My Analog Productivity Toolkit (2022)
I like to tell people that my 3 brothers and I all got one thing each from my parents. From our dad, we get an affinity for pocket knives. From our mom, we got a love of stationary. We all love a good notebook and pen, but of the 4 of us I’ve taken it to the most extreme.
While I’m squarely in tech, I still love doing most of my productivity stuff (planning, writing, etc.) with analog1 tools. I feel like I really got the system dialed in through 2021 — so much so that I’m not making any major changes to it in 2022. That makes now the perfect time to tell you all about my analog toolkit. All the links are at the end of the article.
The Paper
- Theme System Journal: My journal and “habit” tracker. I try to write in it every week day at least, and track several actions throughout the day, giving a score at the end, and noting overall accomplishments and feelings.
- William Hannah Notebook: This is my planner and everything notebook. It’s got 2 pages per week, and I’ll write down tasks, appointments, and my plan for the month. It’s central to my analog tools, and most of what I write in here gets digitized and put in Craft.
- Analog by Ugmonk: There’s nothing like writing out a to do list and then checking items off. The Analog system from Ugmonk captures this perfectly. Beautiful card holder, cards for Today, Next (which I use for monthly planning), and Someday (which I use for Quarterly planning), and easy storage. At the end of each period, I take a picture of the card and store it in Craft.
- Field Notes: I always have a Field Notes Brand notebook in my pocket. One usually lasts me a month, though sometimes it will be more. As long as it’s not totally wasteful, I’ll start a new one at the beginning of each month.
The Pens/Pencils
I have an entire Pens guide, so I won’t belabor this point, but I keep a few on me, in the fantastic Nock Co. Sinclair pen case2:
- 2 fountain pens, which change each day
- 1-2 ballpoint pens, where at least one is the Mark One by Studio Neat
- 1 Blackwing Pencil and 1 Color Pencil (which is used for my habit tracking)
Miscellaneous Items
There are also a few miscellaneous items in the analog kit:
- Panopad by Studio Neat: This is a landscape notebook that sits below my keyboard. Perfect for meeting notes or doodling
- Subtle Notebook by Cortext Brand: This is a dot grid notebook by the makers of the theme system. I will use these for bigger projects, like a book I’m working on, or my next courses.
What do you use?
I know I probably use more than most, but it’s a system that works super well for me — especially since everything eventually makes it to a digital form anyway.
What do you use? Leave a comment below and let me know!
