The sea of yellow on my desk.
I am going crowd surfing for today’s post.
I need to get more organised. Currently I write things on post-it notes which makes my desk ends up looking a sea of yellow. They then get thrown into my handbag and get squashed, crumpled, ripped and sometimes never seen again until I do a clean out of my handbag months later. I also rely on my memory for a lot of things. This mostly works as my memory is pretty good but I am afraid that one day I will forget things. I do also use the calendar on my phone for somethings but not all.
I tend to favour writing things down versus soley relying on an app on my phone so I have been thinking for some time I need to get myself a planner. But what type? There seems to be a proliferation of new planners on the market now.
So that’s where you guys come in.
What type of planner do you use?
What do you use it for?
Do you carry it around in your handbag?
Do you have any other advice for a planner newbie?
I have tried all sorts of planners etc over the years but their fanciness makes me too precious about using them well. Now I use a school exercise book and note *everything* in it during the day; tasks, conversations, phone numbers, phone calls, meeting notes, to do lists. As something is completed I cross it off. I write “to do” in the margin next to tasks that arise in meetings. I date them on the cover and store them in a cupboard when they’re full so I can look back if need be. Cheap, simple, no stress.
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It took me a while to find something that works for me but it was well worth it! I went for a yearly diary with plenty of writing space for each day as well as a tear off to do list pad and a wall calendar. My current diary is an A5 one from Typo that has large spaces for each day, plenty of additional note pages, a back pocket and yearly and monthly overview calendars. I’ve found A5 are the preferable size as they fit into more bags and aren’t too weighty. I also try and colour code my entries so all my appointments are written in pink, light blue is for work, purple for social and misc and green for study related. I find colour coding helps me to separate out what I’ve written without loosing valuable space.
I use the Wall calendar as a way to get a good overview of what my commitments are time wise and the To Do list is just another way to keep track of tasks I need to do and tick off once they’re completed.
My advice is choose something that you love and are going to want to take with you and use. I wouldn’t bother spending more than $20-30 on a diary particularly at the start as it will take awhile to form the habit of using it and the $15-$20 ones generally have all the things you need.
Hope that helps! Feel free to ask me more questions if you like.
Thanks Ashleigh. It does seem A5 is the way to go size wise. Did it take you long to remember your colour coding system?
I did make a few mistakes at first but most of the time I get it right 🙂 It may help to have a legend at the start of the diary to write down what each colour means.
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After much experimentation (and 10+ years of filofaxing) this year I tried a hobonichi techno cousin.
It is A5 in size and what i love about it is that it has month to an opening, week to an opening and day to a page. (which is what I had in my A5 filofax – which weighed a ton). The hobonichi has lightweight tomoe river paper which (imo) works great with my love of fibre tip pens.
For the monthly pages I colour code. Red = work, green = social, purple = birthdays, orange = health, pink = professional devpt etc. (i keep a colour chart in the cover to remind me.)
The weekly pages I use mainly as a running to do list (work) and the daily pages are for notes. If i need to refer back to something i use skinny fluoro sticky notes as bookmarks (also colour coded)
Reading this back it sounds complicated but it works for me!
Thanks Fiona. I had not heard of this product before. Looks interesting. Will definitely check it out. Your system makes perfect sense to me and is similar to what I want a planner for – a calendar, somewhere to write a to do list, and somehwere to write notes.
This is the first year I have been using a diary of sorts. It’s not a dated diary, just a notebook with sections divided by plastic envelopes (which you can put the yellow stickies in!).
I use one section for a ‘to do’ list, another for team meeting notes, another for meetings with manager notes, another for webinar notes, etc.
It’s working well so far 🙂
For appointments I use outlook calendar which I can access from work and home.