Guest Post - One book July - Post 1 - David

It was a comment on a Facebook Group I belong to which first brought One Book July to my attention, and I was quickly drawn in. For those of you who don’t know, One Book July is a commitment to use one planner book only for the whole of the month as a means to find out exactly what is and is not essential, or necessary, in planning our lives. Anyone who wants more information can find it in a great video which Carie Harling has made on her You Tube channel.


Although I’ve been using Getting Things Done methodologies for some time to manage my life and the various tasks it throws at me, I’ve been feeling unsettled lately, GTD having become rather complicated to keep current with, while at the same time not really allowing me to ‘cover all the bases’ of my life without extensive maintenance work on the system itself – more or less forming another ‘key area’ all of its own.

As a result, I’ve become rather (OK, completely) unsettled over the last 3 months or so, finding myself see-sawing between planner formats, setups and methodologies, so I immediately saw One Book July as a chance to get ‘back to basics’. To start by committing a) to one format and b) to one methodology for a while month, and c) to make myself accountable for sticking with it.

For me One Book July is a form of accountability, firstly to the group I first made that commitment within, and then to the wider planner community. I hope that will help stop me from continually trying to change things, and get me back and settled in one planner.

Is anyone else out there doing One Book July? If not, it’s not too late to make the decision! I plan to post roughly weekly via Philofaxy, and also via www.davepopely.wordpress.com, so that you can see how I am (or am not!) doing. If you decide that getting back into one planner is the right thing for you, I look forward to hearing from you!

Thank you David, we look forward to seeing how you progress with the challenge.