Moleskine Daily Diary 2013

And this is my first blog post on ANY blog in the New Year! Fittingly enough, it’s about something that’s helping me chart out my day-to-day planning just the way I’ve been meaning to. I’ve tried online ToDo lists, I’ve tried flashcards / notecards, I’ve tried yearly planners and I’ve just never gotten around to utilizing them fully.

A few days before the start of the New Year, I read this blog post on @strut120 that recommended the best diary planners for 2013.

I wasn’t even aware that Moleskine had come up with something called the “Colour a Month Daily Diary / Planner”! And the 12 softcover diaries – one for each month – looked lovely! I have quite a few of those as separate pieces I’ve bought over the years but didn’t think of using them like this! There weren’t many photographs of the product online but it was a Moleskine, how bad could it be. I went ahead and ordered it from @flipkart – it cost ~Rs. 3,000

Affiliate link : Buy Moleskine Colour a Month Volant Daily Diary from Flipkart.com. [ Review after the images below. ]

First impression? I didn’t realize it was small – for some reason I assumed it would be larger. The size is actually approximately 3.5×5.5 inches. I was thinking more on the lines of about double that. But that isn’t a negative, just that none of the images online gave a sense of the size and my previous biases made assumptions.

The big numbers on the front of each mini-diary make the quality feel cheap. They are already powdering / peeling off from the edges. These numbers also constrain what color I want to use for what month. Pre-numbered mini-diaries mean that February HAS TO be red, June HAS TO be lime green etc. I mean come on! I’d like to make June red.

The stickers were fun – I peeled them off and stuck them on each little diary and it was a nice ten-minute stress-busting exercise.

An additional thoughtful thing that Moleskine could have done is including an extra diary in addition to the 12. What happens now is that I keep January with me in my bag & leave the rest at home / on my desk or for a longer away-from-home, I might carry the full set separately. There’s space for one diary, that makes the hard-case not-so-secure and the other 11 slip out easily. If an extra diary had been provided, I could stick it in just to keep everything snug. Just a thought.

I’m already writing away appointments and even jotted down points for this blog post in the January diary. There’s a page for each day of the month and there’s also many additional pages of time zones, International Codes, Weights & Measures, Scale, etc. Having those in each of the monthly diaries is a waste of paper I think – that’s where the extra diary could’ve come in handy as well. If you’re interested in purchasing, buy Moleskine Colour a Month Volant Daily Diary from Flipkart.com. I LOVE mine!