Using an A5 Original for work - by Anita

Since purchasing my first Filofax back in 2009, I've consistently been in personal size, apart from a very brief attempt at using an A5 as my only binder. Whilst personal is a great size for me, the skinny pages aren't so good for when I want to write longer notes, so at some point, I decided to try an A5 for planning projects as well. In theory it made sense, but I tended not to use the A5 as my focus was so much on the personal. Therefore some years ago, I made the decision to sell my last A5 and donate any remaining A5 supplies to a friend. 

However, circumstances do change and I then changed jobs after having been in the same role for 13 years! Somehow it felt like time to try something new, so I just happened to mention that I was maybe considering trying an A5 for work and then a friend kindly provided an A5 Original. 

As I tend to prefer older models, the Original is actually one that I haven't seen much, apart from occasionally at one of the Philofaxy meet ups. 

Steve previously wrote an excellent review of the model when the the Original was first released back in 2013, so this post is going to be more about how I'm using it for work.

This is the aqua colour, which I've realised is one of those colours that is very hard to capture properly as it tends come out too blue in photos. I really love this colour as it's a lovely mix of both green and blue. I love the simplicity of the design and don't mind the internal layout, as I don't need to keep much in the pockets anyway. However, that black elastic pen loop doesn't match the rest of the design at all, and Filofax could've done much better in my opinion. 

Taken on an Ikea bag - still too blue!

I changed jobs in 2020, so all of my training was done by Zoom, and at the beginning I was writing lots of handover notes for clients that I would be taking on. Sadly due to client confidentiality, I can't share any of those pages, but it's not pretty with lots of scratchy notes, crossed out stuff when my boss changed her mind and then highlighted sections for important things and to-dos.

As I've been in my job some years now, the notes written in my A5 have reduced as I've done my training, but it's still been a very useful tool to keep everything all in one place.

Here's an mocked up example of what a page might look like (and you can see how long it is since I started writing this post from the date!):

As per normal, I'm using up some old diary inserts and the butterfly pages are from a very old notebook that I tore the pages out of and hole punched. As I gave away the small amount of A5 inserts that I previously owned, I'm pulling apart old A5 notebooks and using that paper up.

My work set up is very simple

• Date and day highlighted in pink
• Any to-dos are highlighted in green and I'll put an asterisk next to anything urgent or important
• Separate to-do list by client for any tasks that will take longer to do 
• No diary in the A5 as I use Google calendar, which is shared with my boss
  
• When I first started using the A5, I briefly had two jobs, so just split the Filofax in two with a couple of dividers and also used small sticky tabs for anything that I needed to return to on a regular basis, e.g. notes on an individual client, as a reminder whilst the work was still new to me. 

Well, I admit that I started writing the draft for this post such a long time ago, that my set up has changed quite a bit now! 

• At the beginning, I used the A5 for everything for work
  
• As time went on, I realised that it could be useful to also use a spreadsheet to keep track of client information, and I found that I was using Excel more, as it's easy to copy and paste details from an email or software. Also, as it's a remote job, it's easier to share the document via Google drive
  
• So, therefore I was using the Original mainly for meeting notes, and then realised that I just find notebooks easier for when you're writing more like that, and also I had no need to move pages around
  
• A5 Original returned to its previous owner (a big thank you to my friend for allowing me to try out the A5)
  
• Current set up:
• A4 hardbound notebook (2017 day per page diary that I got for 50p, which I bought as it was cheap and I liked the silver colour) - meeting notes, brain dumps, ad hoc lists and for when I need to figure out something more complex
• Excel spreadsheet - summary for monthly work by client and sheets for each client with important dates, to-dos, waiting for items and notes. 

I might not be using a Filofax for work any more, but I couldn't be without my faithful personal Kensington, which is my external brain for everything else!

Guest post series - 'Filohax' No.1 - Paul

A big thank you to Paul for this first instalment in his guest post series about his original late '80's / '90's usage and contrasting that with his new Filofax voyage now.

There is an index of all the previous Filohax posts here

The road back to Winchester

I'm sure like many group members my Filofax journey started back in the late 1980's. I suppose I was ideally placed to be a Filofax customer in Thatcher's Britain in the mid late '80's - a wannabe Yuppie, fresh out of Art college, forging a career in Advertising and with folding bread in pocket!

I still remember walking out of the swanky department store feeling like a proper Designer having blown a decent wad of early salary on my first Filofax - the Winchester 4CLF 7/8 (although it took until joining this group (Filofax for Philofaxy Fans) recently to find out it had a name!).  

For anyone not familiar with the model, you can find more Winchester photos and details on the wonderful Filowiki. 

I even built my Advertising agency out of its address book in the '90's - look closely and you can see my Winchester underneath the yellow lamp! 

However after a decade of loyal service my Winchester journey took a turn for the worst - into a PDA cul-de-sac… 

Fast forwards 30 years and a change of career, and getting bogged down chained to the PC. Managements solution? "We'll get you an iPad". That was three months ago, the iPad hasn't even been ordered, and if it ever is would take a developer months and thousands of pounds to build apps specific to our needs… And that was when I had my epiphany - get the Filofax back out of retirement. 

The Winchester out of hibernation

Within a week the Winchester had replaced my crappy A4 desk diary and Excel project spreadsheets, and within a month my whole office was held safe within the leather covers of the Winch - save for e-mail and a web based job logging system on my work mobile phone. Within two months I've added a small 'personal' section and am getting creative again!

Getting to work via Winchester

Prior to the Winch I carried a small jotter for making on-the-go notes as I moved from location to location.

 

As you can see I used a multi tipped coloured pen to colour code my scribblings - and boy was it messy! Add to that the confusion caused whenever the most commonly used nib (black) ran out and it was next to useless - and stress inducing.

My 'Filohax'

The Filofax personal gave me much more real estate than the jotter ever did, but I gave myself the seemingly impossible task of containing all essential office based information within it. Therefore I had to totally change the way I had remembered using it 'back in the day' - when I used to keep a whole year's worth of day per page diary inserts, and my address book in it. This time though it was all about keeping track of multiple projects/ tasks / quotations and contractors - on the go, while having an up to date appointments schedule with me at all times. I quickly realised that space-wise this meant a week plus notes on two pages. Add to that the need to include my personal life on those two pages. My old muscle memory of trying to corral a whole day's appointments/ to-dos/notes on to one page per day nearly torpedoed the project early on, until I watched a few YouTubes on bullet journaling and in-boxing.

 

In-Box or - 'Now' tab

Bullet journaling was a revelation to me - the simple act of deciding on a series of icons to represent a range of different actions, turning lists of almost shorthand notes into meaningful actionable information, drastically reducing the space needed and allowing long lists of notes to be quickly scanned, categorised and actioned.

In-boxing wasn't a new concept to me having used email from the late 1990's, but using it in a Filofax was, and helped me break free from the space wasting and or limiting 'one page per day' routine. To help link date sensitive notes to the diary section - but without having to squeeze it onto a diary page - my stream of work notes are held in a tabbed section I call 'Now', right next to a tab called 'Week', which is next to 'Month' - all tabbed across the top edge of the Filofax. My 'Now' has become the jumping off point for all new information entering my day - so for instance an idea that occurs to me eating breakfast goes on to the next available line in the Now tab, and so on throughout the day. 

 Thank you, Paul, and we look forward to your next instalment!

Free For All Friday - No. 670 by Anita

As I recently passed my first 6 months in my new job, I thought that it was about time to review how well (or not) my A5 Original is working for me. Initially I was keeping all my training notes and to dos in my Original, but as time has gone on and I've increased my hours, I've found that a hybrid system of my Filofax and an Excel spreadsheet seems to be the best for me. I'm really enjoying using A5 again (after selling my last A5 some years ago)  and am finding it the perfect size for taking notes, whilst still having enough room on my desk to use my keyboard. As I solely work from home, this is much more important as my desk is much smaller than the one I used to have in an office. It's still a work in progress, but I promise that I will write a work set up post soon and it's been an interesting experiment as I admit that I've never used a Filofax for work before! 

Do you find that a hybrid set up of using paper and your phone/computer works best for you for work as well?

And as always on Fridays, please feel free to discuss anything organiser related. I hope that you have a great weekend. 

Red A5 Belgravia review - by Anita

As mentioned in my previous post, I have more recently moved back into A5 for work. I contacted Alan to see what he might be considering selling and decided on a red A5 Belgravia, as I saw one in personal size at a London meet up years ago and really liked it. Plus, a red A5 with 30mm rings is perfect as it's one of my favourite colours and will give me lots of storage space. (Stephen K was correct about there being a new red Filofax in the future)  

As always, I'm interested to learn more about any models that I haven't owned before, so my first point of call is the catalogues page on Philofaxy to find more information. 

The Belgravia was first introduced back in 2002:

The leather on the exterior is wonderfully soft and feels slightly padded.

I think that it's a nice shade of red and I like the minimal styling. 

On the left interior, we have eight card slots with a further deeper slot at the bottom, a full length zipped pocket, a full length slip pocket behind and a pen loop. On the right, we have a notepad pocket and another pen loop. 

One downside to this model is that it sadly seems to suffer with cracking on the interior next to the rings. 

However, as the rest of the binder's structure seems solid, I believe this will only be a cosmetic flaw and I'm hoping that it won't get any worse. As I won't see the cracks when the Belgravia is in use, I decided to go ahead with my purchase as it's a wonderful Filofax apart from this. 

I forgot to photograph them, but Alan also very kindly added in some lovely extras with my Filofax, an A5 notepad (Fabriano EcoQua dot grid notepad) and a Filofax pin badge. I think that all of us should own these badges, so that we can identify a fellow enthusiast more easily! The notepad is perfect as it is 85gsm paper and the pages are glued for easier removal. 

As I'm still doing mostly training sessions, I'm using it mainly to take notes, but may make or buy some dividers to help me keep track of my to-dos. It's also perfect timing to get my A5 now as I will soon be starting another social media job, as well as my current bookkeeping role. 

 

UPDATE as of 23/01/21

Sadly in the short time that I've been using my Belgravia, the cracking has worsened (as mentioned in Feld Effekt's comment below), so unfortunately I would not recommend this model either. It is a shame as otherwise it is a lovely Filofax.  

Moving back into an A5 for work - by Anita

Over the years, I've owned a number of lovely A5 Filofaxes, but eventually sold them all as I never fully used them. For a very brief period of time (not even a week), I used an A5 Malden as my only binder, but realised that it was just too large for me to carry around. I guess that my defining moment was whilst packing for a weekend martial arts course and realising that my A5 wouldn't fit in my bag! 

Due to COVID-19, our household has been shielding since March, so I feel very grateful that I can easily work from home. In my previous job, I had been using a slim hardbound A4 notebook, along with Wunderlist to track my recurring tasks. For some reason, I have never used a Filofax for work and now that I think about that, I'm actually not sure why! 

I have recently started a new job solely working from home, so decided that it would be the ideal time to treat myself and use something nicer for my new role.

Until my new A5 arrives (a red Belgravia purchased from Alan), I am using my DIY A5 binder: 

Contents:

• Dashboard - a wonderful birthday card that my lovely husband gave me years ago
• Held together by individual binder clips that I previously purchased to store inserts
• An Oli clip to function as a fastener and pen loop
• Spare envelope for holding bits and pieces
• Inserts - I'm on a mission to use up what I already own, so I'm tearing pages out of notebooks/diaries and hole punching
• Dividers made from origami paper - my first attempt in the photo, so I may change these slightly
• Back page - I purchased something from the Getting Things Done shop ages ago and this alternative workflow diagram was included. 

Today was my first day with my new company, so I haven't written much yet, but I will be using it to write notes during subsequent Zoom training meetings and for an online course that I will be completing. 

So, will I also be using personal size in parallel for non work use? (question from David P)

To be honest, I'm not sure yet... However, I could see myself moving over to A5 for both work and personal use now, as portability won't be a consideration for quite some time due to COVID-19 and working from home. 

Once my Belgravia arrives, I shall be writing a review and then further posts on how my work and personal set ups develop. 

APATT* Nan's Work Filofax

*All Personal All the Time

Early in 2014, when I was still struggling to decide which organizers and diary formats I would use for the year, I came up with a way to simply my decision. During 2013, I'd found myself drifting toward doing everything on Personal-sized paper, even journaling and lengthy note-taking, so I decided to go Personal all the way for the year 2014. Whatever I needed my Filofaxes to do for me, I would have to make Personal size work. That put an end to my indecisiveness—at least for the next 12 months.

With the year more than halfway done, I thought I'd take stock of how APATT is working for me, starting with the Filofax I use on the job.

Step one was buying a new Personal organizer, since all my other Personals were either in use or not suitable. I ran out and got a Fusion, which was all I could find in my local shops on short notice. I'm not in love with its plain, nylon-bound appearance, but it's proved to be serviceable.

I filled it with:

1. Month on 2 Pages with tabs. This is where I keep track of deadlines and days blocked out for ongoing projects. In this photo, you can see one challenge already: The limited ring size. I will fix this by archiving, but I would love to have larger rings and be able to feel like I'm carrying all my information in my fist.

2. Week on 2 Pages diary, lined. I don't have a lot of appointments, so this works fine. I also note my coworkers' vacations so I know who's available.

3. Tabs. Only three are labeled so far: Projects, Notes (weekly meeting notes), and Research (future project development). These are the colored tabs that came with the Fusion.

4. Forms. Behind a few of the tabs, I have some vintage Filofax business forms. I haven't come up with a use for them yet, but I love having them.

5. A-Z Index. I use the standard cream-colored A-Z tabs to store contacts and reference info. 

Behind the Projects tab, I keep both To-Do pages and notes for each project. I soon realized that I needed some way to create tabs-within-tabs so I could quickly flip to whichever project's pages I needed. My solution is to color-code them with washi tape along the inside edge—a different color for each project. I arrange the projects in alphabetical order, which also helps me quickly find the project I'm looking for. 

Here you can also see that I have no trouble taking notes on the diminutive Personal pages. The tape does add to the organizer's bulk, though.

Using Personal for professional purposes is working well for me—except for the ring-size issue. There are also times when I yearn for larger pages to take notes on. If I continue using Personal for business in 2015, I will buy an organizer with larger rings; perhaps a Van der Spek. Or I'll go for something completely different, like an A5 Clipbook. 

Separate Work and Personal Life Organisers?

Do you use separate organisers for your personal life and your work life?

How do you decide what information is cross referenced between both organisers?

I know some of you combine everything in to one organiser, but I wonder if sometimes that might create issues with organiser overload, there's also keeping your own 'life balance' too?

If you have a separate work organiser do you leave it at your office? Or does it travel back and forth? 

Do you use the same size or different sizes? The same size would make it easier to swap pages between organisers of course.

Please share your tips in the comments below.

Work Filofax

I'm in the process of re-organising my A5 Finsbury Filofax. This organiser will become my work Filofax, which I use when we are doing property searches for people wanting to move to our area of France.

We can visit up to about 25 different houses before we submit a report to the clients. So there are a lot of details to collect, photos to take etc. Up to now I've been using my Finsbury Slimline, but I've been using a lot of personal size paper, so the change up to A5 seems to make a lot of sense.

I've printed a lot of the inserts myself and here are a few of them with some 'mock' details filled in so you can see what I need to record for each house. Please excuse my handwriting!

Page 1 of our preprinted survey sheet

Page 2 of the survey sheet.

A map showing the approximate location, we often don't get given the address of the property until we get there. I tend to then find the house using Google Earth and measure distances to shops, airports etc from that. We only work in this defined area which is centred on our house with most places within about a 50-60 minute drive of where we live.

My own description of the house in rough note form, which just helps when you are looking back at the photos later that day or the next day.

A sketch plan which together with the notes helps when we write up the detailed report for the client on each house.

At the moment my pages and inserts are based on what I've been using so far, but I suspect over time it will expand, but with the A5 Finsbury with 30mm rings I will at least have the capacity to absorb and extra pages or sections. 

Using Separate Filofaxes: Work vs. Personal

Michele had a question in her comment on my Where Did I Read This? post asking how people use separate Filofaxes for work vs personal use.

For those of you who do this, can you please give us details on how you decide what information goes into which Filofax, is there any/ very much overlap (information that goes into BOTH the work and personal use Filofaxes), and perhaps most importantly, do you use separate diaries/ planners for work and personal use? If you do, how to you manage both calendars and avoid scheduling conflicts (such as scheduling a doctor or dentist appointment at the same time as a work meeting, because your work Filo is at work and you only have your personal one with you)?

What are some difficulties you have discovered with having two operating Filofaxes, and how do you get around these? And also, how does having separate work vs personal Filos make things easier to manage?

Or, have you tried this method and found it just didn't work for you, you have to have everything in one book?