This topic was suggested by Gaynor during the Philofaxy Round Table Skype chat last weekend. I thought it was a great discussion topic and wrote it down quickly!The question she posed was 'Does your job/profession influence how you plan in your organiser?'
I thought about it for a moment and of course in some jobs I'm sure there will be an influence.
Teachers I would think would be more at home with diary inserts that mirror their academic year. I wonder if accountants would prefer ones that started and finished with the start and finish of the tax year?
Then there is the type of layouts people prefer, does a vertical layout work better for some jobs compared to a horizontal layout?
Let us have your thoughts in the comments below. But I would also be very pleased if any of you would like to submit a short guest post on how your profession influences how you use your organiser.
There is just so much planning nowadays in teaching, that really, big huge arch lever files are the only way to go. I do use my planner for appointments,project planning,and brief meeting summaries, but also have an A4 into which I decant this week's lesson plans and required paperwork. Saves the huge lever file lug, carrying back and forth on public transport. A compromise situation. I use a wheelie briefcase and try to do the marking at school, again saving on a heavy lug home of work items.I prefer the academic year diary, but as the pull out year on one page is not academic year based, I prefer to stick to a consistent format, so have gone to Jan-Dec formats, with a contents page of main events. This may or may not work, use will tell as at the moment it's a trial system as school merger led to redundancies and I'm job scouring.An interesting question and thank you for asking it. I look forward to reading all the replies, even from those who have retired. Have they planner down scaled I wonder in size, or kept the same format because retirement is busy too with new hobbies, travel etc,etc.
ReplyDeletePrior to around 1990 there were specialist Filofax and Lefax forms to cater for a wide range of professions, and the influence for record keeping and reference would have been strong.
ReplyDeleteComputers and networks cover most of that nowadays, and I imagine paper records taken outside the workplace are regarded as a bit of a nuisance by most larger employers, because they are harder to protect and control!
So a lot of the variety will probably have gone, and what's left is more down to individual preferences and creativity.
I'm an administrator in a University. I have an A5 Domino at work and use filofax vertical week on 2 pages. I ue the Saturday and Sunday column for weekly "To Do" items.
ReplyDeleteMy work definitely changes the way I work with an organiser compared to others. Because I work with computers and most of my tasks and projects are repetitive, and because I work mostly in one place without needing to travel around a lot, I use the computer to handle tasks, todos, contact data, passwords and so on. However, nothing beats a diary on paper, so my organisers are really only for (1) a diary and (2) scribbled notes. So I'm missing many of the sections, pages and layouts that others need and prefer, and also my organiser doesn't need to be as portable as others require.
ReplyDeleteI"m a graduate student and after much trial and error, came up with a custom layout that is perfect for me. It's A5 weekly, which stays at home. on the left are two areas for classes to layout what reading to do each day and an area for to do stuff. The right side is the weekly schedule with what's due by day next to it. I carry a slim traveler's notebook in my bag for notes while out that get transferred once I am home.
ReplyDeleteI'm a librarian, and while most of my day is fairly routine, I still use a planner to make sure all my daily tasks get done. Having a planner also helps keep track of the orientations and instructional sessions I'm presenting, as well as additional evening shifts, since we're experiencing coverage issues.
ReplyDeleteI prefer a vertical week on two ages, half hour time slots, so I can map out as much of my day as possible. On the days where the time slots don't matter, having a vertical column just makes the day a running to do list.
I am (apparently) one of the original target audience for filofax (Army Officers and vicars). A few years ago I wrote a review for the blog 'The life of the perpetual student'. My use has changed slightly, but I still use the A5 filofax in a similar manner:
ReplyDeletehttp://thelifeoftheperpetualstudent.blogspot.co.uk/2012/08/otf-many-true-filofaxes-guest-post.html?m=1
I'm in seminary, studying to be ordained in the Church of Sweden. A few years back, working with children and youth in the church, I started designing my own weekly inserts. Mostly because everything I could find in stores had less space on weekends, where I usually want more writing space! Now I'm in a personal ring planner with my own week-on-four-pages layout. That gives me one view for monday-thursday and one for friday-sunday, with some extra space that I sometimes use for weekly stuff, sometimes notes for the sunday service. It also has the readings from our church lectionary.
ReplyDeleteAs I manage a team of project managers that plan and execute a wide variety of large and small and everything inbetween capital projects for a large medical center, planning and staying on top of projects/schedules is crucial to success.
ReplyDeleteLike having daily, weekly, monthly, and yearly schedule views as well as lots of pages to keep task lists organized by specific projects, people I met with regularly, and other topics I need to keep on top of.
Daily view is vertical. Weekly, Monthly, Yearly view are horizontal.
Don't have room in binder for meeting notes. I use several bound journals for this purpose. Makes it easy to keep notes together as well as have each journal used only for a specific topic.
As a teacher I have quite a busy life and I do work on a September to August year. I have children in school too so all our diaries match up. I use my planner to store appointment, meal planning, things going on at home and stuff I need to do for my Masters. I have just swapped to a vertical layout which is working lot better for me. At work all class planning is done on the computer and I use a clipbook for to do lists and general notes that are disposable. I have a separate bound book just for meetings which has an index and this really works well. When we get agendas I just stick them in and write round them. Other colleagues also now do this. Everyone thinks I am organised but very often I feel like it's a bit of an illusion. I am just trying to keep on top of everything!
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