14 October 2022

Free For All Friday No. 727 by Laurie

I take notes in my Filofax, but only certain notes.

I have a tabbed section labeled Notes, where I keep blank pages. This makes it easy to turn to an empty page and jot whatever notes I need to capture. I don't use my daily pages for notes, because when I turn the page they fall into the abyss.

When I have written my notes, I later move those pages to wherever they need to go. For example if I have taken notes at a doctor's appointment, when I get home I move those pages to my Medical file. If I have taken notes on a topic that I have a separate tabbed section for, I move the pages to that section.

If I find I'm taking a lot of notes on a particular topic, I can create a new tabbed section for that topic.

I don't take meeting notes in my Filofax, because it gets filled up too fast. I prefer to take meeting notes in a separate notebook. This allows me to have several months of meeting notes in one book, for easy reference.

I have a large volunteer role, and I use a designated notebook for that where I take all notes related to that role.

I work from home and don't have many work meetings, but when I do have a meeting call I take notes in a designated notebook for work. 

Do you write notes in your Filofax?

As always on Fridays, feel free to ask and/ or discuss anything ring binder organiser related!

3 comments:

  1. Oh yes, my Notes section is more important than the calendar pages some days! That's where all the random information gets put when I need to get it out of my head.

    ReplyDelete
  2. I struggle with this, and have tried several approaches over the years, and nothing is really perfect. I do take tons of notes on my 2PPD spread and I am fairly good at reviewing those lately. My notes section often ends up cluttered with notations lacking context which I later find utterly inscrutable. If I am in a meeting and my only paper is my filofax, I use it. I am intrigued by the idea of smaller notebooks which I could deploy for specific committees or recurring meetings! But I am so forgetful I would almost definitely forget to bring the correct notebook to the right meeting.

    This issue is part of why I sometimes try moving into an A5/half-letter size planner, to have bigger pages for more effective notetaking. But I always find that way too big.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Good question which I believe is at what makes Filofax so enduring - you can tailor it's use infinitely to suit your individual needs. My own note taking section is the most used section - I call my notes section my 'Now' tab, it is a rolling collection of what goes on every day, and each day I add a new day/date and continue on from the day before, no copying uncompleted notes onto the following days 'day on one page' or whatever. Because each note starts with a bullet circle I can quickly scan the days bullet to see if I have a) actioned it, b) forwarded it to another section of my Filofax or c) done nothing about it. The beauty of this method for me is I never leave anything behind - I don't have to physically read over what can sometimes be 20 or 30 individual notes - I just look for the empty bullet circles. And just marking the notes circle and not striking through the whole note makes refering back to a completed task easier. Works for me.

    ReplyDelete