My Thoughts on the Sterling Ink Common Planner

I love planners, especially the paper kind. In fact, I have tested so many over the years that I put together a summary of my favorite ones. Then I came across Sterling Ink’s Common Planner, and I’m glad I did.

After reading and watching endless YouTube videos about it, I bought one because it seemed like the perfect minimalist planner, and having a full year’s worth of note pages in a book is a huge benefit. (This company appears to be the only one that does that.) The company calls it the Common Planner, but it isn’t common at all.

Well, I’m happy to say that after using it a while, this planner is everything I hoped for and more. The owner at Sterling Ink really thought this product through, and it shows.

Here’s my full review. I cover every aspect of the planner and will keep updating this article so you get the full picture. And your timing for reading this is perfect. Sterlink Ink is finally offering a promotion: $10 off your first order.

Now let’s get started!

How It Differs from a Productivity Planner

Generally speaking, a “productivity planner” is a planner with in-depth accountability built into the structure (more hand-holding to keep your day organized).

Yes, this planner has very little of that, so I wouldn’t call it a productivity planner per se. It has goal pages, which are great, but they are brief and overarching. For the most part, the planner gives you more room to make it your own, like a hybrid between a productivity planner and a bullet journal. The grid structure allows you to use the notes pages however you like.

Though it isn’t as thorough as productivity planner pages, I love its simplicity and use it as my go-to planner. I don’t feel like a slave to a given structure, like other planners. I have ample space to use it as I like, while also adding structure to make it easier.

Overall, I use my planner to supplement electronic organizing. I sketch out my weeks, write notes to seed ideas, and then transfer those plans and ideas to electronic formats. It helps me think better. The goals page gives me a quick snapshot to remind me of what to keep in mind as I plan.

Unboxing

Here’s a look at the packaging for the 2026 version. The packaging is next level, ensuring you get a flawless product. Here are a few snaps of the unboxing. You get two boxes. Once you open the first box, everything is bubble-wrapped. Inside, you’ll find a series of stickers, a blocker pad, and the planner itself, which is in a second box and fully wrapped in plastic.

The Cover

2026 Common Planner in Tweed

2025 Common Planner in Camel

The company offers ample cover options. I chose Camel last year because Tweed was out of stock, but I was really impressed. The look, feel, and overall quality of the flexible faux leather is ultra-appealing. It is smooth in the hand and even smells good too. The Tweed has a bit of a tweed texture on the PU material. It’s less soft, but still very nice, and I prefer the look overall.

The Paper

Sterling Ink uses the Tomoe River paper. I am familiar with it because of the notebook I mentioned earlier and because I follow fountain pen users who, by and large, prefer it over any other paper type, but I wasn’t so sure about using it for a planner because of the shadowing. Tomoe River is famous for it. But I found a way around the issue and now love the paper.

I use a mechanical pencil for most planning, which also helps because I make changes often. It glides wonderfully on the paper, too. If I ever decide to use a pen, a fine-nibbed pen isn’t all that annoying, and a fine fountain pen works well too. Still, I get the least shadowing with my 0.7 mechanical pencil. So crisis averted.

I have seen from other users that the paper doesn’t lay all that flat after use, which may be due to using stickers the company offers (or others). To help combat this, the book comes with a blocker pad, which is not a bad idea and not as annoying to use as I thought. But I go without the blocker and simply place it upside down at night. It stays nice and compact.

Page Designs

The page designs are the best I have ever seen anywhere. The owner of Sterling Ink has a superb eye, and I can tell not only from the end product, but also from her choices in improvements to the design year over year. Every detail, from the shade of the grid lines to the positioning of the dates and times in the calendar pages, is superb.

There are only minor, and I mean very minor, changes from 2025 to 2026, mainly some lighter shades of dates on the quarterly pages, and darker shading in the yearly tracker. The grids are ever-so-slightly dark. I never would have noticed if I hadn’t compared them. Honestly, either version seemed fine to me.

The book has slightly rounded edges for easy use, though square edges would probably work just as well.

Planning

Over the years, I found that productivity planners offer me the most clarity for maintaining goals and staying on track. Though digital planning is far and away the easiest way to handle tasks and calendar appointments, nothing beats pen to paper for big-picture thinking and planning. That is why I use these planners for basic planning, then convert final tasks, calendars, and ideas into electronic formats. Starting with paper helps me see things more clearly and dig deeper into my thoughts, so I actually stick to the electronic versions.

I use the planner to sketch out my week, typically on Friday night. I often write daily notes as well for the same reasons. On pen and paper, I feel like I have really thought it through and can set up appropriate solutions online, then edit them even more effectively there.

This planner offers everything I need. It includes a goals page, a quarterly page, a monthly page, a weekly page, and 365 blank pages. As I plan each week, I quickly review the goals, quarterly, and monthly pages to make sure I tackle everything and log all my appointments and tasks. For the notes pages, I use pages 1 and 2 to create an index of various goals and other call-outs I find useful, so I can record which page of notes they are on. When I transfer the info from those notes online, I simply put a box around the number. This leaves unaccounted-for note pages weirdly naked, so of course, I desperately want to put boxes around them to keep me on track, forcing me to log them electronically. This strategy keeps me in check.

Sterling Ink offers planners that have weekly or daily pages (and both come with monthly pages too). I chose the vertical weekly because it’s easy to see my week at a glance, but I found another benefit.

The blank left side and far bottom work together as a way for me to jot down tasks I don’t want to forget to transfer electronically. I can list all the week’s tasks on the far left, assign a Franklin Planner-style letter and number for priority (A1, A2, B1, etc.), and drop that letter-number combination under each day. This means the left side acts as a guide.

By limiting what I write underneath each day to the letter-number combination, I never rewrite the task during the week and can shift it to another day whenever I need to, always knowing where it ranks against others. 

I should say that, in terms of scheduling, the monthly pages work almost as well as the weeklies, so since both tools work interchangeably, I’ll keep testing both to see which wins out. But if I track tasks, the weeklies are the way to go.

Note Pages

If I really dial down into why I bought this planner, it’s because of the number of note pages. Having 365 pages is a massive benefit in the planning world. No other book-bound planner comes close. I can write a full page of notes per day, or even use it as a diary as well as a planner.

As for the issues that come from that many pages, Sterling Ink dodged them intelligently. The Tomoe River paper is so thin that the book doesn’t feel or look bulky. And with a thin-inked pen or mechanical pencil, I see very little bleed-through. The book also has a soft binding, so it lays pretty flat, especially considering the thickness. I have no trouble writing on it at all. She really thought this thing through. If I want a thinner book for any reason, she offers 6-month planners, but I’m fine with the full-year version.

With so many note pages combined with planning capability, this planner is a year-round item. At $50-$60, it is the cheapest planner by far.

There have been quite a few concerns about the cover’s wear and tear, but I have none, even after using it daily for six months and tossing it in a bag on weekends. Sure, I can be like others and buy a separate cover. In fact, I think the company owner keeps hers in a cover. If I destroy it, I’ll throw on a cover so I don’t have to look at it. So far, it looks like new.

My Page Tabs (Not from Sterling Ink)

One drawback with most book-like planners is the lack of tabs for easy access to different sections. Sterling Ink offers tabs, but they are a bit feminine for me don’t appear removable.

I avoided these issues with the Midori Chiratto Index Clips. I originally used different metal tabs from Amazon, but they kept flying out when I would use them to turn pages. These Midori clips are ultra-secure. They come in silver or gold. (The gold might look great with the gold-edge paper Sterling Ink offers.) The clips are easy to take on and off, slide up and down the page for perfect positioning, and have an ultra-minimalist look. Since the book is also organized top-down when referencing (goals first, quarterly next, then monthly, weekly, and note pages suitable for dailies if needed), I don’t even need to label them. I can remember which one is for which and work my way down while planning.

Drawbacks

There are very few, but they may matter to you. One is the fact that this is a book. If you want more flexibility in terms of organizing your information, check out my article on the best ring planners out today. Also, the covers are PU leather, which isn’t the most eco-friendly. I hope they offer a hard paper cover option like in their notebook. If she does, I’m pretty much set with this as my book-style planner. The company recently came out with a fabric hard cover version of their new Complete Planner, which has a day per page rather than empty note pages, which I actually don’t like and actually find limiting for note-taking, but given the fact that the Complete Planner sold out in under 18 minutes, I’m hoping she moves ahead with a hard cover version of this Common Planner. I don’t know yet whether the fabric is eco-friendly, but I hope it is.

If you love Hobonichi planners, I see this one as the next step in that evolution, partly because the designer based some of the design on the Hobonichi system. Again, you may not love the Tomoe River paper, but I recommend sticking with it. Like me, you may convert entirely.

Summary

If you are still debating whether to buy one, I say get it, and use this coupon for $10 off. I have known Sterling Ink for years and debated purchasing because I wasn’t sure about some aspects, like the Tomoe River paper. Now that I’ve decided, I’m thrilled to say the book is better than I hoped and well worth the price. It’s a superb design and easy and fun to use. It is also by far the best-looking book-style planner out there today. It is minimalist, yet packed with features. Plus, having a full year of planning and notes in one book is a rarity. This is a standout planner in my book!

By supporting her, I bet she will put out even more wonderful products. I’ll keep testing the planner and update this article as I go, so what you read is the latest and greatest in terms of results. And I am thrilled with those results.