Now to me this is the interesting bit. It is that one chance you will get to see the detail and the workings of someone else's organiser. I'm not talking about the personal details the such and such appointment on a particular day, more about the level of detail people are writing down each day or each week. The sort of information people record on a daily or weekly basis.
A lot of people use their planners and organisers to record health information, helping them track their weight or symptoms.
It is interesting to see how people mix the use of ring bound organisers with bound notebooks, traveller’s notebooks for planning and journaling.
I know in my own case the notes I make in my organiser might not make much sense to someone else. I don't write in code, more a short hand I suppose! As example a task that just says 'Flip 14th 17th' might not make any sense to you, but it is my prompt to 'Flip articles to Flipboard from web finds on the 14th and 17th of that month'
Generally there tends to be a lot of 'white space' on a typical week view of my organiser, it is only rarely do I fill up a particular section of the week layout that I use, so I guess I've got the size/layout about right. There are some peoples organisers I have seen that are crammed full, every page is full. I admire these people in a way for having such busy lives and being able to cope with so many things happening.
I knew I wanted to slow down when I 'retired' five years ago... may be I've taken it too far... answers not required ;)
So the question which triggered my thinking this morning. Do you plan on a daily basis or a weekly basis? I know if you do plan on a daily basis then you have to also have a long-term sight on the week ahead or the month ahead (likewise if you plan by the week), but what is your main focus when looking at your planner.
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ReplyDeleteI'm mostly a daily planner. I spend a few minutes with my planner either the night before or early in the day and sketch out the day. Unlike Steve, I can't really manage short-hand. I will jot something down briefly, and when I look at it later, (sometimes, embarrassingly, later that same day!) I can't decipher it. So I usually write out full phrases and names. I feel that my planner use, in terms of filling up pages, is rather uneven. Some days I really fill it up, others I do not. I have a pocket notebook and that is the same, some days I write a word, others I fill up several pages.
ReplyDeleteI am a daily planner. I use it religiously to plan my appointments each day (both work related and family related), but also develop a thorough list of todos for each day of the week. And when a todo doesn't get done one day, it gets moved to another day that week. I start each day by reviewing the todos/appts for the day and check in with it each hour (or even more regularly).
ReplyDeleteWhile some may say I am a slave to my Filofax, I find that it makes me very productive. And I am able to manage many projects at any given time because the Filofax allows me to be very organized.
Day, week and monthly! On the last day of the month, I review how it went and how many of my goals I achieved. I then set (or rollover) priorities for the next month. I break these down every Sunday night for the week ahead and then try to find 5 minutes each evening to review and plan for the next day. It's standard Time Manager (TMI) thinking that has worked for me for nearly 30 years!
ReplyDeleteThis is the method I use too. My day to day productivity is determined by my daily (and to some extent, weekly) pages - if I've got through stuff quicker than anticipated, I can use the weekly list to move onto something else - with the monthly list a kind of map for how to complete goals/projects. I've never yet managed to make a monthly calendar work for me, I just have a list, broken down into life-areas that I work from.
DeleteThis is the way I work as well. In my current position as a program manager for a product management education initiative, I work part time and every day/week is different, and I have to book webcasts and presenters six weeks in advance. I do keep a separate book (moleskin) for work, however if I did not record in my personal planner I would not know what hours to work each day.
DeleteAh Tim, as a fellow TMI user I really appreciate the ability to see monthly, weekly and daily schedules side by side. I know of no other system, digital or analogue, which offers this facility of multiple perspectives in one view. I love it.
DeleteI'm in the process of returning to TMI methodology after a few years of GTD. I've bought the 2016 update pack and haven't yet deployed it (the undated refills I would have to use for the balance of 2016 drive me slightly crazy!) but a full scale return is definitely on the cards.
I need a daily plan - if I don't have one, prepared the day before, nothing gets done - but I also need to see the perspective of any given week, three or four weeks ahead, so I know how committed i am before making further agreements to meetings etc. TMI enables me to do all of that and more, and is even adaptable to run Franklin Covey or GTD methodologies as well if desired.
Just curious, is there an online presence for TMI?
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DeleteFound it!
Deletewww.timemanager.com
Found it!
Deletewww.timemanager.com
I like looking at a full week's spread in my planner and am usually pretty detailed with text because (like Josh) I may not be able to remember what my abbreviations meant! I don't use the monthly spread (recording the weather on it for now) mainly because the boxes are just too dang small and since I keep the entire year's weekly inserts in my planner I can forward plan right up until next October! The only time I revert to daily is when the day box on my weekly page is so crammed that I need to organize it onto one sheet to work from that day - credit Kristy from Giftie Etcetera's daily docket method.
ReplyDeleteThanks to you, Steve and Ray, I have found the inserts I actually need! I like monthlies for future planning; weeklies for an overview; and dailies for tasks. I'm messing the inserts I've bought already with some of the free printables. Thank you both very much for providing those printables to us!
ReplyDeleteI use my monthly pages to plan things in the future (like 2-3 months out), my weeklies to plan things in the near future (later this month) and my dailies for the tasks and appointments for each day. I like the week at a glance when I'm making plans - to make sure I'm not over committing myself to too many things in a week. I try to plan one day as my "errand/appointment" day and keep the rest focused on home and work tasks (I work from home)
ReplyDeleteI am finding that I feel more in control of my schedule and to-do's when I use the daily pages. I had gotten away from that for years, and only recently went back to daily pages. I keep my work and personal tasks on there and even though some things get migrated from one day to the next I'd rather rewrite it than try to manage an ongoing list throughout the week. I feel like my tasks get lost or overlooked that way.
For me in a compact filo: month on 2 pages, exatime week on 2pages plus notes, switching from 1 page per day to 2 pages per day in 2016. I need all three perspectives to be on top of my schedule and to doos :-)
ReplyDeleteI plan daily (DO2P), weekly (a chronodex spread) and monthly. I take time weekly to track the week and will take note on tasks and goals. If needed, they will be scheduled further. I also take time to sit down every quarter- yearly to track down if I need to perform more efficiently or if I have already reached my goals. Same applies after every six months, it is a nice divider to a year at hand and then lastly, I see what the year was like and what needs be improved for the next ahead. But these moments are few and sparse. On a daily basis I work with all three daily, weekly and monthly spreads.
ReplyDeleteCall me the Hawaiian Goldilocks. I need the monthly to forward plan, weeklies to flesh out the planning, and the dailies for notes and tasks. I'm also strangely loyal to Loki, my compact Regency. (Must be the effects of the Filo-Tesseract.) So like dear ole Tny Stark and Bruce Banner, I experimented. I did the monthly, weekly,and 2 pages per day combo when I was in grad school plus TFA, but that was too much. I switched to monthlies and dailies, but that didn't work too well because I needed the weekly fleshed out plans overview. I moved on to monthlies plus week on 2 pages, but despite loving the overview and the ability see 3 months ahead, I didn't have enough space for notes. My solution was to do the monthlies, 2 days per page, and a sheet of To Do as a Hanson sort of band. I devote one side of the 2DPP for timed appointments and the other side for notes. Colour-coding everything makes everything much more efficient. The To DO sheet (which also has its 'Today' ruler) is for 1 sentence/phrase summary of projects that I go into details with using the aforementioned half of a 2PPD. This combo has been working perfectly well so far (2 years strong!).
ReplyDeleteInteresting post and to read peoples comments. I'm pretty new to the Filofax/planner workd and haven't quite got into a routine with it all yet. Still figuring out what I like. So far though I have MO2P and weekly spread which I like. I'm going to throw in a daily docket into the mix for busy days now, I'd forgotten this and Kirsty from Giftie Etcetera's reminded me in her post.
ReplyDeleteI rely on my week insert with longer lines for my Franklin pocket binder. I use colored removable labels and my stencil for a row of circles for recurring tasks.
ReplyDeleteLong ago I used the Wo2P insert with a blank horizontal space for each day. I did not prefer the basic space in writing appointments. If one noted a morning appointment near the top then there may not be enough room for an earlier one. On some days a 9 a.m. appointment was near the top of the space and on other days it was close to the middle. Also since the space has no hours I did not want to write every time or duration of appointments or projects.