It’s okay, it’s not another new pen, it’s my good old Waterman Hemisphere Rose Cuivre which I’ve been using in my planner/diary this week. And I’ve dug out my old Cross single-pen case because I have a yen to go slightly minimal for the coming week.

I’ve had a bit of a cold hanging around the past couple of weeks and the accompanying dip in energy has left me struggling with the logistics of my work commute. As I have found out in previous jobs, my ability to be happy with my decisions about bags takes a nosedive when I have to combine modes of transport. Some bags are supremely comfortable and practical to carry when I walk to and from the bus stop, but are clumsy to handle whilst I’m actually on the bus. Some are great on the bus, and okay whilst I walk, but lose all practicality when I factor in the need to carry my work laptop for work-at-home days. The ones which fit the laptop comfortably are just horrid to carry on the walk. Something’s got to give and, since I can’t shrink the work laptop and I’m not (quite) ready to shell out for the drool-worthy briefcases I’ve been eyeing online, I’m looking at cutting down on my “Pamela” stuff.

Let’s begin by looking back at the planner situation this past week. Before I concluded that less is more, I’d been ready for a change so I had popped the Personal-sized Filofax diary pages into my A5 cover which at least allowed me some decent A5 note pages. This wasn’t a spectacular success and I have to admit A5 just isn’t going to cut the mustard for me so far as portability goes. It did, however, teach me that if I am going to have a ring-planner in my future, I’m going to have to find a good blue one because those dividers make me very happy.

You can see how I’ve been using the week on four pages layout to plan/annotate my days and it’s worked very well. I do actually get out the Filofax a reasonable amount at work, when planning work at home days, annual leave etc, or simply noting down something I’m going to need to do when I get home. I thought momentarily about going digital to lighten the load, but I know that’s not the right route for me. Going back to the Personal-sized Filofax is definitely an option, but out of interest I thought I’d revisit the Stamford Notebook Company slim A5 week + notes bound diary.

The first thing was to see if it this book would fit into the handbag part of the dual-bag system I’m going to try and, yes, it seems fine. In fact, it disappears quite remarkably. Cutting down from three pens to one is a big space-saver and I’m working on ideas for a more compact glasses case, although at least the case fits in here – it’s usually the thing I struggle to add when everything else has slotted in perfectly.

Happy with that, I moved on to transposing across all of this week’s entries from my Filofax to see how they would fit on the Stamford weekly page. One of the things which didn’t gel with me when I initially tried this format was the step-change from having appointments, tasks and notes in the day block to having the day mainly for appointments and then a to-do list and notes on the facing page. Filling it in retrospectively, I managed to get most things in under their individual days and I think if I was planning ahead there are a few things which would sit comfortably as general do-this-week items rather than for a specific day.

I tried to do some decoration to mimic the original Filofax pages as much as I could. Overall, I’m happy enough to try a whole week carrying this and see how it goes. One thing I noticed straight off was how much I prefer this paper to anything I’ve been using the past few weeks which is a slight disappointment because I so wanted to avoid things I have to order online and focus instead on going to the shops and buying them in person.

So, that’s the state of play today and it looks like I’m in for an evening of filling a bit more of the future into this book.