New Year Graffiti (Non) Filofax set up

In good new year Philofaxy tradition I am going to show you the set up for one of the three filofaxes I will be rotating this year as my daily planner. This is the Cannot-Be-Traced Golunski brand planner. Found in TK Maxx. The others are a personal crimson Malden and a compact Regency and posts on those will follow. I hope that my quilting readers will not be put off coming here by the fact that there will be more filofax posts in 2013 ... There will be plenty of art as well to keep everyone happy. But I want the blog to reflect my whole life.

My setup up might be a bit bland and lacking in stickers and stuff, compared to many I have seen but I like it like that. Uncluttered filo means uncluttered brain in my life! The left side is my stationery store and I love that I can clip a good few pens to the first verticle pocket flap and not have them interfere with the functioning of the filo. Also here I have sticky notes, the circular stickers you will see later in use and some Cavellini Ephemera Stickers. Just sticking out from the back pocket you can see a hint of my wash tape wall.. Just strips stuck to a fly leaf so I always have some. In the past I have not decorated my filo at all but late last year I sourced some products that I thought were elegant and grown up and I like how they make the diary creative and personal but not cluttered. The front sheet is, well, plain! That was temporary but actually it provides a good foil to how busy the actual filofax design is so it may well stay. Already it has been a good place to put stickies with info which require immediate Red Flag attention as soon as I open up. Immediately behind it is a Brain Dump Page where I jot down thoughts as they fly into my head to be dealt with later. Some will relate to the filos I keep for special projects and will get transferred.

Then I have Filofax brand month in two pages tabbed as an overview. This is mostly for achieving balance between work travel and art. The green circle stickies indicate 'studio days' or days dedicated to art activities. I actually try to have studio time everyday but these show the days when I plan to dedicate a good stretch of hours to art.

Then week on a page with notes. Life is quiet this week! I use Sticky notes for tasks that need doing but not necessarily that week and which I know may well get carried over. When they become urgent they get written in properly and done. I use the notes page for travel bookings, weekly goals etc. As I say, an unusually quite week!

Next the new to me pages. For the last six months of 2013 I used self printed day on two pages from Philofaxy which Steve helped me to modify a bit. I hated them. Oh, the design was great but my ability to print them right and get them trimmed without bits sticking out was non existent. It annoyed the heck out of me. So I invested quite a bit of cash in these pages from Filofax France as they were the nearest to what I wanted. And interestingly the format has dictated some new functions which I find beneficial.

 

As you can see the appointments page is divided by a gap into two columns. I don't have that many appointments in my personal planner so I have been using the right column each night to do a resume of the day. This is great for spotting where time is wasted and recognising where nice but unplanned things happened. I tend to focus on what I did not get done rather than my achievements so this also encourages me to look at my day with more balance.

 

Having numbered to do boxes helps me not plan to do more than is reasonable. And I find that I now do as we do at work when a day is full of appointments, i.e drawing a line through the remainder of the space ( or adding a line of washi tape. No more tasks today!

 

The notes section I am using for my new Focus practice. I have written all about that here on my Plan • Create • Succeed blog so I will not repeat myself here save to say it is working wonderfully.

I then have a section labeled Life which has To do lists separated out by topic. If something is vital, is day senstive or just a chore it goes on the daily pages. Otherwise I choose what to do next from these options. I am deleberately viewing them as options not tasks to reduce pressure on me from feeling I MUST do all these things. They are options for how I get to spend my free time. Here is my New Year Set Up All My Filos list.

I use two magnetic bookmarks from City Organiser here. I bought them in a whim last week becuase I broke the London Skyline ruler that came with the Lineburst Filo and I missed that design from the Olympics. They work great to tab the list I am focusing on this week and move around easily.

The inal section is labelled Reminders and is bits of informational notes. nothing interesting for public consumption!

 

This Non-Filofax has pockets galore. For now I have used the backslots for my RAC breakdown card and European Health insurance card but also to write down on cards my overarching goals for the year any my focus words etc. Behind that is a tube map and behind that you can see the spine of a Moleskine Volante notebook I am using as a sketchbook. More on that in another post. There is a full width pocket behind the rings too which is empty at the moment. For a personal this is the best design for quanity and capacity of pockets. I love it but I am glad I have others I love that I can rotate with it because I dread it wearing out! i am sure I will add stuff as the year goes on.

Oh and finally the pen. The pen loop on this requires a very slim pen. I was recommended on Philofaxy to look at the Cross Centrury pens so I went to Rymans to see if they had one. They did and it was the same size as these white pens but far more expensive. These are I confess I little tacky with their swarovski crystal on the top but only a little, and the barrel is really nice. Besides, as they take Cross refils but the whole pen costs less than the cross refills I overcame my snobbery and bought several! No bleed though=happy writer!

Thanks for sticking with a long post. More filos to come another day....

 

 

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