New Year, New Diary: Why a Clean Notebook Doesn’t Solve All Your Problems

Jane Dillinger
7 hours ago
5 min read

The new year is here.

Fresh dates. Fresh intentions. Fresh starts.

Most people celebrate it with resolutions.

ADHDers celebrate it by buying stationery.

A new diary.

Or at least a fancy notebook with a shiny, glittery, or fluffy cover. Preferably with colorful stickers. Ideally something that feels like a fresh start.

Me?

I bought two 2026 weekly diaries (because the second one was prettier than the first one) and one weekly planner (because it had pictures of Stitch).

On top of that, I already own three dotted bullet journals, several lined notebooks, and a small graveyard of “this will definitely be the system” attempts from previous years.

And somehow… this feels completely reasonable.

Why ADHDers Love Buying New Notebooks

From the outside, it might look irrational.

Why buy another notebook when the last one is barely half-used?

But for an ADHD brain, a new notebook isn’t just paper. It’s possibility.

A clean notebook offers:

a fresh start without past failures
the promise of structure
the fantasy of a calmer, more organized future self

And most importantly: dopamine.

ADHD brains are wired to chase novelty and anticipation. The excitement lives in the beginning—the imagining, the setting up, the “this time it will work” phase. The notebook represents a better future, not the work required to get there.

There’s also a quiet belief hiding underneath:

If I just find the right system, everything else will fall into place.

Spoiler: executive dysfunction does not magically disappear just because the paper is cute.

The Myth of the Perfect System

Notebooks don’t usually fail us because we stop trying or because we “just didn’t want it badly enough.” They fail because we quietly expect them to perform miracles that no amount of paper, stickers, or carefully chosen pen weight could ever realistically deliver. Somewhere between January 1st and the first forgotten task, a notebook is supposed to fix our executive dysfunction, stabilize our energy levels, and turn our thoughts into a neat, linear sequence. Unsurprisingly, it does not.

ADHD also comes with a particularly unforgiving all-or-nothing setting. One missed day is rarely just one missed day. It quickly becomes proof that the entire system is broken beyond repair. A single messy page can invalidate the whole notebook, and at that point continuing feels worse than starting over. So the half-used diary doesn’t feel like a useful object anymore—it feels like a physical record of unmet expectations, quietly judging us from the shelf.

A brand-new notebook, on the other hand, is innocent. It has no memory. No past failures. No crossed-out plans. It exists in a blissful state of potential, and this time it will definitely work—not because the system is different, but because this time we will be. This time we will be consistent, focused, disciplined, and emotionally stable. The notebook doesn’t just promise organization; it promises a slightly improved personality.

There’s another trap hiding here as well: the illusion of productivity. Planning, setting up layouts, writing lists, color-coding pages, adding stickers — all of that feels productive, controlled, and oddly soothing. It gives the brain a sense of accomplishment without requiring the kind of sustained effort that answering emails, paying bills, or doing repetitive administrative tasks demands. The ADHD brain is very good at mistaking the preparation for the action, and the planner becomes a place where productivity is rehearsed rather than executed—which still feels good enough, at least temporarily.

My Current Notebook Ecosystem (Yes, Ecosystem)

After officially learning I have ADHD, I didn’t stop buying notebooks. If anything, I started using them more—just with fewer illusions attached. Instead of expecting one perfect system to hold my entire life together, I now operate something closer to a small, loosely connected notebook ecosystem. None of the notebooks are required to be complete, consistent, or even particularly coherent.

One of them is a very ordinary ruled notebook whose only job is to catch whatever falls out of my brain. This is where random thoughts land, along with notes from webinars, early blog post ideas, reading plans, and insights that feel important at the time and may never be looked at again. It has no structure and no long-term plan. Its purpose is not productivity, but relief.

Then there’s my weekly diary, laid out as a one-week-per-spread calendar. It holds scheduled events, vague plans, inspirational quotes, and—crucially—stickers. I originally bought a different diary first, but it didn’t have stickers and the quotes failed to inspire me in any meaningful way, which turned out to be a deal-breaker. After years of relying solely on a digital calendar, returning to paper helped make time feel slightly more real, as if future obligations might actually exist outside my phone.

The third notebook is a weekly planner that permanently lives on my desk. I use it to track scheduled tasks and the handful of things that genuinely matter that week—the tasks I cannot afford to forget. This setup does require me to rewrite the same information several times: once into my phone, once into my diary, and once into the planner. From an efficiency standpoint, this is deeply questionable. From a memory standpoint, it works surprisingly well—it’s one of the few ways I reliably remember that a deadline or obligation exists at all.

Two Small Experiments This Year

This year, I added two new lists to my diary, not in pursuit of peak productivity, but in an attempt to gently slow myself down.

The “Things I Want to Buy” List

The first one is a list of things I want to buy. Whenever the urge for an impulse purchase strikes—whether it’s a book, a gadget, or yet another notebook—I write it down instead. If I still want it a week or a month later, it’s probably not just a dopamine-driven decision. If I forget about it entirely, that also answers the question.

The Book Reality Check

The second list is a quiet reality check on my reading habits. I keep track of books I buy, and right next to it, books I actually finish reading. The goal isn’t guilt or self-discipline; it’s awareness. Five days into the new year, I already have one book written under “bought” and none yet under “finished,” which feels both mildly concerning and extremely predictable.