head above water

With much of the United States experiencing drought conditions it isn’t too hard. Unfortunately.

Anyway, life has been really busy lately. REALLY busy. I’m putting in a solid 9-12 hours of Work each day. So, how am I doing with my tools and are they helping me keep my head above water?

I think things are mostly going great. Today I feel off (and missed an obligation, but she forgot too so I don’t feel *too* badly considering it was scheduled informally). I woke quite tired with a huge headache so I’ll er.. hmm.. I’ll just buckle down and try to make this coherent.

RTM is being used for more longer range planning than routine items, that’s been the case since I switched back to filo from the composition books. I’ve improved greatly on the routines (doing laundry on Sundays the past few weeks has helped). I expect that once the term fully ends (on Wednesday) and my routine changes I’ll pick up the the frequency of use in order to track and complete everything.

Joe’s Goals I’ve not been using them at all. It’s a great idea but I’ve not really succeeded in placing this in my work flow.

My A5 planner? It’s beyond awesome. Almost every day I’m quite good in recording everything I need to. There have been a few days (like today) that I’ve not been so good at pulling it out, nor do my notes always make sense, but it’s there and I’m happy with it. To replace the daily log in the composition books, I’m using Dave’s awesome PCEO ETP scaled to print on A5 paper. I’ve been using them actively for two weeks and find that they are working as I need them to and that scaled from US letter to A5 doesn’t impact the space I need to write in. Additionally, I’m using the week on one page for my calendared items and I like the format for the calendar. I do need to supplement the calendar with a daily notes page. I currently keep these daily records for well, my idea is 6 years but I need to finalize and legal-check my retention schedule.

For the record, A5 Japanese punched paper does not fit in a filofax A5 ring binder but that doesn’t mean you can’t purchase it and have some funky holes on the opposite side and use your own hole puncher. The paper (at MUJI is cheaper than filo branded.

I also use a small A5 zippered pouch (different from what is pictured in the flickr photo. There are not photos today—I just can’t take decent photos this week.) to carry those papers I can fold. It’s small size makes sure I constantly review the contents and purge as necessary.

Katom has surprised me by working so well. When I had to schlep my laptop and its bag a few weeks ago I was amazed at how heavy everything was! I finally scored a MaxiMini bag from tcs 9in olive) and it is also nice and holds what katom can’t. However, I’m not pleased by the seam on the handle and see that as a weakness and design flaw. In any case it’s clipped to the keyring thingee on Katom and fits inside the outer pockets. I look forward to making the padded thing for the strap to both calm down the large amount of orange and to well, pad the buckle that hits at my collarbone. I could adjust it but then the bag is either too long or too short. ;)

Lastly, I use Google Calendar as my calendar backup (in case I lost the filo, ka’h) and for the reminders it sends. Oh and for the pretty colours without carrying twenty pens. I switch between the month and agenda views and generally keep this open through the day. I have some items colour coded (birthdays, book due dates, holidays, shabbat) and that is quite nice. I’m a sucker for colours on my calendar. I’ve included a screenshot of the pretty colours in my gcal for this month. [OMG that was embarrassing I uploaded to flickr the WRONG IMAGE which wasn’t mungled. I wonder how many trillons of people saw it. *sigh*]

Whew! This ended up longer and both more and less coherent than I expected. If you made it to here, THANKS!

• Category: tools
• Tag: filofax