I'm having some serious planner overwhelm at the moment. My kids start school next week, and I'm already inundated with dates for class trips, after-school activities, dentist appointments, weekend events, on and on. This calls for an upgrade!
I've been struggling with the small page size in my personal Filofax for about a decade now. During my less-scheduled summer it worked fine. But now with lots of daily details and things to schedule coming my way, I have upgraded to my A5 Boston Filofax (which I reviewed here). With 20mm rings and a smaller-footprint cover, it is slimmer and lighter than any of my other A5 binders. In fact, I've streamlined my pages so that my A5 Boston weighs just about the same as my fully loaded personal size Filofax, about 645g. It's still a little weighty, but much better than the 1100+g of my other A5's.
Are you, like me, starting a busy time of the year? How have you upgraded your Filofax to cope?
And as always on Fridays, feel free to discuss anything ring-binder related!
My kids are grown and out of school, but life still gets busy about this time. Even though my FF Saffiano weighs close to nothing, papers were falling out everytime I'd open the rings. I've switched to my DayTimer with 1 inch rings. Amazingly, fully loaded, it feels lighter than the Saffiano.
ReplyDeleteI do switch binders, not just b/c I consider them to be accessories, but b/c of ring sizes.
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ReplyDeleteI'm currently happy in my personal sized, using DIYFish pages which allow for a LOT of room to keep track of things. I hear the siren call of my larger A5's but I'm resisting right now. It's only the 2nd week of school for my kids so we will have to see if I need to "upsize" soon to track their activities or not.
ReplyDeleteI *almost* switched to A5 but then stopped myself. Like Lois, I am trialing DIYFish to see if her annual, monthly, and weekly charts can help me manage everything. August, September, and January are my busiest months and it is hard to keep track of everything I need to do. My system in the personal Winchester with 7/8 inch rings works really well all year but becomes overwhelmed during these three months. The charts seem to be helping.
ReplyDeleteI hope you'll post a video about this experiment.
DeleteI hope you'll post a video about this experiment.
DeleteEvery third month is crazy-busy for me - the last month of every quarter. And each crazy month also coincides with a major personal thing:
ReplyDeleteSep - back to school for the kids
Dec - the holidays
Mar - tax season leading into spring break
Jun - wrapping up school year and planning summer
I've designed my own A5 month view that has goal and project areas. I tried to go all A5 with a weekly view, but that wasn't a good fit for me. So I'm moving the monthly pages into a spiral-style set of rings, but I can still rearrange pages as the ProClick spirals can be opened and closed.
My goal is too keep the A5 super thin, and focused on project planning/big picture.
I've given up keeping work tasks on paper, which frees me up to use either Personal or Pocket for family tasks. I'm starting with Personal - I've got a working shopping system going in a Bloomsbury Personal, and although its a little tight right now with all the Back to School coupons and various gift cards, I think I can get enough pages personal tasks in there and maybe more once we use up those gift cards on school stuff.
I'll have to carry around the slim A5 spiral and the Bloomsbury most days, but I was doing that with a stuffed A5 Boston so it should work.