I love my filofax planner.  I use my 1989 Winchester for everything.  It works flawlessly.  It allows me to keep track of lots of things which I usually lose track of.  Outgoing mail, bills to be paid, letters to be replied to, documents to be filed all get tucked inside the cover until I can deal with them.  All sorts of important information about myself, my work, and my rental properties is filed neatly within.  I track my days, my tasks, my goals… 

But recently I realized that I have a problem.  I really like using one book for work and home, but I should really be keeping my work planning in another book.  All my work documents are technically records of the State and under freedom of information laws are basically public information.  I have nothing to hide in my planner, but I’m not sure I’d want it to be public information!

Also, I have a diary issue.  I use week to view with a notes page filed between.  This works well, but I have no notes space in the diary and no where to log things for future reference.  I loved using two-pages-per-day but could only fit about two months worth into the binder.  But, the pages gave me plenty of space to log my appointments, tasks, and to record the day as it happened (phone calls received, questions answered, issues noted, points raised, projects completed).  

I have been looking at the recent DayTimer catalog and started looking at their wirebound planner setups.  Most of these have each month bound in a separate book with two pages per day, plus come with a monthly booklet for forward planning and an address book.  I started to think that this could work perfectly as a work desk-book to log all of these stray details.  It’s not ideal.  It can’t house all the various information I keep in my filofax, it would mean maintaining a bifurcated planning system which is always challenging for me.  But it solves two problems.  I can keep all 12 booklets at my desk, the current one in the planner cover on my desk.  It can travel around at work with me while my filofax stays locked in my desk.  It can be locked up at the end of the day.  I can keep a section in the filofax to jot work-related items as they occur to me outside of work, to be pushed into the work planner the next time I’m at work.  The DayTimer can be my work daybook, which I can keep archived at work for future reference as needed (currently I archive my filofax contents at home, and then when I need to refer back at work I need to remember to bring the relevant pages in with me, a pain).  

I might just give it a try.  The wirebound booklets are easier to archive and make for a much slimmer planner.  DayTimer stuff is so incredibly well designed for professional use and produced nearby in eastern Pennsylvania.  

We’ll see.

I think I live a pretty healthy lifestyle; I quit smoking 6 years ago, battled alcoholism and have been sober for three years.  I walk everywhere, every day, all the time, and have done so since high school.  I don’t eat much in the way of processed foods.  I take breaks, relax, and take deep breaths.  I’ve never owned a dryer.

I’m not a chef or really a “foodie” but love to create in the kitchen.  I bake hearty round loaves of bread; I also bake regular old  white sandwich loaves.  I grow a lot of veg.  I try to buy most of my food straight from the grower/producer.  I do eat the occasional piece of grocery store meat.  I eat quite a lot of cheeses and butter and smoked or cured meats.  I also eat lots and lots of greens.  

Lately I’ve started to feel that there is a new set of fads which are generally inoffensive but are being treated as some sort of eco-friendly, healthy holy grail.  Suddenly, people who were eating bigmacs a few months ago don’t want to eat my loaves of bread because they’ve “gone gluten free and it changed [their] life.”  Suddenly, people who have driven everywhere, everyday, for decades start riding a bicycle and behave as though I am some sort of climate changing neanderthal for not being a bicyclist.  People flock to yoga classes but seem to miss the spiritual/meditative point of the practice.  Friends pour milled flax seeds in massive quantities into everything they eat, ruining textures and flavors of recipes which have been perfected generations ago.  In all of this, there seems to be an attitude that if you’re not up with these trends that you must not care about your health or the health of the environment.  

I don’t ride a bicycle because it scares the shit out of me.  I learned to cook when I lived in Italy and I don’t believe in messing with success.  I walk because I love to, it’s free, it gives me exercise, and serves as  a form of meditation.  I don’t believe in using other people’s cultural practices as fitness fads.  

I don’t know if the above makes sense.  I just needed to get it off my chest.   

Most of us use our planners to manage our personal workload.  I also use my planner to plan, schedule, and track my staff.  I work in a university library and manage a staff of 25 student employees who work anywhere from 5 to 20 hours weekly.  They perform all manner of routine and non-routine tasks.  I work hard to set up routines and checklists and such so they can be as self directed as possible, but there are limitations.  Also, I want to be sure that I am constantly working towards reinforcing good habits and performance and minimizing bad.  There are various long term projects I need to deploy these student assistants on at various times.  I need to (loosely) track their payroll, keep up with scheduling, remember various details, and remind them of a whole range of topics.  I track their training.  It all gets to be quite complicated and extensive.

Student assistant information gets filed under the “S T” index tab in my info section.  I have a roster of employees with their phone numbers, I student specific projects, schedules, payroll due dates, etc.  

The various planner pages I’ve used in my filofax over the past couple of years are clearly designed for personal day planning.  They don’t include spaces dedicated to managing the work of others.  What I end up doing is putting notes in my own task list saying something like “Student: Correct signage mistake” or “Student: Swap tan booktruck on 1floor”.  These work, but also clutter up my task list.  

I’ve been trying to figure out how to manage the work of this troupe of helpers I’ve got without co-mingling their work with mine.  I’ve been thinking about this for weeks and came up with the following plan:

I will add a cut down sheet between my 2PPD planner pages for a running list of student tasks, reminders, updates, and notes. I will move this page, along with my page marker, from day to day as needed.  I will keep a master list of forward planning along with the other student assistant information in the info section of my planner. I will consider inserting a fold out year calendar to plot important dates and project timelines onto.  

Most importantly, I will need to schedule a time slot each week (probably at the end of the week) to synthesize the info; make sure that needed items have gone onto the upcoming week’s interfiled list, update any information, remove obsolete info, follow up as necessary on incomplete items.  This should help me make sure I’m moving the ball forward on their work in addition to my own, help keep my focus on their training and development, and foresee upcoming needs before they are right on top of me.  

Will report back on how this is going, along with pictures, in a few weeks.  

When thinking through my biggest time management challenge, mornings come to mind. I am terrible at waking up, getting up, and getting going.  When I get up on time, I dawdle.  More frequently, I fail to get up anywhere near on time, and sometimes I don’t even wake up until hours late.  I arrive 10 minutes late to just about everything.

I’m not sure what I can do about the dawdling in the morning (and really, throughout the day), but I think I can establish a routine of getting up at a certain set time every day.

Of course, part of my issue is that I’ve worked evening hours for most of the past decade; I get off work at 11, I get home at 11:30.  I read my mail, clean up the kitchen, read books, read blogs, feed pets, write, and suddenly it’s 2AM.

I’m also a person who really requires a full 8-9 hours of sleep time before waking.  

So, if I want to GET UP at a certain time, I’m going to need to GO TO BED EARLIER. Meaning; set a strict bedtime and stick with it.  

After some thought, this is what I’m planning to do, starting today: 

Go to bed at midnight.  This means lights out at midnight.

Get up at 8. This means actually get out of the bed and go downstairs at 8am.

Some of those activities I currently do at night after work will need to switch to the following morning.  I think it will be best to stay off the computer and smart phone after work completely.  I can read my mail that night but must wait until the following day to write replies.  I can wash remaining dishes in the morning while the kettle boils.  I can come home, feed pets, get into bed, and read for 20 minutes.  

I think New Years resolutions work a lot better when you set a realistic, daily goal you can measure.  This is mine for the year.  I will report back on 2 February with my success or failure to develop this routine.  

Lately we’ve noticed that Filofax is busy trying to become a fashion accessory.  They’re sending free personal organisers to fashion bloggers and celebrities.  They are chasing the fashion crowd in this absurd, embarrassing wanna-be way that makes me cringe.  The thing is, as they chase the fickle “fashion” crowd (who are really, mainly, tacky followers of celebrity fashion, which is virtually entirely garments loaned for advertising purposes), they’ve obviously forgotten that Filofax, in years past, had real style.  The simple, very high quality binders they produced in the 1980’s were perfection of form-follows-function design.  People carried them for years as an essential extension of their person.  

If Filofax were to partner with a designer to produce a special edition of their products they could, at least, have chosen someone with class.  Imagine a Stella McCartney filofax, if you will; I envision something simple, classy, high quality, and not leather.  

Filofax turned out their Temperley line with truly gauche marketing.  The naming itself was absurd: “the Affair” just evokes something naughty.  I cannot see naughty as being the right word for a personal organiser!  Their ad copy described this horribly named product as being made of pale pink leather encased in black lace “simulating lingerie against the skin.”  Disgusting! The “Guinea,” in this age of vegetarians and animal rights, was described as being made of “pony skin.”  No, just no.  

“Celebrity seeding” was determined to be a choice marketing tactic.  Personally, I find today’s celebrities a truly sad bunch and seeing most any of them carrying a Filofax does not make me want to own one myself.  These are people who put name ahead of fit, who try to look rich, who have no real style.  There are so many cheap and trashy celebrities in this day of reality television; I certainly do not take my fashion cues from these people!

Filofax has made a fatal mistake; they’ve insulted their core customer.  They’ve sent us the message that they don’t think we’re stylish or fashionable.  I find this insulting.  I’m not very interested in my own clothes but I studied art history and am keenly interested in the decorative arts.  I closely follow the couture shows each year, and love to visit fashion exhibits at museums.  I see good fashion as exceptionally well made, by hand, of the highest quality materials.  It is truly wearable art.  

I do not equate poorly made, flashy accessories as being fashionable.  And they certainly are not stylish!  

If I cared not about style and fashion, I’m sure I could outfit myself with a perfectly functional vinyl DayRunner binder for a fraction of the cost of a good Filofax.  But this is not what I choose to do.  I’ve tried several modern day filofax binders and have found all of them to be either poorly made or cheap in appearance.  The truly fashionable filofax is the classic vintage model.  My design eye truly appreciates the simplicity and quality of the Winchester.  I even appreciate the Domino, which in my mind is the most successfully designed modern filofax, being simple, purposeful, and clever.  Plus, I’ve not found a Domino with a faulty ring mechanism!

The marketing people at filofax have truly lost their direction.  I’m sure that this fashion/celebrity pr plan will net a few new customers, but they are throwing away a long-earned style and reputation to achieve their desired end.  And in the end this cheapens the brand.  If filofax becomes a cheap and nasty fashion accessory I will invest in something classy and move on.  There is so much trash in the world; must Filofax become trash too?

I desperately need to build a professional wardrobe.  Since I began my working life, I’ve never worked anywhere with much of a dress code.  I’ve always dressed myself in casual clothes; khaki pants, polo shirts, button downs, wool sweaters, never really t-shirts or jeans.  I don’t take very good care of my clothes and don’t like to iron.  I’m always frantically running late for work and waste time trying to pick through my closet of ancient, well worn clothes to find things that look presentable and fit decently.  I quit smoking about five years ago and have yo-yo’d in weight and most of my clothes have been accumulated from occasional gifts, very rare purchased items, things bought for special occasions (job interviews, parties, weddings, conferences) and some are far to big and others too small.  Many things are missing buttons or have frayed collars or obvious stains.  In other words, I make myself look presentable, but it is an extremely time consuming process of sorting through what’s available.  

On top of this general disaster,I’ve come to feel over the past year that I really need to pull together a more professional look for work.  I’m in management now.  I realize that there is a certain value in looking the part.  I don’t need to be in a suit every day, but I need to sharpen up my wardrobe and step from casual to something a bit more formal, neat, and tidy.

As I evaluate my time management and where I’m struggling to gain control, I keep coming back to this wardrobe situation.  I cannot emphasize enough how much time I waste.  The time and motion study of my dressing time would make for a good french farce: Go to dresser, pull out pants.  Put pants on, find button missing or large stain; reject and try second pair.  These are better.  Go to closet, find no shirt in appropriate color.  Frantically search house for laundry basket of washed items, which turns up by living room sofa.  Find suitable shirt, but it’s terribly wrinkled.  Run back upstairs and switch on iron.  Search for matching black socks.  Find, pull on to find that the elastic is shot and they fall down.  Furiously pull off defective socks.  Run through house and locate basket in laundry with clean socks.  Tear through basket to find matching pair.  Run back upstairs and quickly iron shirt (all the while realizing I should have left the house 5 minutes prior).  Put on shirt.  Search for shoes.  Cannot find shoes.  Put on sneakers instead….  And so on.  

What I’m thinking at this point is that spending some bucks now on a few pairs of quality wool dress pants, several good button down shirts, a few ties, a few sweaters and cardigans, socks, belts, shoes, etc. all in colors that work well together would serve me well.  And then toss all my dumpy clothes.  Send the pants and shirts to the cleaners, launder the other items on the weekend, and have work clothes basically all sorted and set together in one closet to only wear for work and more formal stuff.  I think it would boil down to a less-as-more type of change.  Would cost me more money, but save me a great deal of time.  

I find that my ADD forces me to establish highly structured, yet very simple and easy to maintain systems for overcoming very basic obstacles.  I mean, how many people who don’t really care about clothes spend 30 minutes getting dressed for work?  I have found in other areas of my life that I can gain control, but I need to work hard to keep it simple and then push myself to make it a habit.  I trained myself to maintain an immaculately cleared desk at work, just because if I let it go at all I lose all control.  I trained myself to write every single reminder, phone call, to-do, appointment, idea, contact detail, etc. into my planner, because if I don’t I lose track of it.  I organize my life around super-simple structures and setups to help me overcome the challenges I face.  

More of my thoughts on switching back to my personal size Filofax.  

I miss my personal size Filofax.  I miss it a lot.  

I think that using my mini Windsor for the past week has made me realize how NOT portable my Success Choice binder is.  Also, while being a beautiful product, it’s not a filofax, and lacks that filofax style.  

On the other hand, the Success Choice binder is fantastically convenient.  The day planning pages are so wonderfully roomy and nicely designed.  It’s incredibly easy to add any stray document that comes across my desk.  I’m able to take notes in my 8.5x5.5 inch notebook and easily punch and pop the pages in.  The big rings are super convenient for me, as I have a lot of reference information I like to have on hand at all times.  But there’s the rub: the binder and it’s contents are so big and clunky that I don’t have it with me at all times.  It sits on my desk a lot at work.  It sits on my kitchen table a lot at home.  It absolutely requires a bag to carry it.  

I’ve been playing with my mini, and with copying all my appointments and contacts into my google account/evernote/dropbox. I toy with trying to use my tablet for more tasks.  But I think that this is not sustainable.  

Logically, I think I need to just keep using the Success Choice binder, just carry it even though it’s big, use it for everything, and get on with life.  

But then I recall how well my Cavendish worked: I had my wallet, reference info, planner, contacts, and notebook all in one binder.  I used the secretarial flap as my GTD “inbox.”  I kept my loose change in the back zip pocket.  I could carry it in a bag or just tote it in my hand.  It really went everywhere with me.  

Basically, everything I keep in my Success Choice planner also was in the Cavendish.  

I’m beginning to wonder if I would be better served by just using my Cavendish and deploying my Success Choice planner as my work reference binder, where I can file procedures, meeting notes, departmental schedules, project plans, and other items which I only need to reference at work, and use my Cavendish binder for everything else.

To make the Cavendish work, I definitely need to find ways to slim its contents slightly.  I might try to find a more space efficient way to manage contacts, plus the aforementioned removal of various work documents, to thin it back.  

It’s all a very difficult choice.  I will report back later if I make a decision.

The mini solves an issue I was having with my ability to “trust” my system.  My big planner is with me most of the time but not ALL of the time, and when I don’t have it I need something I can take a note in or make an appointment with.  I wanted the security of having an ultra-portable backup planner to keep me going during those times when it doesn’t seem worthwhile or necessary to carry the big planner.  So the Success Choice planner with it’s huge rings still serves as my reference information, day/project/task/time manager/planner, full contacts, and basic notebook.  It will still travel with me most places, sit on my desk all day at work, be at easy reach throughout the day.  But, if I happen to step away from my desk without it and have need to take a note or consult my schedule, I will have the mini.  I always thought to have more than one planner would cause chaos, but I believe this setup will work.  I’ll keep y’all posted.