12 December 2012

Using the Plannerisms planner along with your Filofax

I've had several people tell me they are interested in my Plannerisms planners, but they are so attached to their Filofax they can't imagine leaving it for a bound planner. The good news is, you don't have to! Here are some ideas on how to use the Plannerisms planner along with your Filofax.

1. Use the Plannerisms planner as a Goals Workbook/ Journal and your Filofax as your planner/ diary. Recently on Plannerisms I wrote a long and detailed post on how to use your Plannerisms planner as your Goals Workbook/ Journal (which you can click here to see).  In that post I show you all the different types of Goals pages and give you suggestions and ideas on how to use them. I designed the Plannerisms planners with lots of pages for your Annual, Quarterly, Monthly and Daily goals. You can easily use it as a designated workbook/ journal for all your goals, separate from your actual planner if you like.  You can click here to see a video I made showing all the Goals pages and more ideas on different ways to use them.

2. Use the Plannerisms planner as your weekly planner and your Filofax as your daily planner/ diary and/ or information book (as I do)I use 2 pages per day Franklin Covey inserts in my personal Malden Filofax to plan and record today only (click here for more details on how I use these). This gives me a thorough record of each day. I use my Plannerisms planner (currently self-drawn, switching to the new printed ones in January!) for all future planning and goal setting.

I've been using a weekly planner plus a day per page planner for nearly two years now. This system works great for me as an excellent combination of planning overviews and plenty of space for daily recording. I did a detailed post on different ways to use the Plannerisms weekly pages, which you can click here to see. 

So what's it like to carry two books? The Plannerisms planner pages are approximately A5 size, 5 1/2 by 8 1/2 inches but the book itself is much (much!) slimmer (at only 1/2 inch thick) and lighter than an A5 Filofax binder. When I use my Plannerisms planner along with a smaller Filofax as my information book and daily diary, the two books together are smaller and lighter than one A5 Filofax, yet I get the nice big weekly pages. Plus I like to be able to see my week in my Plannerisms planner open alongside my day in my Filofax for the daily details with the weekly overview to see what's coming up.

3. Use the Plannerisms planner as your household routines/ cleaning/ maintenance/ finances book. This is a great use for the Plannerisms planner if you want it to stay home.  Use the monthly and weekly pages for your housecleaning rountines, FlyLady Zone work, home maintenance schedules, gardening, and anything else that needs done around the house.

It's also great as a financial/ bills tracker. Use the Monthly calendars to track bills due and paid, write financial details and totals in the lined pages between each month, and tuck unpaid bills in to the back pocket so they don't get lost.
So you see, there's no need to abandon your Filofax to try out the new Plannerisms system! With Plannerisms and your Filofax you can have the best of both worlds, rings and bound.

For loads more photos of the Plannerisms planners Goals pages and other features, click here for my detailed Plannerisms planner post and click here for my video overview of the Plannerisms planners.

Click here for the Plannerisms planners ordering page!

20 comments:

  1. I love this planner, hopefully I will win one, hehe.. otherwise I think I "have" to buy it .. :)

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  2. Instead of just moaning about the shortcomings of other products, Laurie has been very couragious and designed her own! She has put a lot of work and passion into the design, so they deserve to sell out.

    Laurie knows that I'm disappointed that the size is not quite A5 and are annoyingly just 4mm too tall for a Flex binder. However, this will hopefully be corrected in the future.

    One other way of using them with a Filofax is to dismantle one with a craft knife, punch the pages and insert them as separate pages. This may seem mad, but at the price is still better value than buying official Filofax diary inserts - and better quality too. I may end up doing this myself . I'm sure it would work well in a slim binder.

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    1. Tim, just being cheeky here, but maybe you should be annoyed with Filofax for designing the Flex to be 4mm too small for a Plannerisms planner? I'm sure if we asked them nicely they might review it and make it bigger for next year :oD

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    2. Natalie - can you imagine their response? It would be unprintable for sure! It's not just the Flex issue though. Being a tad too narrow means you can't fold a piece of A4 once and slot it into the pocket at the back of the planner, for example. And documents kept in the diary pages (such as an agenda for a meeting) will stick out too. Laurie has a great concept that would be even better at A5.

      If there are any left unsold (which I doubt) I would be very happy to spend an evening converting a batch into Filofax compatible inserts for folk who only want one binder and can't face being without a ringed system!

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  3. I love this planner, I purchased one last night in Teal to replace or use alongside my Filofax diary as yet i'm not sure. I may just use it for goals but until I have it in my hands I'm undecided. I've tried goals sections in my Filofax and failed miserably so maybe this will help :-)

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    1. I have done the same! Teal planner as goal and longer-term planning. No failing miserably in 2013. Right?

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    2. Right! Haha, I'll certainly try my best :-)

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    3. Father Christmas has acquired one for me in Basic Black, and I have been very, very good and not opened it parcel so I haven't seen it in 3D at all.

      Mine will be for goal planning and (importantly) review. I'll keep it in my zipped A5 Holborn so they are together but separate.

      I'm thinking I need a fitness plan, a gardening plan, a textiles course plan, and those are just for starters.

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  4. I think these are fantastic. I'm tempted to buy one & take it apart to put in my filofax but trying to reduce my spending & use up what I already have.

    I notice they're now only available in black & pink, so get one while you can :)

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    1. Anita thanks for pointing out that only Pink and Black are listed on the Collins UK website. I have asked if they will get more stock of Purple and Teal and will let everyone know what I find out!

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  5. Sold! I'd like a Teal one so please let us know asap if more will be available. (2nd choice would be black and don't want to miss out on either before they sell out!) Great post by the way. I will use mine along with my Filofax. I'm thinking of its purpose as of now; it will either be a fitness goal setting planner and/or a job search planner as well all know when searching for work there are many daily, weekly, monthly tasks (tracking contacts, networking events, resumes sent, interviews, job clubs or workshops attended, follow up letters/emails, etc. etc.) Once a job is secured I would then start tracking professional development goals/tasks such as courses/classes taken, areas of improvement (goals and achievements), conferences attended and professional development hours earned, etc. This would be handy for your annual review with your supervisor and documentation of such activity.

    At first I was concerned about the narrow daily columns on the weekly pages but now I see their usefulness for tracking and for lists. I think, like you, I would use day on 2 pages in my Filofax along with the Plannerisms planner. Until this past year, I had used FC day on two pages for over 20 years and I really miss it since I switched to Filofax binders with WO2P inserts. I do like the WO2P diary but am finding I miss having my daily to do's and space for daily diary in front of me. I'm excited to get started and quite truthfully will be glad when 2013 gets here already. In the meantime I will try to enjoy the holiday and not be stressed over the fact that my shopping is far from done and the tree is staring at me with lights but no decor as of yet. Sigh.

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  6. OK - I've ordered in Pink of course. I plan to use this for setting goals and tracking them for the next year. Not sure whether to do personal and business together or separate - I'm thinking about that one!

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    1. PS They say it should arrive before Xmas - so fingers crossed as I want to do some planning between Xmas and New Year. If you ordered one did it come quickly?

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    2. Alison - quoted 5 working days, which I thought was optimistic as I think they were still in Singapore then! Came on day 5 though!

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  7. Laurie please do let us know if they get more teal in! I'll just get a black if they are all out, but I don't want to wait too long and have all the planners sell out in every colour!

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  8. I'm quite conflicted, as I definitely see the need for a better goal and project planning function in my planner setup but absolutely loathe the idea of two planners. I think what convinces me that looseleaf is ideal is that I can constantly adapt the one planner to fit my current needs. I really like the idea of the Plannerisms planner but every-single-time I've used more than one planner I've achieved mass chaos in short order. In the meantime, I'm adding some of Ray's monthly planner sheets into my personal filofax diary to help get the bigger picture on track.

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  9. Josh: I feel the same way.. I really need to be in one book. But a personal sized filo just doesn't allow for enough writing room for goals and planning, and an A5 is too large for me to carry around. Trying out goals in the plannerisms and then daily+monthly+yearly and all my blog+column+work planning in my filo. Hope this works!

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  10. Please let us know if more purples come into stock!!!

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  11. Hi everyone, here's the update: Singapore is shipping more of all colors, and extras of Teal and Purple, tomorrow so Collins UK will have those all in stock next week, probably Wednesday. Sorry for the delay but they are coming! Yay!

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