Almost all of us have calendar or diary pages in our organizers. But they also often include blank pages or notepaper. What do you do with yours?
- Journaling
- Work notes
- Lists (shopping, collections, books, etc.)
- Art, sketching
- Information for crafts, knitting, etc.
As always on Fridays, all discussion related to ring-bound organizers is welcome!
My A5 is primarily blank sheets for notes along with project planning inserts and meeting / 1:1 inserts. Most of this planner is filled with blank sheets for note-taking at work.
ReplyDeleteI find it more practical than a bound notebook because often I need to rewrite and reformulate notes. Part of the process is to redraft sheets and throw away the initial drafts which are often disorganised and just an attempt at capturing as much information as possible in meetings.
As we approach a new year, dare I open the can of worms that is "which planner size format am I going to use?".
ReplyDeleteIn recent times I have settled on using both a Personal and an A5. I think this has been enabled by the higher proportion of remote working, meaning that I don't have to consider the weight and bulk that I am carrying around so much.
I see the Personal as "me", dividing it between my week, actions that I need to take, and key notes/ thoughts that I want to keep close. It is small enough to carry and use all week round both for work and personal life. (As I have got older I have become less self conscious about waking around with it in my hand). It is my consolidated dashboard of my life in all shapes and forms.
The A5 is for note taking, primarily at work, tracking actions I have assigned to my team members, project plans, risk tracking, commercial calculations. I also keep a section of 8 x 5 index cards onto which I create Zettelkasten notes and file these for key thinking, strategy, planning, creating etc.
If I looked back 10 years, when I was forever flip flopping between formats I feel a bit more comfortable. Of course by January this might all have changed!
What is everyone else planning to use in 2026?
My system is working well, so I plan no format changes. I use an A5 for work, and personal for home. I don't see myself ever combining them. My whole adult life has been a fight to keep the work separate from and not encroaching upon the personal, and I view combining them into a single book as giving in, despite the fact that it would indeed be nice to only have to deal with one notebook. But then what would I do with all of my Filofaxes?
DeleteOne change I'm going to make is to move my actual personal planning into a bound pocket journal and keep the Filofax for, as someone on this website recently said, "filing facts." I just cannot deal with trying to write around the rings on the left page. In my work binder, which mostly lives on my desk, I've come up with a nice workaround, which is to keep the sheet loose until I fill it. That doesn't work as well with a binder that I'm carrying all the time.
PS I like the idea of including some cards for a Zettelkasten. I've been thinking vaguely about starting one. Must ponder.
Yes to all of the above.
ReplyDelete