Mama's family, part deux

In the Comments section of the post "The 99-cent Solution," someone asked me how I keep 3 Filofaxes synched. The answer is, I don't. I'm copying my comment in response here, to bring it out to the front, in case anyone else had the same question (thank you, Blogger):

"I have separate A5 binders for personal (red) and work (black), with no crossover. If I end up taking personal notes at work or work notes at home, I just make sure to use a clean page, so "synching" is just moving one piece of paper.

When I write in the pocket filo, I use the paper like index cards, one issue per page, so I can pop that into a big book if I want to. That book mostly holds my personal calendar, shopping lists, and most-used addys and numbers.

Since the pocket filo is always with me, and I have a pretty good memory, I find I haven't been keeping the calendars synched. My current challenge is to figure out how to handle this. There's no real reason to copy appointments into the red A5 personal filo, although that book contains everything else...to-do lists, project notes, ideas, lists, plans.

The big work A5 with the daily pages was supposed to be this wonderful work record where I record my accomplishments by the hour. But I haven't been doing that. Whether or not my work gets done is documented automatically in other ways, without my having to do any extra writing. I'm allergic to redundancy, so I resist the extra documentation. And frankly, I don't like to see my wasted time documented in black and white!

Furthermore, when I'm at the office, I mark all appointments in iCal and have that calendar open on my screen all day. Usually, I find out about deadlines and meetings via email, so it's hard to resist just keying them into the computer calendar.

Currently, I'm tinkering with combining my personal and work A5's. It would strain the rings on my beloved red Belgravia, but it would free up the black A5 to fill a current void -- a kitchen counter book with me/hubby/household calendar with emergency numbers, appliance information, messages to each other, etc. Well, not exactly a void...there's a sloppy letter-size binder from Kinko's (sort of) doing that now, but I'd love to get that into the A5 paper size. I'm definitely NOT allergic to interchangeability!

P.S. After writing this post, I started using the daily pages in the work A5 again. This blog is proving to be good motivation for me after all!