Using technology and paper - by Anita

I know that I'm a little unusual in the Filofax community as I don't normally have a diary in my Filofax. Some years ago though, I did use a purple mini Finsbury as my combined wallet and diary. It worked well enough for a while, but I eventually decided to sell it as the diary was too small and the zippered pocket was tricky to easily remove coins from. I decided that if I ever wanted to go back to the wallet/diary combo, then I would upgrade to an ochre pocket Malden.

Some years have now passed since then and I have occasionally browsed pocket Maldens for sale, but never felt the need to actually purchase one. I've had a Gmail account for a long time, which syncs the calendar with my husband's iCal and it's worked well so far for us. I'm also strange as I don't own a smartphone. I suppose I always thought that I'd get around to buying one, but my little old Nokia just works and my work schedule rarely varies, apart from when I'm covering other people's holidays.

However, last year was a super busy year with family commitments and I started to feel like my brain was leaking out of my ears! I needed to keep track of other people's appointments, plus which other family members were helping out when and where. Over time, I've collected all sorts of inserts that sellers will include free with a secondhand binder, and some I've kept and some I've given away. I found some undated week per page ones (unbranded) and these were perfect for helping through the busiest period. I also quite like the month on two pages, which I've used previously for helping me keep on track with completing some projects.

Thankfully, life has now calmed down somewhat, but I still need to keep track of my Mum's appointments... I could feel myself being pulled into the rabbit hole of... I could get a pocket Malden, maybe downsize completely to pocket etc., etc. However, all my inserts and accessories are in personal size, so I really don't want to change size, unless it's really warranted. Therefore, I instead went with the cheapest and simplest option, a 99p diary that will fit in my back pocket!

I've never thought much about this before, but it seems that I tend to use more paper for my personal life and then list managers on my PC for work. I guess I've never been a 'one planner, one life' person as I don't really need to look at work stuff when I'm away from the office. At work, I use Wunderlist to keep track of tasks and projects as I find it useful for creating checklists, and to check back through completed items. However, I do also use paper to create ad hoc task lists if I'm more busy, or for when I need to figure something out. 

Ultimately, I've found that it really comes down to consistency and actually doesn't really matter what I use. It can be all too easy for me to spend time looking at another app for my Mac or consider changing binder size, but nowadays I carefully consider the benefits of any changes as otherwise it's just taking me away from the actual doing instead.