Help! How on earth can I stay in one darn binder for nearly three years, but I can’t stick with one style of inserts? It is driving me absolutely mad.
Don’t get me wrong, I do love my Organized Mum inserts. I love the ability to categorize my life. But at the same time, full weeks could get a bit overwhelming. See what I mean?
It’s just… a lot. A lot of black boxes full of scribbles. The left page doesn’t bother me quite as much, but the right side, with our schedules, is out of control. It’s messy, overwhelming, and completely unorganized. I tried giving Brian and I each our own box, then just writing across both boxes for events we were both involved in. But the small boxes made wordier events cramped and I had no way to accurately keep events chronological.
So I busted out my Hi-Tec Coleto and went back to color coding. I wrote schedules across the top of both right page columns and then gave us each a color for our schedules. Green is me, blue-black is Brian, and red is for events where we are both involved.
It’s better, but still not perfect. It’s easier to see our events, but I’m still struggling with actually visualizing our days. While I have more freedom to organize appointments chronologically, I still feel like I don’t have a good overview of our schedules. Then it hit me - I really miss seeing the vertical view of my day that I had while using my Filofax day per page, Franklin Covey day per page and two pages per day, and the two pages per day inserts I designed myself.
Then I was stuck. I want the vertical layout, but I’m LOVING being able to see my whole week at a glance. I’m sure I could order a set of Qimmis inserts, but I really don’t have the spare cash, not to mention it bothers me that the days end at 4 p.m.
Determined to make this work, I once again decided to design my own inserts. Instead of creating a design and unveiling them to my readers like I did last time, this time I decided to bring you all along for the ride! I know it will take me a while to perfect this design, so I plan on sharing each new “version” with you.
Here’s version one. I created vertical days and left them blank instead of lining them. At first it was mainly out of laziness, but I’m finding that I really do like the blank layout better! Saturday and Sunday share a column which hopefully won’t be too big of an issue. I left the days without times, though I did realize by Thursday that I much prefer to see some sort of timeframe so I hand wrote those in. On the left side below the days I made space for meals and on the right side I put check boxes for “sometime this week” tasks. There has been plenty of space after the time slots on each day to write in any day-specific tasks.
Of course, I immediately found a bunch of things I wanted to change. But, instead of going design happy, I’ve decided to live with each version for one week, then make any changes. I simply kept a sticky note on the page marker and noted any changes as they came to me…
Then on Monday, I did a redesign that adopted all of my required changes. Here’s version two:
The overall concept is the same, with a few tweaks here and there. I made most of the lines thinner as the original version was a bit overwhelming. I also added more space to write in the days and included a calendar strip down the right hand side where I can shade in which week of the month it is. I’ll just handwrite the month in above the date - hopefully this will make it easy to thumb through and find any week! I also added lines for the weekly tasks and added 7 a.m. to 8 p.m. time slots to the vertical days.
Today is only my second day with the newest version, but it seems to be working really well so far. I am loving the ability to really see my day in a format that my brain accepts, and my OCD loves that I can add an appointment without messing up the chronological order of my day. I haven’t had any issues running out of space yet, but I’m sure that could be solved with sticky notes or a day planner page when needed. I’m still color coding with the Coleto, which is working alright, but when I run out of refills I think I’ll give the Uni Style Fit a whirl since it has my favorite Signo ink. We shall see.
Since this is still an experiment I am still planning my days on the Organized Mum inserts as well - I need them especially for forward planning. It’s kind of a fun little test to see which ones I naturally gravitate towards!
What are your thoughts? Anything I’ve forgotten that might be helpful? I’d love some feedback with your thoughts!
Labels: design, Filofax, Malden, Organization
