I bought my first H&O weekly hardcover planner for my 2023 work year. I loved it immediately! I was struggling with burnout and keeping a hundred different projects straight, and I thought I'd treat myself to a proper planner. No hate to At-A-Glance - their weekly planners got me through a lot of tough years, but once I saw H&O, there was no going back. I love office supplies, physical media, and checking things physically off a list. I love supporting small businesses, too, especially those that operate with consideration for the environment in their materials and packaging. Though my weekly planner is just one organizational tool in my toolbox, it's critical to my success at work, so it has to meet all of my criteria. The H&O planner does it all and more.
First, it's aesthetically pleasing and looks highly professional. There are no bright, AI-generated patterns with life affirmations across the front cover, so I can take it into meetings with the big bosses and not draw undue attention to myself. The cover is a cloth hardcover, not plastic, and it feels nice. The page marker ribbons match the book, and the color scheme of the pages is soft and gentle. The pages are a lovely thickness and my pens don't bleed through. The pages also smell good when you open the planner. (You guys smell new books and stuff, too, right?)
Second, the layout is everything I want, and nothing I don't. There's a monthly overview with a margin checklist for general ticking-off of to-do items and tracking higher-level timelines. There's a tiny monthly calendar on each weekly page for reference, and the daily organization within each week is vertical, which I find much better for tracking meetings, appointments, etc. There is space at the bottom of each day for additional notes or to-do items that are day-dependent but not hour-dependent, and of course, there is a margin checklist space, too. The weekend days get full columns instead of sharing one (as they do in most planners), and the time is divided by 30-minute increments from 6 am to 10 pm. (Yeah, sometimes I need a 15-minute division, but it's rare, and at this size of page, I wouldn't want that as a feature.) I also appreciate the blank space before the time divisions start so that I can track days I am out sick, work from home, etc. And fear not, the week number is printed conveniently at the bottom of the page for each week. At the beginning of the planner, there are breakdowns by quarter, horizontal monthly tools, and multi-year outlooks. I love it all.
Finally, extras! For 2026, I bought the A5 weekly again, but chose the minimalist, which still has a lot of great extras. Though, as I mentioned earlier, I am not a fan of bold affirmations and motivational phrases on the cover, I *do* like space to track my own development. The H&O planner has a place at the start of each month to document boundaries, self-care, intentions, habit-tracking, and rewards. I use it to track the number of days I bike to work and to remind myself about personal and professional development goals (they often get forgotten as we focus on business goals). At the end of each month, there is space to reflect on what gave you energy/drained you, lessons or thoughts for the month, memorable moments, and blank grid space. I think the space to document what gave you energy and what drained you is actually very helpful when it comes time for annual reviews at work! Real-time tracking of those things is much handier than trying to remember it all at the end, and the year-end review is a good way to summarize for the year and get psyched for the coming one. Ample note-taking grids at the back mean I don't have to carry a planner *and* a notebook to meetings, too.
Obviously, I love the planner, and I think if  you're an organizer, a letter-writer, an office supply connoisseur, a reader, and/or a project-oriented person like me, you will love it, too. It's totally worth the cost. I moved to Denmark from the U.S. at the end of 2023, and I tried desperately to find a planner here in Europe that I could use to replace my H&O (trying to avoid tariffs and shipping and all, ya know), but even with advice from other planner nerds, there was nothing available that even came close. After two years of limping along with Maylands, the only logical thing was to order my H&O planner again. Does it have the Danish holidays in it? No, of course not, but I can always write in King Frederik X's birthday or J-day or Potato Week with a cool pen, right? Besides, international shipping was relatively quick, and now, I'm happily sitting at my desk breathing in my brand new, beautiful, 2026 planner. No regrets.