(With ADHD. Who Like To Write.)

You guys, I am terrible at using planners.

Every year, I buy one … okay, or more than one … and I try to make it work with my insane schedule, my ADHD, and my apparent allergy to anything that resembles a journal but not a blog.

The thing is, most planners aren’t designed for people who might work from 1000 – 1130, then again from 2100 – 2330. Most planners use sensible hourly formats designed for sensible people who sensibly work from 9 – 5 or, at the outer limit, 6. Everything later than that gets, like, two tiny lines labeled ‘Evening’ or what have you.

Enter Ink & Volt. I discovered them via Insta, then poked their website. I immediately vowed out loud that I wouldn’t buy their planner because their UI had serious problems, and in my darkest and most cynical heart-of-hearts I’m a cranky UI design crank.

And then, after fighting with the UI for a while and poking around and discovering that there wasn’t actually another goal-oriented planner on the market that suited my needs and that, G-d help me, I actually loved their product design, I sent them $40 (which is the most I have ever spent on a planner, but it seemed like a good idea now that I have gigs to keep track of and stuff).

Basic black for a basic b*tch.

Yeah, yeah. I know.

The thing is, I’ve actually consistently used this thing every day since it arrived, which is saying something.

It has catchy little guided-journal pages, like this:

“Bring Your Year Into Focus”

… And this:

“January Goals”

…And this:

First week of January

In addition to weekly scheduling pages, like this:

“Weekly Outlook, January 1-7” … Obviously not the busiest week.

I like the simple schedule blocks. I like the lack of space-wasting hourly breakdowns. I like the paper that doesn’t bleed through.

I like the fact that this thing has some heft to it. It’s like a literal anchor for my day—I could probably tie it to a canoe and toss it overboard and expect to stay put for a bit, though then I would have to buy another planner. I like being able to sit down in the morning and fumble though it with my bumbly morning thumbs.

I like that it’s there, a solid and visible object that I can pick up when I’m bored, and that it has little ribbon markers so I can turn right to the monthly overview page or this week’s schedule (which is how I choose to employ them). Sure, a lot of the info in here is also in my phone and in The Cloud … but I can pick this up without getting distracted by Dots & Co or Google Now’s next suggested article about time-management (ironic, amirite?).

I like that there’s a little structure, but not so much my head wants to explode. Just enough.

I don’t think this is the perfect planner for everybody, because I don’t think that planner exists. It’s probably not even perfect for me—but it’s closer than anything else I’ve tried.

Will I stick with it? We’ll see. The $40 price tag is certainly an incentive—and I’m doing better than I’ve done with any planner since the free one I used to get at IUS, which had the advantage of also acting as an assignment book.

Sure—there are things I don’t love. My handwriting is sufficiently terrible that a spiral binding that really, really opens out F L A T T T would help. On the other hand, it wouldn’t feel as nice, and I secretly quite like the heft and permanence of the hard binding.

So there you have it.

If you, too, think you might like to go be pissed off by an irritating UI but still wind up buying a darned good planner, you can find both here.

Full disclosure: Ink & Volt doesn’t know me from Adam, and I received no compensation of any kind in exchange for this review, which they don’t even (yet) know I’ve written.