer, and vice versa. The planner was then always open on my desk both at home and at work.
Now though I have a job that’s much more mobile. I work in the office 2.5 days a week, I’m filming 1 day a week, and I’m at home 1.5 days a week. So busting out a planner just isn’t the move when I keep having to shuffle myself around. Plus, apps like Google Calendar and Things are now fully accessible to me so I rely on those things because they’re great, they sync, and they just simply work.
So the planner’s role is tbh kind of up in the air. What I’ve been experimenting with is using it as a consumption log. Books I’m reading, audiobooks I’m listening to. And then a sort of daily snapshot of my social life. Brunch with friends, team lunches, catch up calls. I like the idea of being able to flip back and just see what my life actually looked like on any given day. I’m not sure it’ll stick but I’m going to keep going with it and see.
#3 - Field Notes
Ali gave one to me a few months ago and I’ve had one on me ever since. For context, I currently work as Ali Abdaal’s YouTube producer, so half my week I’m literally behind a camera. The Plotter is just too bulky to whip out when I’m on the move. But the Field Notes just fits in my pocket.
I love the size. I love the versatility of it. I love just dumping stuff in there. Notes from a meeting, notes from team lunches, random essay ideas that pop into my head, and now, also memorabilia like stickers and black-and-white photos from my new thermal printer. I went to a 7-Eleven at Victoria Peak and they had a stamp, so I stamped it in there. Went to a museum, stamped it. Disneyland, stamped it. My mom came over and wrote on my to-do list page so I just pasted that in too. There’s no rhyme or reason to it. It’s just become this catch-all for whatever is happening in my life on any given day.
Video Tour
Update log:
🐎 Happy lunar new year! It’s funny celebrating it in Indo. It’s A) full of everyone just semi-yelling at their semi-deaf elderly parents and B) full of Chindos LARP-ing as Chinese folks because we don’t understand the culture.
🌎 New Small Creator Big World episode: We Tried Building a Creator Community
🤖 Alex Dobrenko` got me into Claude Code and now this is ALL I think about
🌐 Already relaunched the smallcreatorbigworld.com website lol
📖 Reading Lin-Manuel Miranda’s biography and I’m so invested in the origin story of In the Heights
🖨️ My new favourite thing is printing b/w photos from my thermal Niimbot B21Pro printer and then sticking them in my Field Notes journal.
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Zebra’s TS-3 mechanical pencil fits perfectly in a field notes notebook and doubles as a bookmark :)
Notebook content 🤤