24 August 2023

Time to rationalise your organiser

On Monday I wrote about printing my diary inserts for next year. Once those are printed and punched it will time to add those extra pages to my organiser. 

To fit them in I think it will be time to run through my other inserts and check though them to see what updating, what I can archive or recycle. 

I am still a lover or should that be a hoarder of printed maps, but I really shouldn't be carrying them all of the time! I will be removing quite a few of those which will make quite a bit of room on the rings, especially as some of them are printed on quite heavy weight paper (Transport For London).

My organiser holds a lot of miscellaneous information, it will therefore be a good opportunity to review a lot of those pages too. 

What sort of annual contents review do you do? Or do you do it more often?   

8 comments:

  1. All organisers I’ve ever owned have a built-in warning that lets me know that rationalising is needed. As soon as the front and back covers are no longer parallel (when sat on the desk) or it becomes difficult to turn the pages due to overloading, then I find a good train journey to go through and streamline all the content. I use old and rarely used organisers as archive folders. I’ve never seen the appeal of a bulging organiser and the thought of an over-stuffed 35mm Norfolk fills me with horror!

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    1. I like that as a good rule of thumb, parallel or converging covers.... not diverging.

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  2. Using a compact doesn’t allow for surplus pages so my review is an ongoing process. As soon as a page is no longer required it gets removed.

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  3. I get inspired to clear mine out when you post these posts!!!!

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  4. Having just moved house I need to re-do my pocket Filofax address book. At the moment that is at something like number 653 on the to do list!!!

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  5. I like a clean and elegant looking Filofaxes so I remove unnecessary stuff as soon as it doesn't look neat. I find it very relaxing to be honest, it is almost like a ritual of cleansing of sort.

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  6. Like Tim, I tend to use the same method to let me know when mine needs a good clear out. I do an annual review to look at projects etc., but probably have a bit of a tidy every couple of months or so.

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  7. I groom my Filofax weekly, on Monday morning. I was taught to do this in a time-management course I took in the 1990s! I use the two-page-per-day Time Management Diary, and keep an Annual Planner, three monthly planners (current month plus the next two months), and two weeks of daily planners (current week plus the next week) in my Heritage Compact A5. At the start of each week I make a list of goals for the week, and move last week's worth of daily pages to an A5 Stratford. Then I insert the next week's pages. I wish my Heritage held a bit more, but I have the original one with 15mm rings. I keep lots of blank Notes and ToDo pages in it, plus some reference information, so it is pretty full. Once or twice a year I review everything, and either remove or update the reference information. This is the one advantage that electronic devices have over a Filofax -- pretty much unlimited storage!

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