Paper versus digital organisation (part two)

This is part two of my post on paper versus digital organisation, you can read part one here

I previously owned a filofax at university which was pocket size so was great because it would fit into a handbag, but I thought it would be too small now with the way I wanted my system to look. I could see a lot of benefits to the A4 size for work, but I couldn’t see me using it at home. So I narrowed it down to personal or A5.

I borrowed my husband’s old filofax, a personal size. The first problem I encountered was the paper included was based around someone else’s organisation system and a very traditional one so did not match what I wanted. I borrowed some templates from diyplanner and drew out some ideas up for the more unusual forms.

Unfortunately it didn’t work for me. Although I think this was mainly because I found the filofax too bulky, but at the same time found it wasn’t large enough to fit the width of text I wanted. Hmm what to do? I felt the filofax was bulky because of the design being a sporty one, but I knew it wasn’t worth buying an A5 filofax when there was a good chance I wouldn’t use it more than a few weeks, but how would I know if I didn’t buy one?

I looked for inspiration at the local stationers and bought an A5 ring binder, some file dividers and plain and lined paper. In total this cost about £5 ($10) . Other benefits included the use of a normal hole punch and the many diyplanner templates that come in A5 version.

I found this system worked from day one. It still amazes me how easy it has been to implement. I assume this is because of the effort put into planning the system. Don’t get me wrong, it is not invincible, there are things I still need to improve, but it is significantly better than any previous attempts.

For now I am committed to a paper system, but that is partly because I haven’t thought of a way to implement it electronically yet. Part of me is itching to go back to something IT based, but I will resist it for a while longer yet because it is working in its current style and I’ve only been using it since the middle of January.