I picked up one of these when I was in Northampton last month. It is exactly what you’re looking for. I believe I saw both a hard cover and a soft cover version. I picked up the soft cover as it was thinner and lighter.

http://www.moleskineus.com/mcl518-w.html

I spent weeks looking at planners, trying to pick out the perfect one. I finally found what I wanted when I went to pick up a new Moleskine and discovered they had the perfect planner. I’ve got the hardcover in black and it’s the perfect size to stick in my bag and run.

Ditto on the Moleskine Calendar. I have an 18 month on, soft cover that works great. Just got my wife the Red hard cover 12 month weekly - they rock!

You might also take a look at Levenger’s Circa notebooks. Yes, they are ring-bound, but you can easily remove pages for writing and replace them for keeping.

The thing that’s nifty about the Levenger system is the flexibility. For instance you can set up a section for a project that includes lined pages for actions, address pages of project-related contacts, a financial ledger for tracking expenses. As the project grows you can add pages.

http://tinyurl.com/2u5c8g

I went through a similar process a couple years ago. However, I had slightly different requirements. I also wanted to be able to have my calendar fit in my pocket so I could go anywhere and have it with me.

What I wound up doing was buying a cheap 3-hole punched 8.5 x 11 weekly planner ($10 / year or so), keeping all weeks in a binder, and just carrying the current week folded up around with me. I called it the “PPA” — personal paper assistant.

If I was somewhere without my big binder and had to schedule a future event, I’d write that down as a todo note somewhere on the current week’s page, and mark it in the binder when I got back to it. The couple of times that I did double book myself it was far enough in the future that I could renegotiate the meeting.

But this didn’t work perfectly. First, there was no big space for weekly notes, which I sometimes needed. Second, because it was meant as a 3-hole binder system, the week started on a Thursday and ended the next Wednesday, which was a little irritating.

Eventually I wrote a ruby program to generate postscript to make these sheets exactly the way I wanted them. The final version even pulled repeatedly occurring events and well-known events (e.g., Birthdays) from a text file so when I printed it, it would be prepopulated with some stuff.

Since then, however I’ve switched jobs so I’m never far from a computer, so I don’t need to carry it with me. Plus, I found out that this system made it difficult for me to do long-term planning, because it all had to be associated with particular dates. I now use VIM on a couple big text files with a hierarchical outline.

But the DIY situation was great. Since you have specific ideas, you might try making your own. It will take a few hours (either to make a document template and manually change all the dates, or to code up a program to generate the appropriate sheets) but you will get what you want. You could get them all nicely bound at a printing store probably for not too much money.

I’m finally down to the last couple of weeks on my 18 month Moleskine. When it comes to the format, I’ve been very happy w/ it. It’s been great for me w/ both a calendar and notes each week. Unfortunately, I absolutely hated the soft cover and the craptastic, unusable pocket in the back.

I bought the RED (it’s very, very red) hardcover version. The construction on it seems to be very good w/ the typical Moleskine pocket. The downside to it (other than its extreme redness) is that, instead of more than the typical 10 extra blank pages following the 12 months, there is some sort of removable address book. It, frankly, sucks.

Maybe they’ll get it perfect next year with a black hardcover 12 month w/ more extra notes pages.

I’m also an 18month weekly moleskine user and I found that its the best solution for what I need. The back pocket is pretty useless but I just stick things in the notebook where ever I need them. I used the pocket size last year but found I ran out of room pretty often so I upgraded to the large size.

I still run out of room for notes on occasion so I keep 10 or so sheets of large post-its in the back. The 5x8 sized notes basically give me an extra page I can put in as needed. By the end of the year my moleskine doesnt close really well but I’ve got everything I need on-hand.

I am using a notebook/calendar system called x47(www.x47.com).

It uses a unique way of binding the inlaying “books”, using a spring-locking mechanism like those that hold wristbands at watches. The benefits are, that the pages lie flat and no ringbinding or spiralbinding is in the way. They claim to increase the usable writing area by 47% compared to a equally sized file-o-fax, thus the name.

Though it is intended to be more of a file-o-fax like personal management tool, I use it mainly as a notebook with added weekly planner. They offer inlays with different designs, blank, lined and sqared pages, monthly, weekly or daily calendar and a unique daily calendar called time-circle, based on the face of a clock (12hour circle) where you mark dates pie-chart-like, see http://tinyurl.com/yqgqmz

The main benefit for me is, that I have a reusable cover (soft leather) that holds three inlays (I use two blank and one half-year calendar) with space for a pen (for me: Fisher Bullet Pen), business cards and two marker-strips (probably the wrong term, but hey, I am german ;-)

There is also relative new second, and less expensive line, which uses rubber-rings to hold inlays and cover together: www.myx17.com

Last summer I visited my 88-year old grandfather. He actually had the same problem that he couldn’t find the perfectly formatted planner and he’s shockingly lucid about it. He… just designed his own.

It’s simple. Take a blank notebook (e.g. a moleskin if you want to look cool), and just start filling it in like you would an agenda. It’s shockingly straightforward and has the effect that you feel like you’re in control of your time, not some agenda-manufacturer / software-developer.

Levenger Circa rings, punch, and some lightly editted DIY Planner forms. I bet you could put together a left hand oriented notebook without much effort.

To me, this dialog is akin to discussing the potential whereabouts of the holy grail. I can’t say how many hours I’ve spent thinking about this topic, not to mention dollars. I too have tried a bunch of digital possibilities and found them extremely impractical. And the paper possibilities: TimeDesign, Franklin, Daytimer, Filofax, Moleskine… Letter, Jr, Compact… Right now I’m fairly settled on Jr size Levenger Circa for the flexibility (as mentioned by Wild Rye) and quality of paper stock. BUT. My problem with each system is that they track life in a linear fashion;only Circa approaches exceptional in this regard.

In any case, could anyone post photos of their systems? I would love to see, especially the DIY efforts.

I have been on the same quest for years and finally decided to make my own. I started by just designing my own pages for a DayRunner ring binder I had. But also being left-handed, that was not ideal. I finally started to not only make my own pages, but also bind them (being a bookbinder has its advantages…). You can see some of the results here http://webalstrom.ftml.net/bookworks/gallery/artistsbooks/calendars/calendars.html. Unfortunately I don’t have pictures of the actual calendars inside on this page. I’ll try to get some up. Each year I tweak my system and design. For this coming year I finally am going full 8.5x11 size since I always carry around a notepad with me anyway. I used to design the pages in PageMaker which offered great flexibility in layout. But every single number had to be placed by hand. Now I am using MS Word with mailmerge. I set up my template, fill in the dates in a MS Excel file and let the computer magic do its work.

I also have found another company which makes nice calendars which might fit awelfle’s requirements: http://www.starthereny.com. An added bonus is they have an interlocking system so you can attach a calendar with one of their notebooks and turn it into one book. I bought one out of curiosity, but the layout wasn’t just quite right (picky, picky, picky!).

Enjoy your search for the perfect planner. It’s another thing that makes this time of year so special!

Eric

I like the Quo Vadis line of planners. Recently bought the IB traveler at the local University bookstore. The Scholar may have what you need too. (http://www.quovadisplanners.com/catalog/scholar). Most of the other weekly planners have that annoying time thing going. Andy

I’m really interested in the x47 line, but I don’t speak German or live in Germany (The pictures look cool). Do they ship to the US? The price points also seem pretty high. Has anyone else seen or used this system?

Everyone beat me to the punch, but I’ll throw my vote in for the Moleskine Planner.