As we all know, we all benefit from picking up ideas from seeing and hearing how other people use their Filofax organisers in their daily lives.
You only need to look at our webstats to see the most popular posts tend to be ones describing in great detail the inner workings of their own individual Filofax, which might not contain fancy inserts or specially printed diaries, it's just their own way of using the standard off the shelf inserts.
So the Week on Two Page, a fairly standard diary insert... they are standard in most sizes, come with most new organisers, there are a few variations, some have appointment times, there are some slight variations, Sunday or Monday start. Some have reduced space for Saturdays and Sundays. Some available in cotton cream. Single language, multi language, non-English. So quite a variety in just this one format.
So if you are a WO2P person.... how do you use it? Tell us about your use of this format, include links to a Flickr photo if that helps. Include as much or as little detail as you like. Which version of the WO2P do you use... etc etc.
I'm pretty new to using a Filofax (and Philofaxy, but I love it!) so I stuck to the calendar that was inside my Domino, which is a WO2P. I use it for work and private stuff, so I needed to find some way of coding, which is where my Pilot Coleto comes in. I use red for work-related stuff, green for private stuff, orange for deadlines and blue for whatever else needs to be remembered.
ReplyDeleteOn the Notes section I write all the copies I need to make for this week, I'm a teacher and I make quite a few copies every week. On the individual days I write the classes I teach that day and a really short reminder of what I planned for the lessons. I also write if I need anything else for that lesson, e.g. a CD player, and usually circle or highlite it.
That's pretty much the system I use, now there's the unsystematic "put private stuff wherever I find a spot for it", too, but that's really random as long as it goes in the correct day space. Oh, and I also try to write down all kinds of appointments when they come up, they usually go on the bottom line of the day in the color they're supposed to be in (e.g. red for parent-teacher-conferences, green for doctor's appointments).
I also use a To-Do-List with my WO2P and a lot of post-its in all colors and sizes, usually for shopping lists and things like that.
Maybe I'll look into making a flickr account and uploading a couple of pics, but for now I really need to get down to correcting those class tests that have been sitting on my desk for nearly 10 days now! ;)
I am using an A5 classic. I colour code. Green for art related items, red for holidays from my day job and travel, black for all other personal things. I insert a coloured page at the beginning of each month with my goals for the month. these are taken from two other places. first I have a tab for my life plans with the overall goals which I then break down into smaller bites each month. Am also a member of the Studio Art Quilt Association (www.saqa.com) and use their members visioning project where we set goals for our art work and keep each other accountable to them and I transfer rhe monthly breakdown to the filofax ( and a white board in my studio for good measure) so I don't have to keep checking online.
ReplyDeleteOn the diary pages if there is a block of time taken up with a major activity that will decide if I have time for other tasks or committments I put a coloured line down the edge of the page. So at the moment I am taking an art class so there is a green line for this month. I use the notes part for each week to write my statement of intent for this week. I write any appointments and daily goals in black on the left and keep a record of the hours I spend in the studio on the right in green. there is not all that much room in the boxes for two lives so I also interleave To Do lists which may be a general ' dump list' in no order of all the things I need to do to get them out of my head. Or it could be a travelling list for a project that I will move on week to week until done. So at the moment I have a list of all the steps I need to do to get my website back up to date.
I use an A5 Finchley in Imperial Purple (which I love!) and the time management WO2P diary. For those who haven't seen it, I have taken a photo of my current set-up
ReplyDeletehttp://flic.kr/p/bkRQ6e
It works well for me. On the right hand side is my weekly calendar where I can put in day-specific information, then I have a "priority activities" sections where I have important "to dos" for the week. At the top of the right-hand page I have a countdown to important deadlines - in this case, 3 weeks until my next statistics exercise is due in ... all nicely scored out as it's already done! :-D
On the left-hand page I keep my notes for the week, such as the readings I need to do for my course. And at the bottom of that page I record weekly expenses, reminders for shopping, etc, as and when I need to record them.
It works really well for me and I have to say I love the layout of the time management pages.
In my Winchester of 1990, I put a sheet of blank paper between the two weekly pages, this gives me additional space for writing down notes and sticky notes in various colours.
ReplyDeleteActually I get a week on four pages by doing so.
best,
bs
I once uploaded a picture here:
ReplyDeletehttp://www.flickr.com/photos/heliumxenon/6390752697/in/photostream
I put my appointments in the day section and to-dos on a to-do sheet thats inbetween the two week pages.
As I'm a student without a Job, I don't have to use color codes or something like that. I just use color for really important things like exams or deadlines.
At home, I use a lined WO2P and jot down appointments/teaching etc at roughly the right space relating to the time of day. I use a DPP for daily planning though.
ReplyDeleteAt work, with the extra space (I use an A5) the WO2P (vertical columns with appointment times) has all appointments/teaching/etc in the right place. I put the day's to-do on A6 scrap paper on the rings and chuck that away at the end of the day.
I use post-it tabs that I stick to individual days in my WO2P to capture recurring tasks. So, for instance, if I need to invoice a client every other Friday, I'll write 'Invoice client' on a coloured tab and stick it in Friday's space, moving it on two weeks when I've done it.
ReplyDeleteI've mentally divided each day's space into four squares: left upper one is for important (and mostly business) appointments and to do's, while left lower one is for my private-life (family, hosework...) important to-dos and appointments.
ReplyDeleteRight upper one is for appointments and to-dos regarding my personal life (i.e. pleasures!) and right lower one is for recording any special events of the day I want to remember(i.e. my daughter's first step.)
I put a transparent flyleaf between the week's pages and use it as a transparent dashboard for my post-its, so I still get a glimpse of the whole week (while an ordinary to-do page would cover a half of it).
@ vanjilla - transparent flyleaf - genius...why havn't I ever thought of that!!
ReplyDeleteYes, brilliant idea. Stick a tab on it too and it replaces the today marker. Or you could make one of these:
ReplyDeletehttp://mylifeallinoneplace.blogspot.com/2011/12/making-transparent-dividers-with.html
@SSA - glad you like it! :)
ReplyDeleteAnd if it wasn't for RAY, I'd never think of making transparent flyleaves myself!!! :)
This is why I love philofaxy! :)
@Vanjilla. Your metal division of the 4 areas and the flyleaf ideas are great! Do you have pictures somewhere so we can see it all together?
ReplyDeleteup until this weekend, the Wo2P personal was the diary set up of choice. On particularly busy weeks I would stick in an extra sheet for either ToDos or just extra notes.
ReplyDelete@Lime Tree - hopefully I'll finally manage and make a blog post this weekend about it... I'll let you know when I do!
ReplyDelete@Scoot - like I wrote, I use the transparent flyleaf as a dashboard for my post-its, I don't write on it directly.
I used to use WO2P lined exclusively. I don't currently, but you can see how it the week layout was used here:
ReplyDeletehttp://www.flickr.com/photos/90685181@N00/6134488426/in/photostream
Scoot, wouldn't an old fashioned overhead pen work for writing on plastic surfaces, like a flyleaf, without rubbing off? I use the kind of overhead pens you can remove with water on my plastic bins, so I can remark them as needed.
ReplyDeleteI'm in the middle of taking the leap from an ordinary, pocket sized diary to a filofax and love reading these suggestions. Especially like the suggestion for putting an empty page in the middle of the weeks, for post-its, reminders etc. Makes the standard week view that comes with a filofax work for me. :)
@Vanjilla: Great! I am really looking forward to see it!
ReplyDeleteI use the "Week on Two Pages" because I need to see the whole week to plan, but I write enough to fill a "Day per Page"! So, I only write appts and tasks I absolutely must do on the calendar and I color code them by member of my family. I add a colored piece of paper between to write down flexible tasks.
ReplyDeleteI just very recently started using the Personal size Cotton Cream week on 2 pages again, after many many failed attempts over the years at using personal size WO2P. The day spaces are too small for everything I need to write. I've also tried moving up to the A5 Filofax to have more daily space, but the A5 binder is too big for me to carry around everywhere.
ReplyDeleteMy new solution is this: I use the WO2P for an overview of my week's scheduled activities, and to do dinner menu planning.
Then I write all my daily details in my pocket daily Moleskine diary. This has several advantages, including being able to see today's details (in my Mole) open alongside my weekly overview (in my Filofax). The Moleskine is a bound, permanent record of what I did each day.
For tasks, I write things that are Urgent for that week in the This Week space above each Monday. Non- urgent and ongoing tasks go behind my Lists tab for easy access.
I'm feeling good about this system, and I just might have cracked the code on how to make the personal size WO2P work for me!