Custom standard Van der Spek |
There is the possibility that here in Europe some countries will fix their clocks all year around which convention they will follow hasn't yet been decided, but a directive has been passed that allows individual member states to decide that time standard they will adhere to, but with COVID taking up so much government time, the decision has naturally been delayed.... by more than hour!
How will you use your extra hour on Sunday?
Of course it is Friday so feel free to discuss anything organiser related.
Have a good weekend.
Sometimes you can get lucky and you can find a 'Brand New Still In Box' (BNIB) example of the model you have been scouring the internet for. Other times you will be a little disappointed for various reasons.
The model you are looking for, was may be only made or sold for a year or less. They might not have withstood regular use unlike others that can look like new even 20 years or more old.
So the examples you might find for sale might be a little worn at the corners or not have perfect condition covers, but in some cases that can add 'character' to an organiser, which some people prefer.
If you do discover the particular model/size you are looking for, don't get too keen and start offering silly amounts of money for it. Do that and the seller might start to realise that this 'old dusty organiser' that has been sat on their book shelf for the last decade is worth more than they paid for it all those years ago!.
I have put a Wanted advert on our own Adspot page and had reasonable success finding a couple of organisers I 'missed' when they were on sale. One was my A5 Chameleon in black that I bought for a reasonable price and it was literally brand new and still in the original packing with the original inserts still in place.
So it is possible to 'get lucky'
To post a Wanted advert, just send me an email: philofaxy at gmail dot com and give the details of the model you are looking for (any brand) include what country you are in so the seller can estimate the cost of shipping and your contact details.
Good luck in your hunting.
Filofax has long been associated with the city of London, their headquarters offices were there for many years, although not these days. They had shops in London, but again now sadly closed. A lot of the Filofax organiser names are places, districts within London.
During a quiet moment during my stay in London this last summer, I happened to be looking through the London Underground Tube map and I started to note down the station names that were also Filofax model names.
I was initially surprised at how many there are. Sure some of them need a little 'adjustment' to match the station name to the Filofax model name, but I'm sure that is allowed!.
This lead me on to thinking of a new London Tube Challenge. Visiting all of the stations listed in the least possible time. A visit basically means that the train you are on stops there. You don't have to physically get off and exit the station and reenter the station, although you can if you wish. Also you can use bus and walk between stations as well.
Where did I get this idea from? There are plenty of other Tube Challenges already, the main one involves visiting all of the underground stations (270+ stations) in London. This as you will see currently stands at under 16 hours! An on-line friend of mine Geoff Marshall has held the record twice, he has also done several other public transport related challenges including 'All the Stations' which was an epic trip around UK visiting all of the railway stations with his partner Vicki Pipe.
There are lots of 'Alternative Tube Challenges' as well, I wonder if we could get the Filofax Tube Challenge added to the site!
Naturally I've created a diary insert for our own Tube Challenge!
This is in Personal size, so just print it on to a single sheet of personal size paper and you are ready to go.
You might need to do some planning ahead of time and reorder the stations in to your own preferred route, so I've made the page available in Word and PDF format.
It would a fun challenge for a future London Philofaxy meet up may be!??
What's your favorite multi-task?
When you're setting up your organizer or using it to plan, what do you like to do at the same time? Sip wine? Listen to relaxing (or stimulating) music? Stream TV episodes or podcasts?
As always on Fridays, feel free to discus any topic related to ring-bound organizers!
The on-going discussion about the pros and cons of using analogue or digital will continue for ever... well as long the lights don't go out and your digital device doesn't run out of electrons to power it!
I like to think I'm not in either camp, I use both, using the strengths of either system to overcome the weaknesses of the other. The 'best of both worlds' as it were.
I try not to duplicate a complete planning system in both although as you will see if you are using both it's hard to avoid that.
If you are a 'purist' you might be only using digital apps for all your planning and task reminders, but you are very unlikely to be reading this blog post?
Or may be you only use paper planners for all of your planning and task reminders and note taking... and we love you for accepting that method as the only way of doing things. Why not!
Going exclusive or only partial digital isn't as straight forward as you might think, there are host of different apps for different aspects of your digital planning needs, calendars, note taking apps, task reminders, project planning, etc. etc. and the outputs of these can be private to just you or shareable in some way or form with your partner assuming they are using a similar app.
The sharing with others seems to me to be the main reason for retaining a digital calendar. It's often a requirement of some work places that you share your calendar with your team/line manager as it makes booking meetings easier.
Alison and I have access to each others main calendars without getting out of our office chairs or speaking to each other! It helps avoiding clashes of dates when booking things etc. We both have additional calendars as I'm sure Alison doesn't need to know about the schedule for Free for All Friday posts on Philofaxy, and I don't need to know about her book blogging schedule!
As I'm sure I've mentioned before I do use Apple Reminders for routine tasks that are repeating in nature in either regular or irregular intervals. The advantage of this is that when you tick off a task as being completed, the system will automatically reset itself for the next time and you don't have to work out the date in 9 weeks time or what ever it is.
However, I do bring together in my organiser these routine tasks and my many 'one off's' that don't get put on my digital app. That way I have all of my tasks for the next week or two in 'one place' on my paper organiser diary insert. Noted down on their appropriate days.
At least once a week I look at the schedule list of my reminders and I transfer them across to my paper insert.
I also cross-check my appointments at the same time so that those are in-sync between the digital and paper world.
I only have one paper diary to keep up to date. It is too easy for multiple planners to get out of sync if you using more than one (as I used to do!)
There are plenty of You Tube videos discussing 'Analog vs Digital' take a look.
Which camp are you in?
On our 'Files' page you will find a large collection of templates for pages you can download and print in various sizes. You can also modify some of them to your own requirements.