additional planner pages, quo vadis principal
The main pages of my planner are well known (thanks to my almost daily photographs), however, what else lies within the covers? This post will provide a brief tour of additional planner pages that are often overlooked, and changes I’ve made to them.
The Cover
I use the faux suede (vinyl) cover that arrived with my Trinote back in 2013. Quo Vadis calls this style “Texas”, and mine is in charcoal black. It’s held up much better than I expected; while it no longer looks new, it is still presentable.
Inside front cover
The front spread is where I keep post-its. It’s also where I often forget about them while I’m planning. They are most helpful when I’m at the library or Starbucks and need a post-it, stat!
I also wrote up my watercolor recipe for the color of tea. Do I need it? No. One day I was playing with my watercolours and wanted to see how much white I needed to add to the yellow when I doodle the sun. It evolved from there as yellow is also the colour of Twinings’ Earl Grey box. I now often draw herbal teas as a leaf instead of a square teabag.
Personal notes page
There are many entries I do not complete and some which are in my own personal encrypted code.
Why? What if I lost this notebook? I try to be careful, but as I do often work in public spaces, it could happen. While I blur things in my posted photos, those aren’t how they appear in the book, nor is my blurring necessarily infallible. I’ve had to trade-off usability verses encryption.
Is my encryption hard to break? No.
Will I teach you? No.
If it’s something that private, I don’t record it here.
Front Notes Page
Here in the front is where I keep random information such as the hours of certain stores. I also have phone numbers that I keep in my cell that I don’t have memorized.
Time Schedule
I’ve struggled with this spread, which is a surprise given my love of time blocking. I now have post-it notes that fit better with the time grid (thank you scissors) and am slowly working on using this regularly. I had been writing in pencil, and while that works, it wasn’t as flexible as I’d like. This still isn’t quite right, but I’m looking at it more.
Current Anno Planning
Other than blocking out the Jewish holidays and 6-month dentist appointments I haven’t been using this as much as I used to. It’s a bit narrow for me to write daily events such as dinner and I prefer to keep that record with the rest of my day. I may begin to record my morning inbox count here; by recording it within my daily notes, it often becomes lost. It would be interesting to see if there are trends.
Future Anno Planning
I haven’t done much in the 2017/2018 Anno Planner beyond marking out that I need to get my car inspected in August and the 10th annual Paine to Pain is tentatively scheduled for October 8th. The slightly darker grey boxes are the Jewish holidays I need to remember to schedule around (Pesach in 2018 is at the end of March).
Revised Back Pages – Monthly!
Until last week, I mostly ignored the back pages. I was tired of schlepping a different sized monthly calendar around, even though I really liked to be able to lay it out next to my weekly. I’m waiting for the Monthly 4 to be available; I’ll have to figure out a new cover solution then. In the meantime, I printed up a 4 week layout through August and pasted it over the reference pages of Practical Information which I haven’t used since I began this planner last July.
Ideal? No. Good enough for now? Yes.
It has simplified what I need to keep track of when I go running off somewhere other than my desk or the dining table to plan. The layout proved useful last week when I realized how very little time there was before Pesach! My default google calendar view is three weeks, so that was a surprise!
Back Notes Pages
Here is where I do pen and watercolour tests. I haven’t figured out what else to write in the pages that isn’t in my always present log book, but they are there.
Three-year calendar
Here I highlight the Jewish holidays, there really isn’t space to do much else.
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I hope you’ve enjoyed this tour of some of the shyer pages of my planner. Do you find yourself puzzled by pages in your planner? Let me know, I believe together we we can find a solution.