My youngest is currently studying for his Big Exams. He asked me if I had a notebook he could use to organise his study plans, figure out which topics he needed to spend more time working on and which ones he already knows, etc. Of course I had the perfect notebook in my stash, and he happily took it to start planning out his studying.
The next morning I asked him how it went, and found his initial enthusiasm had waned. He quickly discovered the limitations of a bound notebook. If he wanted to move a page from one category to another (for example, after he had mastered a topic he would move that page from Need to Study to Complete), he couldn't. He also realised he had to plan every page of the notebook in advance, decide how many pages each subject would get, etc. His plan broke down.
I offered him a ring binder with tabbed dividers, tape flags, and repositionable sticky tabs, and it was just the thing he needed. Each subject had its own tabbed section. Within each section, he could designate pages for what he needed to spend more time on and what he already knew, and could move pages around accordingly. The tape flags allowed him to label the tabbed dividers, and then move and re-label them easily. And the sticky tabs let him go directly to any section he wanted quick access to.
Which of course brings me to Filofax and other ring binder organisers. I get frustrated with bound notebooks because, what if I want more than one topic within the notebook? What if I want to move pages around? What if I end up only using a few pages, then decide I don't need an entire notebook for that purpose?
A Filofax, as my son quickly discovered with ring binders in general, gives me the ultimate in flexibility of use. I don't have to stress about where I'm going to write something. If I want to move it someplace else later, I can.
Do you like to move pages around in your Filofax, or even between binders? Or do you prefer to keep your pages in your binder in a certain order?
And as always on Fridays, feel free to discuss anything ring binder organiser related!
This reminds me of my university years. Like school we simply used a lever arch folder with tabs and index page. At the front a schedule of classes, labs and other repeated weekly events. Each tab represented a term or semester in a single module course or subject. I never really thought much about it but what is that if not a cheap, large and ugly form of a filofax. Or more correctly a filofax is just a ring folder. How you use any folder is up to you. I find it funny how I have always thought of filofax as being separate from folders.
ReplyDeleteNow I'm not using the old foolscap or A4 folders but I'm using filofaxes in personal and A5. I use bottom tabs, side tabs, day markers with the bottom cut off and sticky page markers. I've only just reached a system I think I like, time will tell, but it's made up with clear plastic, coloured plastic and paper dividers. A real mess but once I have run it for a few months I'll probably replace all dividers with the same style of dividers.
My new system is bottom tabs for chapters which are diary, notes, projects and information. The last section is work information like iso standards, company acronyms, passwords, account passwords / numbers, financials, contacts and birthdays. Within projects there are six side tabs for main projects but I could add a second layer of 6 tabs to expand if needed. In the info chapter there are labelled tabs in creme card for info, financial and contacts in my personal or coloured plastic for A5 filofax. In diary my personal has month tabs for the filofax monthly diary then a WOTP diary. A5 has a day to a page only in rolling 3 month and a yearly fold out I printed.
I don't like the messy as I think filofax deserves clean and tidy look but I can't work out how to make the above anything but messy because of all the tabs. Perhaps all the same style of tabs might make it look better but I'm not sure. How do you people make your multi tabbed / sectioned folder or filofax look tidy? Do you even bother trying? Do you have your own system of dividing the contents? Multi sectional with sub chapters or just tabs the same throughout?
I spent a while getting my core Filofax completely streamlined in terms of inserts, dividers, additional pen loops, I hunted for discontinued refills and pens to complete the set, and went to considerable lengths... only to find myself hankering for a more "fun" (or maybe just messier) layout. As I noticed once before when I had a binder for a specific project, which I completed with matching dividers and paper throughout, a too-perfect Filofax can feel stale, too "complete," and eventually, uninspiring.
DeleteWhether this is some complex philosophical truth along the lines that anything taken to excess will inevitably decay, or simply that the grass is always greener, I don't know.
Maybe there's a balance to be struck?
To answer more directly, getting most of your dividers matching in style or colour will probably have the biggest impact visually. Different colour paper can replace some dividers and tabs, without adding width. I can't remember where I first saw the idea (so apologies if it was on here, and I'm not crediting it correctly) but keeping seldom-changing reference information on brightly coloured paper saves adding extra dividers, while still being easy to find.
Yes! As much as I adore the Bullet Journal concept, I need to have rings so I can add, subtract, and move around whatever. I use bound notebooks for journaling and memory keeping. It's what works for me.
ReplyDeleteI keep a number of personal size binders on a shelf by my desk, each devoted to a different subject: travel, keto, DC, NYC, lists, etc. i like these binders to be simple and unfussy, so I use vinyl binders (by Mead), that I find on Amazon. When I need certain pages to come with me, I can take those pages out and put them into my everyday carry binder - which includes a month on two pages, full year, and other daily needs. (My everyday carry binder is an LV mm, or a Van der Spek, or a Gillio, or a vintage Filofax - I switch them up.) I need a source for vinyl binders with larger rings. The Mead binders have 1/2” rings. I have one vinyl binder with 1” rings, but I don’t know where I bought it. Does anyone have a source for plain vinyl binders with larger rings? (I’m in the US). Bonus points if there are also binders like this with A5 rings, I keep some notes in A5 size as well.
ReplyDeleteMy first thought was 'surely a student is using a ring binder for lecture notes & work?' And, yes, a Filofax is merely a ring binder. I guess the unique bit is actually the leaves that are put into it (I don't use them, but have recently started creating tools to automatically create them, starting with diaries and tabular forms). Having recently been binge-watching YouTube videos by various filophiles (during a period of illness), it seems for many, the appeal is creating the binder and contents, rather like a scrapbook, and the functional aspects seem to be secondary.
ReplyDeleteThough I can't really criticise, as I spend too much time designing inserts I am unlikely to use, and have just finished spending a couple of days, obsessively reproducing, ironically, the 'Free-Form Time Management' booklet and Keypoint pages in LibreOffice... I also bough a Dahle rotary trimmer on eBay yesterday, to go with the Lihit paper drill.
Oh, and one of the insert pages I have designed is a bujo grid page (a 20-line PostScript function).