In the past month, I have used three different diary formats. The first was with my short-lived Moleskine experiment – a week on one page with notes, in a very large size. The diary layout itself worked fairly well, but I was having problems with the bound planner and so switched back to my Filofax. At this point I was lacking diary inserts, as I’d traded my personal size diary for my mother’s Franklin Covey Classic (similar to A5) inserts. So I needed some new ones if I wanted to use the Filofax as a planner again.
The second diary format I used was very kindly mailed all the way from France by Steve of Philofaxy. It is the Filofax cotton cream week on two pages, with the days all the same size and a notes space above Monday. I honestly love this layout – it works quite well. My problem with it is that it’s very compact, and I just don’t think I can squeeze everything I want or need to note in a day-specific way into this diary.
Today, the third diary format arrived – Franklin Covey 2 pages per day (in the Serenity pattern). I ordered these because I am starting grad school in just over a week, and several people recommended the 2ppd, saying that I would need the room. (Thanks Laurie, Rori, and Zoe! and anyone else I’m forgetting!) I’ve used the page per day layout before with success. This diary also comes with a month on 2 pages, which is absolutely essential for use with daily pages.
I just finished getting all my appointments, etc. written over. The daily sheets are still quite bare, as most of my to-dos are still on the context sheets and grad school hasn’t yet started, but I expect they will fill up rapidly. I do feel like there’s a lot more room to breathe, which is nice. The pages are sectioned: appointments, to-dos, a “daily tracker,” and notes. I’m going to use the daily tracker for my husband’s schedule, and I think this will work VERY well. In the past I’ve taken the top line of the appointments, or just the “margin” of a day space on a weekly page, and neither of those have worked too well. The daily tracker box gives me room to note details if I like, and it means his schedule is not taking up space where my schedule needs to be! The notes page will be used as an inbox-type thing as well as having the extra information I will need for assignments.
So, there you have it. I am planning on forcing myself to stick with this format. My problem is that I sometimes try and fix what isn’t broken! Ack! I really must learn not to do that.
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