My Life Changed. So My Planner Had to Change, Too.

For seven years, I was a Leuchtturm1917 loyalist, happily bullet-journaling my way through a single, dot-grid A5 notebook each year.

It was an intimate and fulfilling relationship. During that time, I was a free-floater, writing novels, freelancing, traveling, and living abroad. The free-form nature of the bullet-journal system — essentially a flexible, DIY planner system that you create as you go — matched the free-form nature of my life.

But then something happened. I got a sort of reverse seven-year itch. I moved back to the States. I took a full-time job. I signed a lease instead of a sublet. I upended my life by settling down.

As I slowly stitched myself to routine, I found that I could no longer ride out my life week-by-week. Meetings and due dates piled up weeks in advance; I arranged vacation months ahead. Every time I opened my beloved bullet journal, I had a subtle stomach-drop feeling. I once loved spending each Sunday night planning my upcoming week with a newly designed spread, but now it was a time suck, a vestigial to-do that tied me to a time frame useless for organizing my actual life.

As the new year approached, I guiltily scoured the planet for a planner setup that would play nice with my new life, but the options frightened me. I felt stifled by all the standard weekly planners on the market, every page dictated by a pre-determined layout someone else had created.

Like the lit-degree-carrying overthinker I am, I worried that this was a metaphor. Such a planner left no room for vacation travel logs, sketches, impromptu page-long lists of future craft projects — all of the lovely things that I wanted to make up the whole of my life. Was there really no middle ground, no space to combine the me I had been with the me I was becoming?

As I searched, the modular Traveler’s Company Traveler’s Notebook came up again and again (it’s a pick in our guide to paper planners, and it has a loyal following among some of the staff). But I kept dismissing it. I didn’t think I’d like the strange tall and narrow proportion, a little larger than an airline ticket. But despite my misgivings, I had to admit I was drawn to it. The notebook had a sleek, sophisticated leather cover and interchangeable inserts made from lovely paper by Midori, a Japanese brand beloved by stationery aficionados for its resistance to bleeding and feathering. (Midori also makes one of our favorite notebooks.)

Top pick

This planner is a cross between a simple calendar and a beautiful journal. And you can fill it with a range of inserts for any type of planning.

Intrigued, I watched a few videos about the notebook system. I read, of course, Wirecutter’s review. I looked up Traveler’s Notebook influencers on Instagram. I took the bus to Omoi, my local Philadelphia stationery shop (and one of 10 official Traveler’s Notebook shops in North America), and looked at all the insert options for an hour.

I dipped a toe. A foot. I was up to my knees.

The modular system is clever. You can use several notebooks at once, held together inside the sleek leather cover with a simple system of rubber bands. If you finish a notebook insert mid-year, you can replace it while keeping your other notebooks as well as the leather cover. It’s like an elegant mash-up of a three-subject notebook and a binder with tabs.

The Traveler’s Notebook has a dozen accessories and inserts to choose from — blank, lined, grid. It has paper types galore — sketch paper, watercolor paper, even sticker-release paper. You can get folder inserts, accordion inserts, a zippered pouch, a writing board, or even a half-size insert to, say, take as a small, dedicated travel journal on a specific trip. Some people get charms to decorate the elastic that closes the notebook. And for the collectors, each year the company releases limited-edition inserts and accessories featuring an annual theme.

But what intrigued me most was the dated planner, an annual planner (released toward the end of each calendar year) split into two inserts, one for each half of the year. Each spread had a week of dated boxes on the left, much like in a classic planner, and a lightly gridded page on the right, much like the classic bullet journal. What’s more, because the planner is split in two, you still have space in your Traveler’s Notebook for at least two more inserts, which you can fill with whatever you like.

There was space to plan and space to play. That was a metaphor I could live with.

Suffice to say, I was sold. I bought the starter kit, which includes a leather cover and an insert, along with a set of planner inserts, a monthly calendar insert, a grid insert, and a folder. I used the planner to track assignments and to-do items as well as to doodle and write little notes about my daily life. If something burst beyond the bounds of the planner, I flipped to the gridded notebook, filling it with lists, long-term goals, journal entries, and sketches.

The starter kit that includes the leather cover costs over $50, so the initial setup is pricey. But after the initial spend, inserts from Traveler’s Company range from a reasonable $5 to $15. You can also buy no-name “fauxdori” inserts everywhere from Amazon to Etsy, which have more choices and some cheaper options.

There are things I miss about my Leuchtturm1917 bullet journal. It was especially good for journaling and sketching, thanks to pages that were wider and lay flatter. But, it turns out, the narrow width of the Traveler’s Notebook is great for the kinds of lists and bullet-pointed notes I end up writing most of the time. Plus, I love the flexibility of the dated planner and the versatility of the inserts. I have found that three inserts, plus a folder, is the most my Traveler’s Notebook can comfortably hold (though some intrepid users manage five).

Like me, editorial director Marguerite Preston bought her Traveler’s Notebook during a life change; in 2019, she was promoted to senior editor and needed a new way to keep organized. She’s been using it daily ever since and likes that it’s a totable size. She buys off-brand inserts from Yellow Paper House on Etsy because it has tons of fun options (like rainbow paper, plus a weekly dotted insert she uses to track her to-dos). Her system has evolved over the years, and that’s one reason she likes it — the notebook is designed for change and experimentation.

Supervising editor Hannah Rimm, recent Traveler’s Notebook convert and self-described “bag girl,” is delighted by the aesthetics of the notebook — especially the leather cover, which she says smells and feels like a quality leather handbag. She uses her notebook less like a classic planner and more as a catchall for daily life. Her inserts include two lined notebooks (one for to-do lists, another for writing) and one blank (for drawings, like floor plans when she moved), along with a zipper pouch for her pen.

As for me, after nearly a year of using the notebook daily, I’m all in. The Traveler’s Notebook supports me living the life I have, every single part of it. Yes, there are more deadlines now. There are more meetings. But there are also craft projects. There are adventures. There are sketches and stickers and lists and musings.

It is, of course, hard to predict anything, including whether the Traveler’s Notebook will be with me forever. But it’s so versatile — each Traveler’s Notebook devotee I spoke with had a different system that worked for them — that I suspect it will age well, changing with time like the leather cover itself, no matter where life takes me.

This article was edited by Katie Okamoto and Catherine Kast.