Using A3 paper in A5 size Filofax

I did a post about this last year, which you might remember. But when I showed people the map at one of the meet ups, the post suddenly made sense! The original post has all the dimensions etc

So I've done a quick video of how to fold your A3 map so it can fit an A5 Filofax.

I'm sure some of the owners new A5 Filofax purchased in the last few days might find this of use, I hope so...

Philofaxy Skype Round-Table - Thank You...

Wow what an event that was yesterday. 13 people involved and a total length of the conference call was 3 hours 37 minutes!!!!

Thank you to everyone that took part either for the first time or this was a repeat visit to the 'table'

In a way the chats are similar to a meet up, except that instead just chatting to your immediate neighbours sat around a real table, in the Skype chat you hear everyone and everyone hears you. So you sometimes have to be a little patient to break in with your comment! But I thought it really worked well yesterday.

Not all 13 people were there all the time, one or two disappeared to talk to their families and then were surprised we were still chatting away so they came back again!

Thank you for your patience as well, getting the conference set up at the start can be a little hectic whilst everyone gets connected and we do the introductions... Skype names versus Twitter names versus Comment names... Yes it can be a little confusing, but we get there in the end.

About an hour after we finished I then had my bi-weekly Skype chat with some old buddies of mine who are all retired radio engineers... quite a contrast! Although last night the discussion was mainly about CCD cameras used for astro physics, one of our group used to work at the observatories on the Canary Islands. I didn't need much rocking to get to sleep last night!!!

So once again thank you to everyone that took part in the Philofaxy Skype Round-table. I think the earlier time worked better for some people, I would be interested in your feed back on that point. It certainly meant that Laurie could join in and I know she loves taking part because then she feels less isolated in a time zone sense.

Until the next one in July..... Thank you..

Multi Pens For Your Filofax

If like me you have recently tried going to just one Filofax. Or you are downsizing from an A5 to Personal or from any Filofax with two pen loops to one with only one pen loop. Then you might run in to the same problem I did. I like to enter future appointments in pencil and record past events in ink.

I'm not a big pen buff like some of you so I don't know the difference between the various makes and types etc. But at someone's suggestion I took a look at 'Multi Pens'. I had come across these before, but I didn't realise you could get some that were a combination of a pen and pencil, or multiple pens and a pencil.

My other concern was the diameter of the pen barrel, so that it would fit my Malden.  So I made an enquiry with 'Cult Pens' in UK and Michael Randall of Cultpens really came up trumps with some suggestions.

The Tombow Zoom 414 is one of my favourites, and is 9.5mm at its widest point.  It has a pencil and two standard 'D1' multipen refills, which can take anything here:
http://www.cultpens.com/acatalog/D1-Multipen-Refills.html
http://www.cultpens.com/acatalog/Tombow_Zoom_414_Multipen.html


Zebra's Sharbo Diary Pen may be a bit too thin, at 7-8mm:
http://www.cultpens.com/acatalog/Zebra_Sharbo.html

Lamy have a couple of options, too, that would be worth looking at:
http://www.cultpens.com/acatalog/Lamy-cp1-multipen.html
http://www.cultpens.com/acatalog/Lamy-st-multipen.html

Pelikan and Ohto both sell almost the same multipen, presumably both made by Ohto, which are 9mm diameter:
http://www.cultpens.com/acatalog/Pelikan-Multi-4x1.html
http://www.cultpens.com/acatalog/OHTO-Multi-Slim-4.html

It's worth noting that the Ohto version can only take Ohto's refills - standard D1 refills are too wide at the tip.

Thank you Michael for these suggestions.

It had also been suggested to me to take a look at the Pilot Frixion series of erasable gel pens. These are a clever ink pen that using friction from the tip of the pen it erases the writing without damaging the paper and without leaving behind any eraser dust.

I bought one of their standard range a few weeks ago to try it out in my Filofax and I've been very pleased with it.

There is a Frixion Slim version, This has an 8mm diameter barrel, which does fit a Filofax pen loop. These will also take refills as well.

What pen do you use with your Filofax?

A5 Day Per Page Business Style Diary

I bought an A5 Day Per Page (Business Style) diary insert a couple of weeks ago at a vastly reduced price of £1.00!!! It was in clearance sale in a store in UK I was visiting the other week.  OK it was five months in to the year, but I thought it would be a good opportunity to try out this format to see if it worked for me or not.

I think you will agree that you can look at a blank diary until you are 'blue in the face'... but until you try it for a few days you have no idea if it will work for you or not... or is it just me...

The other thing I should mention at this stage is that I've never used a page per day diary of any sort before now. So this trial was voyage in to the unknown.

So what is in this diary insert? So starting at the front:

• 2011 Calendar 
• 2010 and 2012 Calendars
• Personal Information
• Notable Dates 2011
• Religious Festivals 2011
• European Union Members 2011 (Country, Capital, Currency, Time Zone, Dialling in and out, National Holidays)
• International Information 2011(Country, Capital, Currency, Time Zone, Dialling in and out, National Holidays)
• Weights and Measures (conversion factors)
• The World and Time
• World Temperature Guide
• Clothing Size Equivalents - It seems I'm big in any size where ever you are!
• Expenses record (2 pages)
• Meeting Planner (2 pages)
• Delegation Review (2 pages)
• ToDo (2 pages)
• Birthdays, Anniversaries and Special Occasions 
• The Diary it self which is page per day Monday to Friday and a single page for Saturday and Sunday. 

So most of the above content is common to most diary inserts, so I will concentrate on the diary pages themselves. 

So note that this format is only in English, which I prefer as the other languages tend to clutter the page in my opinion. International holidays are indicated with the country code under the day.  A small monthly calendar block appears on each page. The Week number and the days in to the year and the number of days until the end of the year also appear in the header.

Today, gives you somewhere to add general notes, birthdays and other 'all day' events.

Then in the left hand column you have your appointment schedule from 07:00 - 19:00 hours, but with some blank space below for later appointments.  There is also a tick column to check off things during the day.

Moving over to the right hand column it starts with To Do/Notes,  then Phone/Correspondence, Tasks to Delegate and finally Personal Reminders.

Saturday and Sunday are similar, but there are no specific times in the Appointment Schedule and there is only the To Do/Notes. There is however, still the same header information.

So I've mocked up a couple of pages to show you how I'm using this diary insert

So firstly ignore the fact that it's on pages from February... no it's not warm enough for a BBQ in February!

The appointment schedule is fairly self explanatory. The To Do list I really like, I add to these lists during the day. Tasks that need to be done that done that day I add an * in the left column. Tasks that I complete get ticked. Ones that don't get completed are copied over to the next day.  I put non-critical tasks at the foot of the To Do list.

I occasionally include the weather that day in the Today notes as well as our swimming pool temperature.

Overall I'm very pleased with the way this insert works for me, having the to-do list visible every day is a big bonus for me. Looking back through the past days I can see at a glance from the tasks completed, I can see what I was doing each day and how long it took me to get around to doing something if a task is copied over from one day to the next continuously.  I also write in tasks that I do that I hadn't put in the list to start with, a lot of satisfaction from seeing things ticked off!

I'm not sure if I'm using this insert as the designer intended, or in true GTD style, but as with all of these things you can easily adapt them over time.

I have the diary set up in my A5 Malden, so it sits next to me on my desk all the time.  So I will be ordering my A5 Page per Day insert for 2012 soon.

Web Finds - 4 June 2011

Posts at this end of the week were not in abundance, but there are some interesting ones all the same.

• Botanic Pocket - Strickmuse
• Dream Planners - Rori
• Louis Vuitton Filofax Agenda - Louis Vuiton
• Filofax Blackberry App - Emma McIntyre *

* I stumbled upon this page almost by accident as one does... The app was a university student concept study about what a Filofax app might look like etc. It was never actually created as such. It was never show to Filofax themselves as far as I understand.  But an interesting idea... Emma is a Filofax user herself.  I also found a similar concept study here;

And here is Imy's first impressions of the Flex by Filofax, she is was very excited, but you can forgive her for that I'm sure!

Enjoy and have a great weekend.