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muji chronotebook

How this entry came to be:

Chronotebook - Exterior

This is a Muji Chronotebook. It doesn’t look like much, but the idea is so interesting.

Instead of your run of the mill daily planner where time is arranged in a linear fashion, the Chronotebook organises time in a circle.

Chronotebook - Interior

You can make pie charts or just draw a line/arrow to the time, a much more flexible (and visual) system than the usual method of pre-ruled lines on a page.

MUJI Chronotebook - Usage

It’s an quirky concept and something I really want to try out, though I can foresee some problems for me personally.

I’m not a person who has a very active schedule. What this means is that there will be many many blank pages intersected by the occasional fully packed day (usually weekends). I must admit that this problem is not restricted to the Chronotebook, it’s pretty much my problem with any day-per-page planner.

There isn’t any feature for monthly or weekly overview in this notebook, which means you can’t do a lot of pre-planning (easily), or mark any multiple-day events. Not a big negative against the notebook, but can be awkward if I want to mark in a five-day holiday. {edit: unless I convert a page into a week/month view, the dial in the centre would be separated into seven/thirty-one sections… hmm… food for thought}

How I can see myself using this notebook is as a journal;. It’ll help me record how much time I’ve spent on certain activities. It would also be useful on days when I want to really micro-manage my time (if only this notebook was out when I was in high school or Uni – perhaps I should take up a Master’s Degree, just to test out the notebook ;p).

As a scheduler, it would be more useful for me to stick with the usual week-per-page scheduler and to draw a dial on the certain days when I need to micro-manage. {edit: or use the dials as monthly/weekly organiser until I come to a day when I need to micro-manage}

In fact, while writing this entry, I found a site called chronoNotebook.com (please note the original item only have one “no” in the spelling) which provide templates of the centre dial. You can print the dial onto any circular sticky labels and put that in your preferred notebook. Otherwise you can print out full pages with the chronotebook in the centre.

For now, I’m going to try the dial method in my normal scheduler first – if it works, I might look into my local Muji store to see if they stock it.

More links to the Chronotebook:

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