Show Notes
In this episode we discuss habits and how we define them and track them using both digital and analogue tracking and documenting. We share our own perspectives of how we develop habits. * Helen has bought all of the stickers in the whole world (possibly) * Rob is trying to build the habit of not buying anymore notebooks for a while - and instead, using up the mountain of notepads he has * Rob has regained the love of Yellow Legal Pads * Helen spends her life trying to make herself better using structures and systems to try and take away the thinking around habits * Helen is trying to stop eating chocolate * We reference Atomic Habits by James Clear as an awesome book about habits (affiliate link) * Rob talks about how routines and habits that he used to work with in business * Charles Duhigg's book on habits is also pretty special (The Power of Habit) (affiliate link) * Helen is tracking how she feels using stickers in a notebook * Rob used to track habits in ToDoist and simply didn't keep it up to date * Helen is using Moleskine Balance digital app to track her habits. And reminisces about "Sunrise" app by Dan Ariely - since closed down * Rob used to do quantified self, then went on to use the fridge of accountability * Rob is changing his environment to force the habit of weightlifting - and will become the strongest man in Winchester within a month * Rob references The Diary of a CEO podcast with Tim Spector * Helen has moved to measuring the impact habits is having on her life, rather than the thing itself Why not subscribe to the newsletter! Thanks Rob and Helen
More from Stationery Freaks
After a few months away — and a very welcome "petition of one" from Stacy in Florida — Rob and Helen are back. Rob has been building a public commonplace: twenty-five years of learning, typed onto index cards (possibly breaking his typewriter in the process) and slowly taking over his studio wall. Helen has been redistributing her notebook collection to a room of grateful authors, which may or may not count as cheating in the great notebook challenge. See original hoarding cast here and a revisit to the challenge of using notebooks here. Along the way: why old publishing offices were built around attention rather than productivity, a typewritten daily planning ritual that's quietly replaced Todoist, the strange magnetism of Midori paper, a beautiful Japanese storage haul, giving away index cards to parents and why the whole world seems to be drifting back to analogue. It's like old times. Which is rather the point of the cast. It's good to be back. If you'd like to see images, and more about the show - check out the companion newsletter to this episode. https://stationeryfreaks.substack.com/
In this episode of Stationery Freaks, Rob and Helen dig into the messy, essential world of scrap notes: desk pads, Post-its, legal pads, envelopes, voice memos, and the “grab whatever’s nearby” capture habit. They explore the real question beneath the stationery: what’s the process for turning a quick note into something useful — and what happens when your capture system becomes a pile of open loops.
It’s our first Stationery Freaks episode of 2026, and we’re going deep on goal setting, as we usually do for the first cast of the year.
It’s the last Stationery Freaks episode before Christmas, and after a slightly chaotic month we’re back with a free-form catch-up full of notebook temptation, planning experiments, and advent calendar joy. Helen reviews two very premium stationery advent calendars — Martha Brook(s) and Tom’s Studio — including what you actually get, which one feels more “decorative vs functional,” and the one item she absolutely refuses to touch (again). Rob shares his new structured SmartPlanner time-blocking experiment (and why he’s moved from pen to pencil), an everyday-carry bag confession featuring nine notebooks, and an early idea he’s calling The Wallpaper Method: learning notes on a giant scroll. We also chat about “analog wellbeing,” why January is peak notebook season, end-of-year reflection (hello, Collins ledger), and what we’ll be tackling in the first episode of 2026.