How to build your perfect planner system? Week 20: Use more planners!

In the last post I summarised what everything you can have your planner and how you can organize it. I mentioned also, you might have use more planner (as I do). Why should you want to use more planner? The best way is to keep everything on the same place... I will try so much possible scenario to collect as I can.

You are a lot away from home and you don't want a big and heavy planner with you

Maybe you are using public transport, and you need your schedule with you. You can have to planner, one which you carry with you and one what stays at home. What size should you use? For "Home" planner you should have an A5 and for "On the go" planner a personal. Or pocket size. But if you fit to a personal size, both can the same size. I tried to use personal size, but it is too small for me. So I take my A5 planner with me! It's up to you. Keeping all planners in the same size have a very strong benefit: if you change your mind and want to move something from one planner to the other, you can do it easily! But it is not a must. What to keep in which planner? It needs a brain dump, what should you need on to go? Calendar for sure. Some informations, but not all. Phone numbers, if your phone is going dead. If you are going to work, work projects. But you might have also a work planner, what you leave on the workplace. Lot of people use Filofaxes as a wallet. You can have here all your cards, receipts, finance stuff, and calendar. Of course note paper and post its are must :) You can leave home most of your informations, home projects, yearly plan, etc.

Work and Personal planner

You might divide your stuff for work and personal. Here I have a very important advice: even if you have two planners, you should have only one calendar! If you have two, it will be cause a chaos one day. Keeping everything synchronized is an impossible mission. Ok, not 100 percent sure. There are some things, what you don't have to know on the other situation. If you have a blog planner why not to have an editorial calendar on it? You don't need that information what blog post you want to write, when you make a doctor appointment. But if the assistant offers you an appointment for working hours, you have to know, if you have that time a meeting, or it is possible to go later to work. If you have this informations in two planner, it makes a chaos. Also you can have work deadlines only in your work planner, because it should not influence if you can go out with your friend on Friday evening. 

Something is too big or important in your life

Do you have a hobby? You might have a separate planner for it. To keep track you make, have, want, idea, brainstorming.... Do you write a blog? You can have a blog planner. Do you go to university? Have a study planner! Fitness planner.

You don't have enough space

If you like write and keel by hand so much stuff as I, you should have take out some sections from your "Main" planner. Have a separate Projects, Informations, 17 dividers ... planner. Why not?

What do you think: do you need more planner? What would you keep separate? Why? Share your thoughts on Facebook or here in comment!

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How to build your perfect planner system? Week 19: What to keep in your planner and how to organize?

Have you noticed, I left a week out! We were in Paris :) I'm back again, and ready to continue!

What do you have now? 

If you have going with me, you have calendars, to dos, list, informations, someday/maybe section, or 17 dividers, notes, planning section, goals, projects. OMG, what a chaos! Do you need all? Where? What is important? From what you have a lot, and what is only a piece of paper? You might not need notes sections, because you don't make too much, or you use daily pages, and it's enough. You might not need to keep any information in your planner. Think about that, when you move on and plan, what to keep in your planner and how to organize all that stuff.

Stay by the logic we followed until now

But you don't have to have too much sections. What was the logic? Stuff comes in: Inbox. Time related stuff goes to: Calendar. Tasks are going to: Projects and Planning. No task, no time related is: Information. Notes are also Informations, isn't they? Goals belong also to planning. Lists are interesting things. They can be informations, like a wish list, or they can be also tasks! If you use only the bold sections, it will be only 5, not too much. 

Keep it simple

The simplest way is if you have a landing zone with an inbox and notepapers, than your calendar(s) and planning pages - together or separated? Is up to you. Until now we kept the two thing in separate sections. I'm now in trieing keeping it together, and I'm very satisfied! I think, this subject deserves a separate post! Than have an A-Z section, where you keep everything else. Yes. No dividers. Contacts are going to C, Informations to the letter what is it about (colors to my homepage are by me by C, routines by R, etc), Projects to P...

Lift out 

You have a lot pages from something? Half of your planner is by P, because you have a lot projects? Make for this a separate section. Keep all other stuff in the A-Z tabs. 

I started here to lift out some stuff, I'm not sure yet, what I want, that's why I didn't created dividers yet.

And my A-Z dividers

Thematize

Lot of people like to keep sections in their planner like: Family, Work, Home, Finances, etc. Are you one of them?

More levels

It can be also overwhelming, but it is also simpler than a 100 divider system :) Some example:

- Calendar: Monthly/Weekly/Daily section

- Work: Calendar/Informations/Finances/Projects

- Projects: Work/Home/Personal

- Blog: Editorial calendar/Statistic/Weekly planner/Ideas

My example: I started to set up a separate "business planner" for me. For now, I have these main categories:

In all sections will be sub-sections

Blog - sub-sections

OMG! Subsections in subsection!

I added to Blog Planner also monthly tabs.

Combine

Or combine any of the above mentioned ideas together!

If you have any other organizing idea/logic, please do not hesitate to share in comments below or on the Facebook!

Housework for next week

Make a brain dump: what logic is your way? What is heavy in your planner? Use page flags to make your system, and use your planner with it for couple of week. Re-organize if it was not the best solution! If you are happy with it for a while, make your dividers!

What am I doing here? Using more planners? O, yes, I have a lot! Next time I will be write about why you would want to use more planner, and how to organize them.

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How to build your perfect planner system? Week 18: Calendar combinations and more about the dailies

Last two weeks I wrote about monthly and weekly calendars, today we arrived to the daily insert. Until now I was asking you to use daily pages, but from now on you can decide if you need it or not. It depends on, what other calendars you use.

I can imagine some combinations...

- Do you have only a few appointments and time related tasks? Use monthly calendar to write your appointments and one or more running tasks list.
- Do you have a lot of appointments and not too much time related tasks? Use only weekly calendar and write here all appointments and your time related tasks. Have some tasks list for not time related tasks.
- Do you have only a few appointments but you need detailed daily task list? You might need monthly calendar for appointments and daily dockets for daily planning.
- You might like to see the big picture in the monthly calendar, more details in your weekly and also need more place for daily planning. Use them all!

How to organize those calendars?

There are two options here: 

1. Have a section for all type: monthlies, weeklies, dailies. This is the common way. Most of calendar you buy in print contains the months, weeks after each other's back.

2. In time. You might find some monthly calendar, which is printed on 4 pages, something on the first and last side, and in the middle is the calendar itself. In this case you can place your weekly, daily inserts between two monthly insert. I like this way much better, this is how I organize my planner. If you don't buy inserts you can also make yourself that's way.
Where to put the dailies? By 2/4 pages per week, I have no better idea, only between the two half of the week. But if you have your all week on one page, and the other is for notes, you can place it after that page.
What if you don't need a daily insert every day, but sometimes it would be good? You can stick a post it to your weekly calendar, and plan there your day. Or a notepaper. Or take an undated daily insert. Keep some from them in your planner, just be by your hand if you need one. 

I think, I already wrote this, but here I want mention again: keep couple month monthlies before and after the current month (I like to keep a whole year for the future, but I didn't printed yet for the next year... I should, shouldn't I? :)) Keep couple of weeklies (3-4 is enough I think), and only 1, maximum 2 week dailies in your planner. It makes no sense to make it too heavy. I remove Sundays always the whole week.

You can take a look into my current system:

Daily inserts

Ok, let's say, you need them. If not, you can wait to the next week's post! do1p or do2p? If you have lot to write, or you have a smaller planner, you might need two pages per day. You might use one side for concrete planning: schedule, tasks lists. And the other side for note taking, doodle, decorating, tasks has to tracked, writing journal, shopping list, keeping post it notes for running to do list, etc. I recommend if you are right handed, keep the planning side on the right and the notes on the left, and if you are left handed, than mirrored. If you have a bigger planner, or you don't want to write too much, you can take a do1p insert. A little trick: if you want to write on this always on the right (left) side, punch the other side too, and flip it over for the next day!
What you need to write on the daily page? I showed you a lot different options before.

Homework

What calendars do you need? How you want to organize them? Reorganize your planner this way! Think about it: do you need a daily page? What do you need on that page? Find/make yourself the perfect daily planner page!

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If you have any questions, please do not hesitate to ask in comment! Share your experiments in our Facebook group, and get more help!  

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