Greetings from the frozen tundra known as Texas. We are still in snow/ice conditions and the state is still dealing with rolling blackouts to protect our aged power grid. Who knew wind turbines could freeze?

Thankfully, we have power and internet where I live, so Tuesday’s Tool Time post can proceed. 

My wonderful family had Santa deliver an Apple Pencil for Christmas and one of the first apps I purchased was the Good Notes app. This basically turns the iPad into a stack of notebooks of every ilk, grid lines, dots, lined, blank, you name it. Also, you can buy on Etsy templates to use. So, I had been curious about the Hobonichi for some time, and some lovely Etsy seller had a Hobonichi notebook for the GoodNotes app. I was hooked immediately. 

What is great about the app with the iPad and pencil is that you can zoom in and make the boxes really big to write in, then squish them back small again to see the full page. Game changer. 

Since I am a paper planning girl at heart, this really works for me. I am using this version of the Hobonichi for blog post and story planning. (One of my goals is to start submitting Medium articles in March. That’s only thirteen days away. Yikes.)

I am using the monthly pages for the blog content calendar, the weekly pages for story writing and the daily pages for Medium ideas, so I know where to find it all. The cool thing about the virtual Hobonichi is that the monthly pages are followed by the weekly and the corresponding days, with one blank page for a review thing. Plenty of space for writing. 

I thought about ditching the paper planners altogether, but I am still not “trusting” myself with the iPad. I feel like power is an issue and I don’t always have it with me. But getting there. Maybe in a few months it will be more a habit. I don’t carry the paper planner with me 24/7 and I have the GoodNotes app on the MacBook and on the iPhone, so it really is “with me” more often.

Also, how cool is it that you can even MIX the paper in your notebooks. If you google GoodNotes templates, there are so many pretty ones, so just ignore my mishmash. (In case your wondering, it’s my border collie’s ToDo list.) I like both kinds of paper so I like having mixed pages.