2014 Diary Pages and Set Up

Check me out!!! Not even in the last month of the year and I'm thinking about my set up for next year - yes, I know, there are many of you out there that were set up and ready to go months ago, but for me this is very impressive. Please excuse the pictures, Ben has been using the timer on the camera and I have no idea how to turn it off, and getting the tripod out was not an option... oops!!!

Admittedly this decision was not something that has been plaguing me, and it was a snap decision that I made this morning, but I have a feeling that it's not going to come crashing down around my ears leaving my life in tatters :o)

When I saw the fabulous Debbie at the Philofaxy meet up at the end of September she gave me a set of A5 Gillio day to a page diary inserts (thank you Debbie!!!). So I did what any pretend organised person does and thought, fabulous - they'll be great for next year, I'll keep them wrapped up safe until then (see, pretend organised, a real organised person would have opened them up, put them in her Filofax/Gillio/other, and started writing in appointments and reminders the same day). But I was sat at my desk this morning, and there they were, looking at me - I'm sure they were bursting to get out of their wrapping.

Obviously, at this point I had to open them, I mean, come on, who could resist? I am so pleased to report that they are lovely. The day to a page layout has timed appointments 08:00 - 19:00 down the left hand side of the page, with space for tasks or other lists on the right, and spaces for notes and phone calls at the bottom of the page. Admittedly, I don't have many appointments, but I do like to assign time-slots to my tasks for the day in an attempt to get through as much as possible, and with this layout I can have a whole spaghetti junction of lines assigning tasks to time slots - awesome!!! As well as this there is also a memo page after each month so that non-date specific items for the following month can be jotted down ready for when you come to plan the days of that month, or maybe you could use it to note the highlights of your month so that at the end of each month you have a list of happy reminders.

The inserts come wrapped in two sections (Jan-Jun & Jul-Dec), I mean, who is going to want to carry around a full year of day to a page diary inserts...?  OK. maybe I will... but it's very sensible to split them into six month packages as many people don't want to carry that many.

Currently I have all my basic set up (personal & work) in my medium Gillio (personal sized in Filofax-speak), but as great as it s to carry just a personal around with me, when I saw this I realised I just have to move back to an A5 for work next year - I love them.

Having looked at them again I'm seriously considering lugging an A5 round with me everywhere again (not literally everywhere - it will be for work and home, not for me to take with me when we go shopping) and having my work and personal stuff in there.

The phone call section would also be perfect for a keeping in touch project, so I now definitely need to change my 101 list to avoid Facebook, and to keep in touch with people via letters and phone calls.

Time to get planning... thanks for stopping by :o)

LJx

City Organiser - Last Time Buy...

Sad times... at the time of writing this post City Organiser's online shop is no more, and the store in Bow Lane will be closing very shortly, by the time this post is completed the store will have closed it's doors for the last time.

I never had the good fortune to visit the shop, but I have had great service from them online previously. As they were closing down and had some great online offers, I though it only right that I should make up for never visiting by buying a stack of stuff from them.

I shall let the pictures do most of the talking today as there is just way too much to write about all of it.

The two main coveted items (that I must have put in my basket about 100 times previously) and finally saw in the flesh at the Philofaxy meet up were these two babies below...

It's quite a big box, so we're assuming A5

Can you guess what it is yet?

Loops are top and bottom instead of at the sides, how odd - and
why did I not already know this?

One minor ring issue, but I'm sure it's fine :-)

the gorgeous Osterleys - grey A5 and compact orange.

These two were top of my futures Filofaxes list, and at these discounts I wasn't going to hang about.

Once these two beauties were done (the main purpose of my visit to the website) it was time to look at inserts etc. The following is just a stack of photos of what I chose...

Deskfax inserts (which I had totally forgotten I'd ordered)

Really bad picture, sorry - you'll have to believe me when I
tell you that these are A5 cream ruled paper and zip lock envelopes

Personal plain cotton cream (ready for printing) and pocket
zip lock envelopes

City Organisers own brand pocket sized reminder sets, so
cute, and very cheap so I just had to get lots of them :-)

Then came the Moleskine onslaught:

Hobbit ruled and plain notebooks that I've wanted since before
they released them

What self-respecting female wouldn't want
one of these?

And this was an essential - another one
that I wanted before they were released

On sale and places I intend to visit :-) And some plain cagier
notebooks (somehow I have managed again to choose plain
instead of ruled - I am an idiot. Never mind, they will get used.

By the time this little lot was in my basket I wasn't far off the spend required to push it up into the next discount bracket. So bravely I added this gorgeous darling, which basically made it free :-)

My compact black Holborn - this my make me move out of my mini Chameleon as a wallet for a while...

Also, with each of the Filofaxes I got a free pen (one was hiding when it was photo time, clearly a little camera shy), so I will leave you with my favourite pic...

LJx

Daily Planner Setup

I am very excited to share this post.

I think there will  be a few surprised people by the end of this post - don't worry, I haven't moved away from Filofax as my planner of choice, but I have setup my planner using things that I just haven't been able to get to work for me before.

After my total failure to set up my personal planner I spent 10 minutes planning, to work out exactly what I need in my personal setup... so, here is what I discovered (again) in summary... outside of work I have no life, and therefore don't need a lot in my planner. Bear in mind that all my exercise, food, cleaning and other routine type logs for the time go in my Plannerisms planner.

With the little amount of personal stuff that I need it makes more sense for me to keep my personal stuff in with my work planner (gasp!!!). Hang on, haven't I been here before? Didn't I say that as I don't need my work filo at home then I can't keep my personal stuff in it? Isn't flipping to my personal to do section something that never happened when I tried this before? Er... yes, yes and yes, in that order :-)

As I use an A5 for work and cannot bring myself to try to downsize to personal for work, this means that I will have to lug around a rather full (another shock to my system I can tell you), heavy, A5 :o(  Suck it up girl!!! Man up and get on with it!!!

So, let's see what happened. Firstly, which love did I choose to be my companion on this arduous quest? Why, the magnificent Holborn Zip of course. I find that the zipped Filofaxes are just so much better for me for work, and Mr Lyndhurst (as lovely as he is) just doesn't fulfil my personal needs as well.

My beautiful A5 Holborn Zip

Handy pocket on the outside for carrying docs to meetings
or for travel

Of course, pride of place we have the essential Philofaxy business card. I also have a small plastic bag for carrying bits that I happen to need.

At the very front I keep a small pile of punched funky A6 notepaper pages in case I think of shopping lists to write. In the credit card pockets I have various plain but funky post-its. 

Then we come to the dividers, nothing fancy about these at all. They're not even labelled properly. All I have done is use Post-It arrow tags to show where each section is.

I have six sections currently...

Lists, with top tab sub-sections for "read this", "listen to this", "clothing", "watch this", "investigate this", and "101 Project".

         These are mainly to write down ideas from blogs that I read, or Facebook, or any other random
          thought processes.

Food planner - fairly self explanatory, but not actually used yet, so let's see what happens with this one.

Blog planner - literally just a list of posts that I need to do. No plans or outline, when they should be posted or anything sensible and organised like that (I admire people who manage to do that).

 Capture pages - just pages to write down things that I need to do or think about. These mainly come from emails at work, but are, in theory for my personal things to do. I must try to remember to write
these down.

Next up is the diary section, and this is where we find the biggest surprises...
     i)   a vertical diary, despite deciding here that this layout doesn't work for me. Having seen the
          pictures that Robyn Placek (I think it was) posted on Facebook I couldn't get this layout out
          or my head

    ii)  colour coding!!! Don't get me wrong, I've always loved colour coding and believe that it can be
         put to great use, it's just that whenever I've used it I've given up because I've never been able to
         remember what any of the colours are for.

Somehow I have managed to overcome my Wednesday issues (being too close to the rings to write in), and have finally found a colour coding system that is working for me - with my wonderful Frixion pens.

I have used one of the tips from Kent from Oz, and added small post-its to one side of my today marker and thought my hotlists from Imy of imysworld would be the perfect addition for the other side

I have even added relevant stickers, which I am quite excited by :-)

Behind the diary section I have my projects section, which I use purely for my work projects. Technically my 101 list could go in this section, but I wanted to keep it separate. Really I guess the Lists section is for me personally, and the Projects section is for my work.

I have also kept the A-Z dividers in here. Originally they were left there because I couldn't be bothered to take them out, but they are quite handy for random stuff, eg holiday dates/notes (for work planning purposes).

In the back I have a few stickers and have just added a red Moleskine cahier notebook which is the perfect size to slip in the back pocket.

So far this set up is working really well for me (including my busy week last week shown below :o)

 Long may it continue...   

LJx

Paper Planners Still Rock!!!

Oh yes - indeed they do :o)

Check out this delight - he is definitely the bad boy in my collection...

Not only does he look like a bad boy, he has caused me to stray from the Filofax path... I have no idea of his origins, but am happy to have him in my company.

He is actually a plain, simple, black folder with his own fabulous leather jacket slip cover (complete with a pocket in the front). Someone has put a lot of work into the detail of this cover, with all the zips, chains, tiger T-shirt, buttons, star studs and a belt. The finishing on the cover is beautiful, and I find it hard to believe that someone would make it and not keep it, or have it given to them and not look after it.

plain black heavy duty card type folder

Slip cover jacket

Opened out from the front

 Looking inside the folder in more detail it is clear that this is quite an old piece (month on 2 page diary inserts Dec 1990 - Jun 1992) , and has not had heavy usage, and there are personal details of the person who used it. Back in it's youth it was owned and used by Laura who attended Huish Episcopi school (having googled this, it is in Somerset), and who's birthday is January 11th.

It also came with dividers (Calendar Planner, Today, Finance, Project, Goals, Notes, C-Z - some with addresses on), card holders, unusual plastic inserts containing post it style notes and some stickers. The front page of the inserts identifies them as being from Filopac (I've tried googling them and have had no joy) and this is The Executive Edition.

Below are some pictures of the inserts, I haven't seen any of these before...

unusual plastic folders

Same type, but opening the other way

Filopac Executive Edition

Tabs

Month on Two Pages

Things to Do for the week

Today - with space for times, appointments and
priorities

Finance sheets

Project pages

Goals

Don't forget sheets 

Adress tabs and extra pages

Ring mechanism embossed with "ensons"

A bit blurred I'm afraid. Having seen small gaps in the
top set if rings, when I took all the inserts out to take
a photo of the mechanism, the gaps are almost gone.

There is also a receipts envelope which I forgot to photograph.

I am now in a total quandary as to what to do with this binder. I had planned to move in as soon as it arrived, but I now feel that I'm spoiling somebody's history by doing this. In a way I would love to use these inserts, but in another way I want to just preserve this whole thing as it is...

I think I may need help...

LJx