Well Planned Life

A couple of weeks ago, I attended a meeting.   We had a guest speaker come in to talk to the group.   The first thing I noticed about this woman was the huge planner she was carrying.   She carried it in the crook of her arm, not stowed away in a bag.   Naturally, I got excited, hoping to see this planner in action. Once we all sat down, I could tell that it was a Franklin Covey binder , something along the lines of their Classic size .   It was black and shiny and wonderful.   It looked very new, which was confirmed once she opened the binder to that day’s inserts—the Monticello two pages per day , to be exact, with the matching tabbed months interspersed throughout.   (From what I could tell, she had the entire year in that binder.)   There was nothing written on that day’s pages.   My thought was, “Well it’s new, so I can understand that.   But she doesn’t even have this meeting written in.”   I wasn’t judging, mind you. ...

While I don’t make a point to discuss work here, I will occasionally discuss work indirectly, insofar as it may pertain to organizing and the like. A couple of weeks ago I attended a countywide meeting for work.   The purpose of this meeting was to discuss various programs each library had done.   One woman talked about a series of programs her library had done, and in particular discussed how all publicity for these programs were designed alike to show that it was a series and not independent programs.   During her discussion, she mentioned how OCD she and her team members are, that they all needed to have a cohesive look where the flyers were concerned, etc.   (But as any good designer/marketer will tell you, this is how it should be.)   I was excited because I can totally relate. As we all know, I am OCD in many ways.   And while some of my coworkers might be considered OCD, they cannot be classified as such in the same way that I am.   The...

I like me some Seinfeld .   I haven’t seen every episode, nor am I a huge fan of the show.   But I like it.   Every once in a while I turn on the reruns in the evening just to watch something.   I am familiar with many episodes but can’t spew the dialog the way I can with other shows. In any event, I happened to turn it on last week.   I happened to catch the episode where Elaine is doing some ghost writing for (I think) her boss.   I just happened to actually look at the screen during this scene: It’s not the best capture of Jerry, but do you see what caught my attention?   It’s the planner he’s holding when George comes in to discuss a date that Jerry had just made with some woman or another. Thank goodness I have DVR, which allowed me to rewind it and make sure I was correct in what I thought I saw.   I now have a new respect for Jerry. This planner seems to be rather non-descript, though from the looks of the inserts, I’d ...

Well, not at all, really. So the “sighting” below isn’t about planners at all.   But I think it speaks to the philosophy of why this community prefers paper over digital formats for planning, or least why we prefer not to use digital in its entirety since many of us use a hybrid system. Below is a snippet of Miranda Lambert’s new song “Automatic.” If you had something to say You’d write it on a piece of paper Then you’d put a stamp on it And they’d get it three days later… Hey, whatever happened to waitin’ your turn Doing it all by hand, ‘Cause when everything is handed to you It’s only worth as much as the time put in It all just seemed so good the way we had it Back before everything became automatic If you listen to the rest of the song, you’ll see that the song points to nostalgia of a time that was simple, before everything was digital and instant and, well, um, automatic.   I think we can all appreciate that. Click here to list...

I’m currently reading One True Thing by Anna Quindlen and came across a passage having to do with a datebook (no brand associated, though one can perhaps assume a Filofax, based on the mention of an included map of the London Underground, or maybe that’s just my assumption, though one should never assume…).   To avoid any copyright issue, I will paraphrase the passage: Someone gives the main character a datebook, which at first goes unused.   She flips through the blank pages just thinking about the possibility those empty pages could represent.   Describing the empty pages, she is looking back, so the narrator mentions that in present day, she uses the datebook, would be lost without it.   Her friend says she is anal about the use of this datebook, that the reason behind it is to bring order to a chaotic world.   The main character, however, states that it’s just become habit the way one eats corn on the cob in one direction or another. Also, she...

A while back, I teased you all with a post about Someday, Someday, Maybe , a book featuring Filofax.   Obviously, there is more to the book than that, but that is what caught my eye and made me read it.   I bought the book figuring I would want to own such a treasure—it’s s good thing I did since it has taken me almost three months to read it and finally get a review up.   I did finish it a while ago, but I’m only getting around to reviewing it now.   On the whole, it was an okay book—it’s your typical chick lit read.   Franny Banks is an aspiring actress in New York City.   She works as a waitress when she’s not acting.   She has a quasi-boyfriend, finds a real one, and of course questions whether or not he’s right for her.   She has given herself a deadline of six months to get her life in order, which is where the Filofax comes in to play.   Can she do it?   Does she end up with the boyfriend?   After many dead-end leads, ...

Today’s post is a collection of random items. 1.   A Broken Today I always use two Today markers in my Filofax—one to mark the current month and one to mark the current day.   Somewhere along the line, I received a clear ruler, which I use for the month.   In the past, I used a black ruler for the current day.   The idea here was that I could see through the clear one to the black one behind it, but if I had the black one first (I keep my monthly sheets before my daily sheets), I wouldn’t necessarily see the clear one behind he black one.   I don’t know if this is really true, but this is how my OCD brain works.   Eventually I bought a frosted ruler to replace the black one since I prefer the clear(ish) rulers to the solid color ones.   Anyway, more often than not, I flip to my pages by using the bottom part of the today marker—with my thumb, I’ll flip the ruler itself to access whichever page I’m looking for.   The other day I did t...