Guildford extra slim!

Those of you who have children might have experienced the special feeling when you first meet your older child again just after the new baby has arrived - suddenly the older child is incredibly big! Huge! A giant!

It happened to me today. No, I didn't have a new baby, but I did meet a new filofax! Guildford extra slim came in the mail this afternoon.

First impression: But it's so tiny?! 

Second impression: It's really, really tiny!

Third: It's like an a4, except it's for a doll's house?!

Fourth: It's small even for a wallet...

See for yourself! Here it is, on top of Roxy, my A5 Finsbury:

And here with it's bigger relative, the Guildford slimline:

And here it is again, next to my mini Finsbury:

I bought it used, for just under 10 euros (where's the euro sign on my keyboard?). The rings are 11 mm and in good condition. Only 54g. The leather is the same as in the other Guildfords I own. Smooth and very soft.  No mesh pockets, I'm happy with that... No pen loop.

There's some sign of wear on the outside, but nothing that bothers me. 

I will use it for my action lists, which have so far travelled mostly in the mini Finsbury. The Finsbury has a calendar in it, but I very rarely use it so I think I'll manage with a monthly overview instead. I can put some of my most used cards in the pockets, like my id, bank and credit card, passcard for the office, public transport card. But that's about it. 

See, the action lists have already moved in! There's to much personal stuff in there so I won't show you more than this, sorry... ;-) But I have ten or so sections for actions in context, e.g., at home, at the office, talk to my DH, buy, pay, findout etc. and I use them all the time.

I think I will be very happy with this filofax! But I think it will take me atleast a day or too to look at the others without thinking they're too big and clumsy! 

Meet Bond, A5 Bond...

I found an ad for a brand new unused, very reasonably priced, A5 Bond, and I bought it... My though was to use it for work, as my stay-at-work planner. It arrived in the mail today! Here he is!

It's the same model as the one I used for my son's Birthday project. He seems to be in good shape, the rings are looking well (fingers crossed there). It doesn't lay flat when opened, but I'll work on that.

It may be a little out of character and a perhaps a little mean to Mr Bond, but I wanted a filofax that wasn't pretty enough to distract me from my actual work. Anything in genuine leather would have me stroking it and sighing instead of planning... Grown up decision, eh?

The set-up 
I will use it for taking notes in meetings, for pen-and-paper planning, for keeping reference material handy and action lists for my different projects. I will also keep track of hours spent on different projects. I am not sure I'll want to use the generic calendar, rather loose sheets for the week at hand when I'm busy with a particular project (they usually don't overlap). My work requires some travelling, and I have spent too many hours offline in an airplane without access to some important piece of information I needed... No more!

My preliminary sections/dividers:

• Inbox
• Meeting notes
• Next actions
• Waiting for
• Project 1
• Project 2
• Project 3
• Project 4
• Later
• Someday/maybe
• Reference material
• Email addresses and phone numbers for my colleagues and clients
  (good to have on paper as well as digitally)

I think that's it! I'll give you an update on how I progress with my work set up.

the Holy Grail of organisation

I had a lovely vision this morning.

Imagine me sitting down, at home on a Sunday like this. Going through my gtd inbox (=random notes and scribbles) in my filofax, Roxy, and updating my action lists. At some point I add an appointment to my calendar, and I know it should be added to my husbands calendar, too. Now I would like it to be magically, or atleast with minimal effort, sent to him!

I don't want to have to write a separate note and remember to give it to him later, start up the computer to write an email or text or call him. It should be extremely quick and also fit his style of organisation. He uses a moleskine diary, spends several hours a day in front of computers and has his Android with him most of the time. 

I'm not psychic, so I can't make the thoughts and info appear in his mind, so I suppose I have to stay within what is physically and technologically possible. Speech, notes on paper and digital representations will have to do!

What I do today is usually just hand him the original inbox note with some extra info on what's been decided and let him process it any way he likes. It's a good system. The drawback is I have to remember to give it to him (it's actually an action item in itself!) and when he's out of the country on work they tend to pile up here. Some of them need to be acted upon before he comes back.

Technology is getting there, I suppose. Just look at the Evernote Moleskine initiative (the price of the notebook is, well, crazy) and the Whitelines link app and paper. Whitelines allow you to download the paper as pdf for free which allows for (or at least inspires) all sorts of attempts at adaptation and tweaking - yay!

Wouldn't it be nice to be able to capture what's handwritten on a page in your filofax (or any other piece of paper for that matter) and with a click or two on your smartphone have the relevant information sent to whomever it should reach? I would love an app like this! The computer scientist in me will have to give this some serious thought... :-)

Magically (digitally) sharing my handwritten paper-based calendar items and actions with other people in the appropriate format at the right time. 

This is my Holy Grail of organisation, what's yours?

Moveable action lists

I dearly love my A5 Raspberry Finsbury, and she (yes, it's a she...) is my main Filofax. But she is heavy, and I can't bring her along wherever I go. My action lists need to go with me, however.  I also want to be able to carry them in both my mini and my personal. So I decided on a format that works well for me:

It's basically a mini page, and I punched it with the mini hole punch. All the holes have little slits in them so they can be lifted off the rings. As you can see, this page will not fit in a personal, so I cut off the corner.



When I process my inbox I write my action lists, and when I'm at home, they stay in my A5, and when I go out I move them to either the mini or the personal.

What about you, do you move information between your organisers daily?

Removeable notes

I don't know if there is anyone else out there who doesn't really like opening the rings of you filofax, but I don't! I'm always worried things will fall out or that the mechanism will wear out too soon, and instead I just let things stay where they are, which sort of defeats the purpose of a filofax... And when I eventually muster up enough courage to open the rings I have a lot of reorganising to do.

So I cut out little squares of paper, and punched them with three holes so that they will fit into all my organisers (mini, personal and A5) and made small slits from the punched holes so they can be removed from the organiser without opening the rings. I have blank pieces in all my organisers and keep stacks of them around the house and in my office, too.

I use these mostly for GTD inbox/bucket style notes. Whenever I think of something I need to put in my inbox I jot it down. Later I just pull the notes out from all the organisers (and my pockets!) and put them in my inbox. 

Most of them are torn up when they end up rewritten as items on a next actions list, but this one was added as a reminder in my calender. See? 

Of course I have to be careful and make sure the slits are not too worn if I reuse it, but most of the time they are ok being moved a few times.