If my planner pages are anything to go by, there's been a lot to catch up on this month!
Not everyone does a formal review every week/month, but I found time over the weekend to look back over the last four weeks to check I hadn't missed anything.
I found it easier to take the weekly pages out of my organiser and lay them in order, side by side on the table. I use 'Week on One Page + Tasks' in the form of our 1.5.1 Enhanced Time Manager insert. I was able to see all of the appointments at once, then after flipping over the pages all the tasks at once.
Generally I'm fairly good at carrying forward not completed tasks, but with all of my alternative travel plans in the first two weeks of January, a few tasks at home had got missed out. Nothing life threatening, but annoying to have got out of sync on a few minor things.
Having gone through the first four weeks I sat with my cup of decaffeinated coffee and prepared my pages for February and beyond. Noting down appointments and scheduled tasks from my electronic reminders. Adding in reminders for things like birthday cards etc.
Also reminding myself that this year is a leap year so we will have 29th February next month.
Do you do a monthly review?
My monthly review and plan is undoubtedly the most important use of my organiser. Whereas I used to focus on weekly goals (as a Time Manager/TMI user), I found that was too obsessive. You've only got to have a difficult week (such as being ill in bed with flu or Covid-19), or just being in 'reaction mode' for a few days, rather than being proactive (such as the tax year end) to stray from goal/task setting and achievement. I find a monthly review allows chance to tick off a good few 'to-dos" and is a decent chunk of time to make progress on goals for the year. OK - so January hasn't been as productive as I'd hoped (flu and tax year end for starters!) but there's still eleven months to go - and - being a leap year - we've a bonus catch up day on 29th February!
ReplyDeleteI absolutely agree with you, Tim, as I have also moved over to a monthly review & it's an essential part of using my organiser.
DeleteI'm currently quiet at my new job so I'm catching up on things such as clearing out my overstuffed personal. At 23mm rings I can't run it as the portable mirror of my desk A5 finsbury with 30mm rings. So I'm archiving first half of January already.
ReplyDeleteI use day to a page because I like to mirror my works outlook calendar but it means ideally 3 months in at one time. I do have monthly tabs calendar and fold up yearly for future planning. I'm starting to wonder if that's a good idea. I might just take it all out and use lined, dotted, gridded or plain paper and the bullet journal method instead. Current diary use reduces my personal being used for notes and project notes.
Right now I'm not monthly reviewing but in constant rethink mode.
As an aside, I recently worked out that for me filofax lined inserts have too close spacings. I've found two amazon suppliers that do larger spacing and the slightly cream paper is better anyway.
Dear Paul,
DeleteCould you elaborate on the alternative lined paper inserts that you buy from third-party suppliers?
Thanks,
Martin
For A5 it was fandamei on amazon UK, personal teenitor. Both very cheap but imho better for me than filofax. I would rather say 15 or 20 7mm lines than 30 to 40 that are so close I have to write on every other line to read what I've written. I think the fandamei product was better overall. More cream in colour and very good for my fountain pens. Perhaps others might not rate these products.
DeleteThanks, Paul! I found both types of paper on amazon.de as well. I may give the teenitor paper a try as I'm using personal. However, while the paper branded as A6-size, but it's apparently 17 cm high and 10.5 cm wide. This may be a nice size to use in some personal-size planners; and it'll be easy to cut to personal-size proper.
DeleteThe lined inserts I bought from teenitor fitted my personal Holborn perfectly. Exactly the same size as the filofax inserts, no difference just slightly wider line spacing and off white / light cream colour.
DeleteThe A5 fandemei lined paper is a more standard cream and imho better paper than filofax and Teenitor. Just a shame they don't do a full range of inserts in personal.