Pam Alison Knits

I’m aware it’s been very quiet on the planner front on this blog recently. That doesn’t reflect what has been going on in my head or on my desk, but it is indicative of my lack of direction. My heart wants to use A5 paper, but since setting up the A5 Filofax last October I’ve struggled with portability. It’s fine one day, but not the next; fits nicely with everything I have to carry, then suddenly turns into the straw that broke the camel’s back. I hoped the “fauxlifax” binder from UnderCover UK would resolve this, and it helped with the weight, but not the size. By the end of February I had to admit that I was leaving the fauxlifax at home most days because I didn’t want to carry it. Time for a rethink.

More so than ever, this year I will be readying myself for change and it it will be so much easier if I take advantage of the benefits that planning my days can bring. Armed with this knowledge, it was high time to draw a line in the sand and leave the indecision behind me.

Of all the binders that I own across multiple form factors, it is the personal-sized Filofax Holborn which holds my heart. It’s easy to carry which means it’s more likely to be used consistently. I moved back into this at the beginning of March and it immediately felt just right – like taking back up with an old friend you haven’t seen in a while. No awkward silences, just the entirely pleasant stimulus of shared history, and a willingness to catch up on what’s been going on since you last met. I needed a diary to act as the core of my setup and managed to snag the last Filofax Cotton Cream horizontal week-to-view left at Jarrolds of Norwich. As it is still quite early in the year I expected to pay full price and was surprised but delighted to find it was marked down by 50%. That, together with low stock levels, makes me wonder whether they may not be stocking Filofax products any more, but that’s a thought for another day. Whilst I was in my A5 setup, I successfully established the habit of carrying four months of weekly pages and swapping them out at the change of each quadrimester (end of January, May, September). That feels just perfect for an everyday carry.

This insert has the QR codes printed in every daily space. You can use these to sync your handwritten diary entries with Filofax’s app, but this is generally felt to be a complete waste of time since none of the Filofax users I’ve come across have seen any reason for the app. I am pleased to report that I’m not finding these square blemishes intrusive in everyday use, in fact I use them as a marker beside which I can park the day’s temperatures (I fill these in each morning for the previous day). Having moved to working a 9-day fortnight in February, I keep track of which week it is in the top margin of the right-hand page (Week 1 is a 5-day week, whilst I only work 4 days on Week 2). I track the time I get home each day as I’m keen to see what impact my longer working days have on my journey home. My weekly countdown to retirement continues – I’ve been writing this consistently on my planner pages for the past 5 years and it felt incredibly good this month to get on the right side of 52 weeks!

As to the rest of the setup, it’s pretty bare-bones thus far. I haven’t put in any dividers, apart from a plastic one at the back to help stop the pages catching on the rings. I want dividers, I just haven’t decided yet what I want them to look like. I have a book mark for the current week, and one at the beginning of my spare notepaper. These two card markers have copies of the front and inside of my favourite Snoopy greetings card which I bought back in the 1970s, scanned at some point in the 1990s, and printed off in 2020. I began by punching some random lined paper for notes, but I’ve just bought some pre-punched lined packs from Stamford Notebook Company. There’s a couple of To Do lists near the front of the planner, and the notes I want easy access to (often just to remind myself about things I think are important) live towards the back.

The planner opens on a print-out of my horoscope for the month. In the A5 planner, I could simply screen-shot the e-book, but for personal size paper I’ve had to type out a slightly shortened version. That’s no bad thing as I find typing something (much like writing it out by hand) helps me to assimilate the information better than simply reading or listening to it. I know there’s a strong belief that typing doesn’t stimulate the brain in the same way as handwriting, and I think that can be true, but if you type mindfully – making sure that you are spelling correctly rather than relying on spellcheck to correct you – and if you are writing coherently instead of simply throwing text at the screen in the belief that you will come back afterwards and put it right, then I think typing can edge closer to handwriting.

It was very satisfying during the set-up process to feel the Montblanc Slimline fountain pen slide into the pen holder like a hand into a old leather glove at the first hint of autumn chill. Regardless of which planner I’ve been using, the Montblanc has remained a constant for the past two and a half years – simply the most perfect planner pen and the item which has repeatedly turned my thoughts to blue covers. I wouldn’t be me if I wasn’t still pondering either the Midnight Blue Original cover, or the Blue Holborn. You’ve got to aspire, haven’t you?

I know that setting up a new planner, or refreshing an existing planner, is no substitute for action. It can’t be denied, though, that sometimes you need to reset yourself, take stock of your attitudes, seek a fresh perspective. My mood has brightened over the past couple of weeks as I have moved back into the Holborn, done the initial setup, and pondered what I want my planning to look like right now. We might argue that a planner is only a glorified appointment book, but what glorification it is!