Guest Post - Going to Personal from A5 - Zsu Part 1

Thank you to Zsu for this excellent two part post about her transition from A5 to Personal size. 

If you have stopped to read this, you probably have been there. Planner already in hand, and pondering about moving to a different size. A smaller size. Can it be done? (Sure, it can, you most likely have seen people do it all the time online, but the question is, can you make it work?) It can be tempting to try out a different size, because one size may have more options than others, or because it’s easier to find inserts or make them for some sizes than others, or even because a particular size fits easier in your life, whether you want it open on your desk, ready to catch copious amounts of notes, or you want it to easily fit in a bag so you can take it on the go and not break your back while at it. Or you simply want to try something new, challenge yourself, see your life in a different size, make use of those rings you have stashed or you see in the store.

So, can it be done? Or more importantly, what’s the shift like?

The Story

Throughout my life I have had a lot of planners. I am one of those people, who, at a given moment in time, had a Pilot PDA (PDA: Personal Digital Assistant), and always liked to write a lot. And I mean A LOT.

In my childhood, I remember seeing a movie where a man had the most amazing planner, with sections and colored tabs. A Filofax. I didn’t care much about the plot of the movie, but I knew I wanted to have a planner like that one day. For context, I live in Costa Rica, so finding a Filofax or any ring planner in here was harder than finding a magical bottle with a genie in it. I did look, but it seemed that the fabled ring planners didn’t exist in real life. Pilot PDAs did appear eventually in stores, so that tell you about how markets work.

During the pre-Filofax days I planned in different planners, with different sizes, eventually setting with those bound planners that give you a day per page with hours running down the margin, in half Letter size. I became accustomed to that size and the routine of it. Each year I went looking for the perfect planner, with the best font, lines that were not too thick nor contracting too much with the page, and once I’ve got it, I spent a couple of days copying addresses and phone numbers from one planner to the next, as well as birthdays, and yearly due-dates. The PDA was an attempt at skipping this process, but the electronic devise had its own setbacks, and didn’t fit me.

Going Personal the First Time

Eventually, thanks to the Internet, I learned that ring planners and Filofax did exist and I could order a planner online, and so I went to research. I went to research sizes and binders, and even cut out the paper sizes out of scrap paper to decide with would fit me better. This was the first time I went from Half Letter (or almost A5) to Personal size.

Here I debated a lot, but in the end I decided to pick the size that would fit most of my bags. And then I did something that has helped me a lot later on: I grabbed all my previous planners and looked for the smallest I had to see how did I manage in that size. I compared the planner with the cut out page to try to imagine planning in that space. I did had a small planner, and I figured that, if I was able to use that, I would be able to use a Personal size planner, after years of Half Letters.

When my first Filofax arrived, I didn’t know what to think. The binder was bigger than I expected, and the page seemed smaller. (I did not consider the allowance for the rings). Had I made a mistake? I had ordered daily pages, but soon realized that I would not be able to fit a whole year in the rings, so I had to discard that. It was disappointing, but I was not going to give up so easy. After all, I had spent a lot of money, or what was a lot of money for me then. And so, I gave it a try.

If you wonder how do I plan, I usually have day and time specific appointments (meetings, appointments, due dates), and tasks. There are some day specific tasks, but most of my tasks are either weekly or longer projects, where I like to note whether I have finished them or not. Other than that, my planners also tend to be a collection of random notes and ideas, which makes a ring planner ideal, because then my notes are not interspersed through all the days contained in it, but can be relegated to a specific “notes” section.

In the pre-filofax days, a DPP (day per page) type of bound planner gave me plenty of space to scribble on the “free spaces” any note or reminder about a book or a movie I was recommended, or the name and details of a contact for a project I was working on. Clearly, that was no longer possible with the Personal size Wo2P (week on two pages). My notes, thus, went into the note section. But, would my days, my tasks and maybe my eventual quick notes fit into the new, reduced space?

I copied the addresses and phone numbers, and other important data in the index pages, and set up the planner. I was already consuming lots of planner content online, that gave me ideas on how to better use the paper real estate I had. I learned to divide tasks and appointments in columns and make my handwriting smaller, to fit more of it. Color coding and highlighting were my main tools to pack pages chock full of text and yet be able to separate one topic from another. I learned to develop codes, be efficient, and use the best elements of ring planners: you can have sections for anything, so your notes don’t need to go in your calendar pages. And I was even able to fit a random, quick note in the calendar as well. (Spoiler alert: once the shock was over, I continued peppering my calendar with quick notes, even when I had the Notes section. That’s why I keep the whole year in the planner: you never know when will you need that number or that name you scribbled down sometime in February.)

When my first planner met an early demise (the clasp broke), I went for my second planner, also in Personal Size. I remained in that one a couple of years, until the faux leather cover was peeling so badly my bags were dirty all the time.

That was when I moved to A5.

Enter the A5

The third time I bought a Filofax, I knew I needed to get a leather planner that would last. I thought a lot about it, did research, watched loads of videos, and finally a friend suggested a Malden, and also an A5 Malden. They had on, so I could see it “in the flesh”, and I was sold. I never liked the pictures of the Malden, but in person it was a thing of beauty. I debated on the size because I was used to the Personal size by then, but taking notes in a Personal size did feel constricting, and I ran out of paper fast. So I said, “why not?”. And I got one.

I had to give up bags and consider what would I carry in the bags that did fit my new planner, but the experience was amazing. All that space! That planner stayed with me the longest so far. It went with me from the Filofax inserts, to my own inserts, through my years of bullet journaling until I emerged on the other end of it, back into printed inserts. It went with me from the pre-pandemic days into the pandemic, from one university degree to the next, from one project to the next. The leather got scored and aged, like the face of a faithful warrior or a wise old shaman that has seen the world and stands proud on the top of the hill, facing the sun like an equal.

But I grew old(er) as well. And after the pandemic was giving up and we were properly vaccinated, I packed my old bag, and carried it on my shoulder, like I have done for so long, and realized that it had become too heavy. After being used to carry bags weighting around 8 to 12 Kg on daily basis, with my “absolute essentials” before the pandemic (yes, I had weighted it a couple of times), I had lost that strength thanks to the many days of working from home. A bag weighting 7 kg was just too much. Something had to give.

Part two will be coming soon.... Thank you to Zsu for her detailed story on her transition to Personal size from A5.