27 September 2013

Free for All Friday No. 254

Last week we talked about getting ready for 2014, and certainly the turning of the year is the most important time for big Filofax changes. But do you do anything in-between? Do you change colors with the seasons? Do you do periodic clean-outs?

And of course, all other Filofax-related discussion is welcome. Have a great Friday!

16 comments:

  1. Because I switched to a compact Filofax from a personal Pimlico this year I am testing the number of diary pages and other pages I keep in my planner. I have a Day on one page insert (few weeks at a time) and a Week on two pages insert in my binder. I like the daily pages instead of an additional piece of paper that I used with the Wo2P insert. I can write small lists on the page and just take the page out of my planner as I am shopping. I don't have to make so many separate lists. Also I prefer to not place a lot of sticky notes on my Wo2P or a piece of paper in between the Wo2P. The daily pages allow me to write the information I need and I don't have to use extra pieces of paper. I have had to condense the contents of my binder, but it is a change that makes me focus more on the diary pages and the important information.

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  2. my general strategy is to have two 'big reviews' every year - one in between Christmas and the New Year, which has always been a 'dead' time for me anyway productivity-wise, and the other at the end of May (which is really a hangover from the days when we used to take our three children on holiday with *my* parents, so there was a good opportunity for free time and space. During recent years this has got a bit more 'fuzzy', as we no longer have that holiday pattern (and I'm no longer in that marriage), but also because I like to do my 'new year' when the schools go back (see previous posts on this). So my 'big' review is now July/August time, but that's without the benefit of the 'dead' time provided by Christmas. Still, the weekly review keeps me on track, so it's not as big a problem as it would have been pre-GTD!

    Binder-wise, I just occasionally switch from the Hampstead to the Cuban for a change, but I invariably find I'm back in the Hampstead after a couple of days!

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  3. I don't have diary pages as such in my filofax - that lives in my work Outlook - but I do have todo pages which are often dated. These are marked as completed or dismissed (i.e. all tasks on this page have been done, or any undone tasks on this page have been carried forward or killed off) and gradually accumulate in the binder. Generally I have a bit of a clearout every couple of months where I skim through and review the pages before 'now' and then hive off a chunk of them to a storage binder or batch them up in treasury tags and file them away. It's useful to keep stuff because I often have meeting minutes interleaved, and/or it acts as a record of events which can be handy should an issue arise later... feral project managers on the rampage can frequently be quelled if you can show them documentary evidence that they said 'X' on date 'Y' and it's saved me from a nasty savaging before now!

    I don't use printed inserts but I do use lots of different types of paper. Main to-dos are on cream Rhodia paper which is slightly shorter than A5, meeting minutes live on punched pages from an A5 Rhodia meeting book (A5 with rounded corners); Notes and reference information tend to live on halved A4 printer paper (or whatever they came on, punched and folded to fit) and I have some really nice old paper (no idea where it came from) which is slightly larger than A5 and gets used for stuff I want to be able to find quickly. So instead of lots of tabs I have only a few major tabs and different types of stuff are identifiable by what they're written on...

    @David Popely - Interesting that you used to use the dead time between Christmas and New Year for a big review... I usually do my annual tax return in that period, typically on 29th or 30th!

    As I've only got three A5 binders at the moment - I live in A5 and can't see myself ever downsizing to personal - I tend to just stick with one. The last swap over occurred about 6 months ago when I switched from the Ascot (30mm rings) to the Pimlico in red (25mm rings) to make it a bit easier to carry. The second Pimlico is black and the rings are not perfectly aligned, so I'll probably end up using that one as a storage /staging binder at some point.

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  4. I carry two pocket Filos with me all the time. One as a wallet and the other as a traveling planner in my purse. I keep three months of WOTP in it. I clean out a month of old pages and replace it with a new month every four to five weeks due to space limitations. I keep my pages in the original box it came in for reference if needed. I also have larger ones that keep more pages but that is the planner that is by my side 24/7 and I am most dependent on.

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  5. Would anybody have a spare set of Jot Pads they don't need? I'd order one off the Filofax website but postage ($2.90) is almost as much as the item itself ($4)...otherwise I'll just have to wait till I make a bigger future order.

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    1. This comment has been removed by the author.

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    2. I have one. Where can I send it?

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    3. email me at happypebble @ lycos.com.

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  6. Usually I don't change too much other than cleaning out bits that are no longer needed, but when I ordered a new style of 2014 inserts and saw that the 2013 set was severely discounted, I grabbed a set of those as well! So, it looks like I'll be switching over the rest of my 2013 weekly pages as soon as they arrive :)

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  7. This is off the current subject, but I am desparate to see some setups and pages that are not riddled with washi tape and stickers. I am a female with an all brown (including ink) filofax, with the exception of calendar stickers on my monthly pages. I use these stickers because the sections are too small to write in. Every now and then I'll use a different color pen if I want something pop, but other than that it's brown and cream. I tried the sticker thing for a while in my ARC, but it seemed so pointless and just wasn't up my alley. Everytime I look for ideas all that comes up are filofaxes rife with teddy bears and Hello Kitty and butterflies. Nothing wrong with color and beauty, and I do enjoy looking at them, but for practical purposes I need to see something a bit more reigned in. There was recentt post about this, but I still haven't found many blogs or videos that hit the spot.

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    1. Like you, I use a brown Personal FF for all my needs. I use cotton cream paper throughout, and the only difference between us is that I don't use brown ink (although I've considered it and own some). My setup is GTD-based, it's completely washi tape/cute stickers free, and I use it in both business and personal contexts, full time. basically, my FF is never *not* with me.

      I'm about to write a guest post for Philofaxy detailing how I use my setup, but I already have some photos, taken preparatory to writing that post, which I'd be glad to share, along with some commentary (which will probably form the basis of the guest post) if you'd like to email me off-list at davidpopely (at) googlemail (dot) com

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    2. I too am entirely sticker/decoration averse for my FFs except for (B&W) photo dividers. I have a 1987 FF product list; somehow I can't imagine inserts like, for example, item 541, the "Platoon Cdrs personnel records" form being improved with a Hello Kitty sticker!
      I am currently making custom inserts for a film photography log book/data guide in a pocket Malden; I think it's going to work quite well and will be a reasonable size to go out in either the camera bag or the darkroom bag.
      Obviously each to his/her own though, that is the point of FFs isn't it?

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    3. While if also enjoy looking at decorated pages, I cannot use them myself. I get too distracted. While I did use colored ink on my pages, they are void of any stickers or washi tape. I don't know what kind of examples you are looking for, but feel free to check out my Flickr page, accessible via the Philofaxy photo pool (or search kanalt17).

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    4. Patty at HomeMakersDaily has an EXCELLENT section about the use of her planner, and planners in general : you'll see that her planner is devoid of stickers and doodles, but there are numerous examples as to how you can use your pages, put several information on a page, use the different sections of each page in a way that *you* find useful, etc.

      http://homemakersdaily.com/category/archived-articles-about-time-management/

      "Highly recommended" :)

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  8. As an leather organiser addict, I want to confess my fault, in not knowing Launer until Steve posted his new beauty. It's really all that I would like to have in an Organiser. I know now that they stopped to make organizers some years ago, but the company is "Alive and Kicking", so I mailed them "sales@launer.com" in order to know, as this fever is growing each day, if they had thinked in starting making them again. 
    Next day I received a mail from Mr. Gerald Bodmer, saying that there are not enough demand to justify producing them again.
    I thought: As people like us are a part of "the demand", why not every one of us who like their wonderful Organisers, send them some kind of "group or individual" petition?

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    1. Cost would obviously be a factor here, but dependant on that, I'd be interested in joining any group approach.

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