Dreams Do Come True

I have received as a very generous gift my "dream Filofax," a Personal Deco in Ivory!! It is gorgeous and I love it, love it, love it. I have posted a bunch of photos of it on my Flickr page!

It's a beautiful Filo, but the thing is a workhorse too. The closure strap is long so the book can be stuffed full (which I inevitably do with my Filos). It also has a full-length popper pocket inside the back cover, and inside the front cover there's a full-length zip pocket, another full length pocket, and card slots so it can double as a wallet (although I don't think I will use it that way).

One happy discovery is that the pen loop is leather on the front, and the back side is elastic to accommodate a wide range of pen sizes and shapes. Even my Bic 4 color pen fits into it, but I had to take it back out again because it's just not classy enough for this Filo!

It came loaded with all cotton-cream inserts including diary, address pages, and notes pages. Very nice. I'm not certain but the cotton cream pages seem a little thicker than the normal Filofax paper?

The Deco has hardly left my side since I got it and I have already spent some time getting to know it, loading it with my pages, and filling in the diary. Even though I had already filled in my 2010 week on 2 pages diary insert, I decided to do it all over again so I can use the cotton cream week on 2 pages because it looks so nice!

And if you were wondering, yes that clasp is even more beautiful in person!

Very, very happy with my new Deco!!

Free For All Friday No. 52

Happy Friday the 13th everyone! In the US at least, Friday the 13th is considered to be unlucky. But I was born on a Friday the 13th so I like to think of it as a lucky day. I hope it turns out to be lucky for you!

To add a bit to your luck, check out The Daily Planner if you are in the market for a Filofax Urban, they are on sale right now.

How's it going in your Filofax life these days?

Untidy and Cluttered Life...

I am always trying to not hold on to clutter these days. For the last year or so we have been working our way through this house that we have lived in since 1986 de-cluttering cupboards and rooms. It's all part of our plan to move to our other house in France. In doing so I've come across things I had forgotten I still had, things I had given up looking for.

I've also got rid of a lot of things that were kept 'just in case' well 'just in case' never became 'I'm glad I kept that' or very rarely!

So over this last year or so I've always been looking out for hints and tips on trying to reform my hoarding habits and improve my efficiency when it comes to storing information and things that are needed in future. Storing them in such a way that I will be able to find them when I need them.

The same exercise has also applied to my Filofax, as I said a few weeks ago, I've slimmed down my A5 to reduce the bulk of this organiser. In doing so I now spend less time hunting through the pages/sections for things... so that was a winning idea. But I still go back through it to see if I can take out any more..

This evening I came across another blog called 'Unclutter' naturally I couldn't resist doing a search for Filofax or Planner on there and hey presto up popped some previous articles:

• Creating a central binder for your home - This looked like a great application for a Filofax
• Staying organised with binder clips - You could use this idea for keeping your spare pages and inserts organised and always to hand, may be on the inside of a cupboard door. 
• Weekly meal planner - there is a nice template at the end of this that you could easily use in your Filofax

That's just three that caught my eye, but there are lots lots more to browse through... trouble is my A5 is in danger of getting fat again !

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Personalised Filofax Refills

I came across this press release this evening:

Letts and Filofax launch personalised diary service

Both Letts and Filofax brands are to launch a website this month offering customers the ability to create a personalised Letts diary, or Filofax organiser diary refill, including the addition of personal dates and photographs. The site has been created in collaboration with Penwizard, the award winning personalised publishing experts.

The site, at www.personalisedproduct.com allows the user to create either a Letts spiral bound diary, calendar or notebook; or a Filofax organiser pocket, personal or A5 diary refill. Unique features include the ability to enter an unlimited number of personal dates; the addition of names in silver embossing; and a personalised store of your dates and photos, allowing re-use of your information in the future.

Both Claire Coughtrie, Marketing Manager at Letts and Sharon Golbey, Marketing Manager at Filofax commented “This is a very exciting launch for us, representing a move into a developing market sector by two trusted brands. The opportunity to provide a product on line which has been completely personalised by the individual consumer is a significant strategic marketing development for Letts and Filofax”.

The formats available include:

• slim and A5 diaries
• wall and desk calendars
• A5 and A6 notebooks
• pocket, personal and A5 Filofax diaries

Customers can select from a variety of cover designs, and then upload their own personal photographs to appear in the diary. The system offers a selection of standard diary dates (such as UK holidays) to be added to the diary, before the user then enters their own personal diary dates.

Prices start from just £4.99 for an A6 photo notebook. Now there’s no excuse for anyone to forget that important anniversary or birthday!

For further press information, visuals, or to arrange a Press Product trial please contact Claire Coughtrie on 0131 663 1971 or at ccoughtrie@letts.co.uk

Remembering that Letts and Filofax are part of the same company, it was an interesting development. I've checked the Filofax UK site and I can't see any mention of this new product available on there.

However, clicking on to the site mentioned in the press release: www.personalisedproduct.com you will see a Filofax tab there. I guess a lot of us already personalise our 'fill' after our initial purchase and very few pages are discarded.

I'm note sure how popular this will be. May be give us your thoughts in the comments

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Goals and Tasks

This is a topic that I like to revisit every now and then, because I love to hear how people use their Filofaxes to accomplish their goals, complete their tasks, run their lives and rule the universe.

So today the topic is, goals and tasks. When do goals become tasks?

For example, your goal might be to be healthier. In order to do that, you need to generate some tasks. That might be, keeping a food journal to monitor your eating, or following an exercise plan. I usually have to schedule my exercise, so that I will actually do it instead of another week going by and I realize I haven't worked out at all. I also have to get specific about what I need to do that week, such as 3 strength training sessions and 3 cardio sessions. And I have to write them on my weekly page or again, I will forget to make time for them.

Another example of a goal that generates tasks is preparing the house for a move. We will be moving next summer, and I need to pare down and organize the household contents before moving. So I have a task list of things I need to go through and get rid of whatever I don't want to take with us: clothes, shoes, kids' toys, books (I never normally get rid of books but we have a lot of nonfiction that is outdated, books from university etc that I don't need to drag around anymore!), etc. It's a huge chore, and the only way I can face it is a little bit at a time.

In addition to the tasks generated by goals are those millions of little day to day tasks that build up because they aren't terribly urgent, but if I don't do them then I wind up having to write them over and over again from week to week. Before I know it, it's been a month since I promised my friend that I would burn that CD for her and I still haven't done it!

My problem is, I am terribly "out of sight, out of mind." So if my tasks are behind a tab somewhere, they are forgotten indefinitely. But if I write everything on my weekly pages that I want to do, the low-priority tasks mingle with the more urgent ones, my page fills up with tasks, and I get overwhelmed and don't know what to do next.

I need a more efficient system! Maybe I need to use a prioritization system to rank urgency of tasks on my weekly page. Maybe I need to write categorized Goals and Tasks lists and look at them every day to schedule tasks so that longer-range things don't get put off too long.

How do YOU use your Filofax to handle day to day tasks, longer-range/ non-urgent tasks, and tasks related to larger goals?? Do you have categorized lists like Home, Work, School, etc? How do you decide what to do when?