Yesterday, I registered for the TOPIK II. With only 3 months left until the exam, I have a lot of studying and preparation to do. While I usually do most of my planning and listing in my bullet journal, I thought it would be nice to use a separate planner to track my daily studies and keep me focused for the next few months. During my last trip to Tokyo, I picked up a really lovely study planner which I will be showing in today’s post.

Let’s go~!

When I visited Tokyo last summer, I really wanted to check out lots of different stationery shops to see all of the interesting products that Tokyo had to offer. I went on a wild shopping spree at Tokyu Hands, bought Disney themed notebooks at various character shops, and even tried to hunt down a Hobonichi shop, but unfortunately it was closed for holiday. The morning before my flight back to Seoul, I had lots of time to kill so I moseyed about the shops at Shinjuku Station and found one in particular called LOFT, which carries stationery and cute accessories. I heard they also had Hobonichis but I guess this particular location didn’t have any in stock. Instead, they had a nice selection of regular planners and study planners and I decided to buy this one for its reasonable price (approximately $10 US) and its cute yet functional design. This is a three-month study planner by a stationery brand called &studium.

The cover is originally just plain gray paper with a rose gold foil print, but I decorated it with floral stickers I picked up at Hottracks here in Seoul.

I really love how pink it is inside! It feels very feminine and lovely every time I open it up and it makes me feel excited to study with it. There are a few pages like the one pictured above that have motivational/inspiring quotes.

The first few pages have places to write out your goals, and then it goes into monthly planning pages. This planner is for only three months, but they provide four monthly calendars in case your studying time frame doesn’t match up exactly with the calendar months, or you just want to plan ahead. I haven’t filled in much yet, but it’s a very useful space to have.

After the monthly pages, it goes into the weekly and daily planning pages. I started using this planner back in October because I thought I would take the TOPIK in January, but I ended up being so busy during the fall and winter holidays that it wasn’t feasible. Here you can see an example of how you can use the weekly pages. Across the top is a space to write down your weekly goals. On the left is a section for notes or memos, but I chose to put a fun quote from the movie Halloweentown to get me in the spirit of Halloween. Each day is divided into four sections, so you can organize your day chronologically or by type of task. I used the sections to write out some study related activities I wanted to complete each day.

Next are the daily planning pages. I really liked the set up of these pages. There is a space for the date at the very top, a space for writing down daily goals, a really large area for writing out detailed to do lists, a 24-hour time tracker (each hour is broken down into ten minute increments), a space to write your total time studied at the bottom, and a small section for general notes.

After each week of daily planning pages, there is a Weekly Review page. You can evaluate your progress and make notes for the upcoming week.

I realized I had a lot of different activities and types of studying I wanted to track on the planning pages and in the daily time tracker, so I made this card with a corresponding color for each type of activity. I simply glued two pieces of paper together to make a sturdy card, wrote out my key, and taped it into the back cover using this adorable Sailor Moon washi tape, which I also bought while in Tokyo. Now, whenever I need to fill in the planner, I can simply flip the card out from the back cover to see my color coding key. It makes planning and tracking much easier.

---

That’s it for the tour of my planner! I’m really excited to start using it again. Like I mentioned, I started using it back in October for a couple weeks, so I won’t get an entire three months’ use out of it this time, but I think it will provide me with a good structure for keeping track of my preparations for the TOPIK.

If you also self-study a language, how do you like to plan/track? Do you use a bullet journal or a dedicated study planner? Or do you keep track digitally with apps? Let me know your best tips and advice! I’d love to know more about how I can improve my planning/tracking methods.

Thanks for reading!