My Traveller's Journal Set-up

Stamford Notebook Company Traveller's Journal

Okay, so I bit the bullet (see this post) and moved into my Stamford Notebook Company Traveller's Journal. How have I set it up and how is it working out?

1. How have I set it up?
The SNC Traveller's Journal came with the booklets held in with leather cord and a leather cord to wrap around a button on the front to close it (see photo above). I've changed both of those. My inserts are held in with elastic cord. I've got 4 cords in total, threaded through the two holes (so yes, they are in the same place inside, but it's working without any problem - the inserts just move to the side). I found the leather cord too thick around the inserts so writing on the page was affected. It looked nice (and different to other Traveller's Notebooks/Journals) but it wasn't all that practical.
I've also swapped the leather cord that acted as a closure for an elastic loop that is secured to the back of the cover with a couple of buttons (to stop it falling off), but I may move back to the leather cord because I quite liked it. It's just that it makes a big lump in the back of the cover where the knot in the cord is and it's hard to write in the notebooks with it in.

Any organiser I use has to act as wallet, diary, planner and notebook or I'm lost. I've tried having them separate but I invariably leave the house without one and then find I need it. Hence the set-up I have.

First up are two Midori inserts - the zipped pocket and the credit-card holder. I have these around the first two elastics, with the zipped pocket first then the credit-card holder.

Coins go in the zipped pocket. I can't cope with not being able to see my coins now, having used a clear pocket for several years. I like to know when I go to pay for something whether I have enough change or whether I need to split a note. The zipped pocket insert is pretty sturdy and holds the coins well. I sometimes have my Zebra diary pen/pencil in here too as I haven't put any kind of pen loop in there yet.

Coins in the zipped pocket at the front

The other half of the zipped pocket insert has two slip pockets. I have paper money in one side and I put receipts and vouchers in the other side. For some reason, I thought I was short of card slots and so I put a stick-on one on the back of the slip-pocket. I could unstick it but I'm happy to leave it there!

Slip pockets. The paper behind them is to hide my cards

Next up are cards. I don't really want to show you them. I'm sure you all have enough imagination to be able to picture bank and credit and store cards in a plastic card holder. It holds three per side and 12 in total. I use one for stamps. The slots are quite loose and so some cards are doubled up.
 
Then comes the home-made week + notes diary in the (horrible) Moleskine cahier. The washi tape and sellotape holding it together are because I was slicing out some pages I had been experimenting on and sliced a bit too close to the spine! The stamps and washi are me just playing about. To be honest, I rarely even see the cover!

Paper is hiding my cards. The notebook on the right is my week + notes diary

The week + notes layout

I've deliberately photographed an empty week! But it hopefully gives you a bit of an idea about the layout. On the left are the days and a box for tracking things; on the right, the page is divided into eight - six life-areas (currently unlabelled), 'other' and 'next week'. Tasks and to-do items are assigned to one of the boxes and the next week box is so that I know what's coming up as I am pathologically incapable of turning the page and looking.

The day stamps on the diary side come from a set I bought from eBay. The Things to Do stamp came from Hema. I use the Things to Do stamp to write down my most important tasks for the day. The rest of my day planning is still being done in a reporter's notebook that stays on my desk. I use that to block off time for tasks and as a general scribble pad and then throw it away when it's finished. Despite having written the date range of the diary on the front cover, I'm likely to throw that away when it's finished too. Don't all gasp in horror. I keep a separate diary in which I jot important things about the day that I will want to remember in the future, and knowing that I needed to arrange a chimney sweep in such and such week is never going to be important to me and so stays in planners that I throw away when they're done. It's a planner. I plan in it. Once the plan is finished, why would I want to keep it?
[Sorry - I've never understood why people do, unless they are planning and journalling in the same thing, which is also a concept that defeats me - why would you want to muddle all that up?]

Anyway, moving on...

After the diary is another (hateful) Moleskine cahier that I am just using up to use up. I will never buy them again. I learned my lesson. I'm using it as a scribble pad. In it are going order numbers (crossed out when the item arrives), books to look out for, things to remember to do (noted down while I'm out and about; things that occur to me at home tend to go on the reporter's notebook page) etc.

Back of the week + notes diary (l); notes cahier (r)

Okay, that's the set-up...

2. How is it working out?
It's been working out really well so far. The footprint of the Traveller's Journal is bigger than a personal Filofax but the layout is working much better for me and the overall weight is about the same as a personal Filofax (though more than a slimline, naturally). The larger footprint is no problem as it's not really much heavier/larger than the Filofax and to be honest, the better layout of the planning bit more than makes up for it. Being able to see my weekly tasks, set out in the different life areas makes me see where I end up doing too much and what I still have to do in the week. Using time-boxing in the daily plan in the reporter's notebook stops me from overloading a day (and procrastinating!). It's all working pretty well at the moment.

I STILL do not get monthly pages...

This week, over on Philofaxy, there were several posts in the list of Web Finds for August 1st that featured how to use the monthly spread. I read them keenly - the monthly pages are something I can NEVER get to work for me. Maybe seeing how others use them would help?

I still don't get them.

Absolutely NO disrespect to all of you who use the monthly pages and who make them work well for you, but I really cannot seem to make them work for me. I either want to put too much stuff in the boxes and then can't see the wood for the trees, or I put too little stuff in and miss it. Or I don't transfer information to my weekly pages. Since I have the rest of the year in my week to view (or week + notes) to hand, I would never put an appointment in the monthly pages - I would put it straight into the weekly ones. If it's for a date after the end of the year, I write it on the last page/in the notes pages and transfer it to the new diary when I have it.

If I need an overview of the month, I flip through the weekly pages. Each month, when I'm working out what I want to get done in the next month, I look at my next tasks/project lists and the pages of my weekly diary and allocate tasks based on how much is already in that week. I don't have many externally imposed deadlines, but I impose deadlines on myself and allocate accordingly. Birthdays get written into the weekly diary when I buy it and reminders to send cards/presents/arrange something are put in the weekly diary, the appropriate number of days before the birthday.

When I plan out my week, I use a combination of the weekly pages and a daily scratch pad to sketch out my days. I allocate tasks to each day when I do my weekly review (usually on a Sunday) and then at the start of each day I draft out, using time-boxes, when those tasks will get done.

I have tried and tried monthly pages! I've tried them in my Filofax to be able to reduce the number of weekly pages that I need to carry, but I just hated it - the boxes were too small. I've tried sketching out a month on A4 squared paper so that I can have it on my desk to make me see what I have on for the month, but I then pile books on top of it/don't fill it in/feel as if the whole month is empty because not enough detail of my day to day schedule is on there...

I've come to the conclusion that if it ain't broke, don't try and fix it and despite admiring those who can really work the monthly pages, I have had to accept that I will just not be one of them!

Anyone else find the monthly sheets difficult to work out? Or am I alone on this??

I should just bite the bullet, right?

I've been running two systems alongside each other for a few weeks - my Adelphi slimline which is acting as wallet, diary and address book alongside my Traveller's Journal which has my home-made week + notes in it.

The Adelphi is great as a wallet and carry-around diary (and addresses though I don't use them much) but what I am looking at to see what I'm meant to be doing each day is the Traveller's Journal week + notes. The TJ isn't coming out and about with me, but it could. I have the card-holder insert and the zipped pocket insert from Midori and it would be a piece of cake to move money and cards over. The inserts are in fact IN the TJ already, just empty.

So why am I persisting in running the two alongside each other?
Because I have my Filofax already set up for the year with all the dates written into the diary? True - but I have the diary in the TJ too and seriously - it would be a half hour job to check that the same info is in the TJ as I have in the Filofax diary.
Because it's too easy to leave it all as it is and have the TJ open on my desk and the Adelphi as a carry around? Hm. It is, but I've already spotted that I've written something in the Adelphi that I didn't transfer across to the TJ and running two diaries? That way madness lies! And missed appointments.

The fact is, I am not looking at the diary in the Adelphi and I've begun to not actually like it either. I am basically using the Adelphi as a wallet and no kind of planning tool. I've noted some appointments in it when I've been out at Rotary and things have been arranged, but for actually working out what I'm doing with my day/week, I am only looking at the week + notes I made myself. And yes, it's in the hateful Moleskine (still!) but no, I can't be bothered to make another one for what's left of 2015. The Moleskine is working okay (as long as I don't want to write in ink!). If it all goes well, I can change to the Rhodia version in 2016.

I should just bite the bullet and move the money across and see how it goes, right? The fact I've written out the dates on the Tomoe River diary in the Filofax shouldn't be the reason I'm not moving into the TJ. Right? Right??

What do people think?

Hema Haul!

Well, I managed to waste spend quite a while on the Hema site the other day, and this is my haul:

• Some C6 stripy envelopes
• Some self-inking stamps
• A5 notebook with ziplock
• Stickers of cartoon jungle animals
• A 2015-16 academic diary
• Some stick-on envelopes
• Storage tin

[but no, Steve, it did not include a selfie-stick...]

I'm not going to review each of these in detail (because I haven't had time to play with them all yet!) but I'll show you each of them and also give a bit of feedback about using the site.

Feedback about the site:
There's a lot of stuff on the site and it's easy to spend HOURS on there! A lot of things are pretty cheap and there is a danger that you then chuck a load of things in the basket that you don't really need (I know - is that phrase actually applicable to stationery??). There is also a slight oddity in that some items have a minimum order of two (or three) of the item. This doesn't seem to be related to price - there are some things that are £1 on there and you can order one of them; there are things that are £2.50 and you have to order at least two. For many things, that's all fine but on some of them I was thinking that I didn't really need two of them and was a bit irritated by being forced into getting two.
When the parcel arrived, the items were bundled into a carrier bag which then rattled around inside the much larger cardboard box which wasn't the best packing in the world.

1. Stripy C6 envelopes:

Stripy envelopes.
With hindsight, should have bought some address labels too!

For those who aren't used to the sizing of envelopes, C6 takes an A4 sheet folded in half, then half again (i.e. takes A6 paper). I write zillions of letters and so am always in search of envelopes and these were a bit different from the plain white ones you can generally get. I probably should have bought some labels for writing the address on.

2. Self-inking stamps:

Self-inking stamps

I only really wanted the lower one but they came as a two-pack and were only £2.50 so I ended up with both of them. I'll stamp envelopes with the other one probably. I've been using the lower one to stamp my home-made week + notes to note my 'two most important things to do today'.

3. A5 notebook with ziplock:

A5 notebook with ziplock
(Sorry about the shadows!)

I've seen much more expensive versions of this (Mark's Tokyo for example) but this was a pretty reasonable price. In essence, it is an A5 notebook in a plastic/polyethylene cover and the back cover has a zip-lock pocket, card slots and a pen holder. The front cover has slip pockets too. The idea is that you carry this around and slip things into the pocket as you collect them. I'm not sure if I will use it quite like that as I would use my Traveller's Journal instead, but if I was off to do research on something and wanted something cheap and cheerful and useful I would give it a go. I've yet to try the paper out in the notebook but I'm not expecting anything good. The bonus is that you can slip any A5 notebook in it if it's slim enough so you're not restricted to the one that comes with it.

4. Stickers of cartoon jungle animals:

Jungle animal stickers

There are two pages of stickers - the other page has different ones but I only took pictures of one lot - sorry! These were one of the 'you must buy two' items but I can always use cartoon jungle animals stickers and they were only 75p per pack. The chameleons alone will always make me smile!

5. 2015-2016 academic diary:

Cover of the 2015-16 academic diary

Layout (plus LURID page marker)

Okay. This was only £1. The size of the diary is 12.5cm x 18cm which is a nice size. It's a school diary so there are several pages of class schedule and some pages for recording grades. Considering the page size is fairly small, the layout isn't bad, though Saturday and Sunday are, as ever, squashed into a smaller space and there is that pointless month summary taking up some of Sunday. I don't know what the numbering of 1-9 is for on each day - things to do? It's obviously not for recording appointments, even given some students' semi-nocturnal lifestyle. Anyway, I quite liked the clean font and size but I'm not sure, now I've got it, that I will use it. But it was only £1 so I don't feel too bad!

6. 6-pack sticky envelopes:

Stick-on envelopes

Another item that had a minimum purchase of two but again, I didn't mind (and they weren't horrendously expensive). I got them so that I could stick them on the home-made diary in my Traveller's Journal or in notebooks I use for writing. There are three of each size: 10cm x 6cm (holds a card 9cm x 5.5cm) and 16cm x 11cm (holds a card 14.5cm x 10.3cm). As you can see from the picture, the backings are a bit lurid (pink, orange and red) but bearable.

7. Storage tin:

Storage tin

I just liked this. I got it for putting ink cartridges in but it's a useful size at 7cm x 9.8cm. It also has a very positive click when it closes. Some other tins can have quite a loose lid that easily comes off, but this tin could rattle around in your bag without the lid coming off.

Anyway, there we go - that was my haul. I could probably have bought a LOT more stuff but I managed (just) to restrain myself.

Marvellous Monday

For two fabulous reasons:
1. I have been for a run!!!!

Okay. It was 10 repeats of {30s run, 1 minute walk} slotted into a 3.5mile walk, but...

It was a run!

And anyone who knows me will know JUST how much that means to me.

and...

2. I have been sent some stationery to review and give feedback on. The lovely people at The Stamford Notebook Company have sent me samples of their diaries for the Traveller's Journal for me to play with and give them feedback on, so that's what I will be doing this afternoon.

So, all in all, it's a marvellous Monday!

Hope everyone else is having a good day too.

Oh no...

...I've just discovered Hema.

I may be some time...

Creating a week + notes diary for my Traveller's Journal

In my last post I said I had been trialling a week + notes diary, mocked up in a (hateful) Moleskine cahier, to ultimately use the system in my glorious Stamford Notebook Company's Traveller's Journal. The eagle-eyed amongst you will spot that I hate Moleskine cahiers as the paper is stupendously terrible. Instead, I have used a Rhodia cahier. Infinitely better and cheaper than the (hateful) Moleskines. I got mine from Cult Pens (no affiliation, just a happy customer) and reviewed them here.

There are 48 pages (96 sheets) per booklet - not enough for a full year, so I opened the staples at the centre of two books, removed some sheets from one and slipped them onto the staples of the other, so that there were 54 pages in the book, then closed the staples back up. Then I trimmed the whole booklet to 12.5cm using a rotary cutter.

After trimming (R) - clip is just to hold the book closed for the photo

Now, call me picky, but the Traveller's Journal has rounded corners and now that I had trimmed the book, it had squared edges, so I bought a cheap 10mm diameter corner cutter and punched all of the pages and the cover so that the book now has rounded corners.

After the corners have been rounded

Inside, I will divide each page into 8 blocks and on the LHS have the 7 days of the week plus a 'tracking' block (as indicated in the trial version - see here). On the RHS I will have 6 of the blocks labelled with life-areas and the next actions for that life-area noted in the block; plus an 'other' block and a 'next week' block (again, as in the trial version). The week + notes diary is to be used in conjunction with a day per page plan and I will use either another squared Rhodia cahier or a lined one for that. I have trimmed all the Rhodia cahiers I bought and rounded their corners, in readiness!

What do people think?

Trying something new (ish)

Now, don't get me wrong... I still love my Filofaxes. I'm still in the scarlet Adelphi and am intending to stay in it until the end of the year at least.
But...
I am also running in parallel another system to try and a) use my Traveller's Journal and b) see my week a bit better.
A few weeks ago, I blogged about a home-made week plus notes diary for the TJ (see here). I mocked that up in the (hateful) Moleskine cahier and have now mapped out the rest of the year in the (hateful) Moleskine cahier. (I'm only using that because I'm trialling this. In the final version, I will use a Rhodia instead).
On the LHS, I have the page divided into 8 blocks - 7 for the days of the week and 1 for tracking things (same as I had in the blog post).
The RHS is the side which is going through various iterations while I find what works. Like the LHS, it is divided up into 8 blocks. I've pretty much settled on labelling the blocks with 6 main life-areas, an 'other' and 'next week'. In the life-area blocks I have next actions for projects within those life-areas; in 'other' is a list of other things to do this week (that don't fit into the other areas) and 'next week' flags up important things that are just over the page (because we all know that I am incapable of just turning it over and having a look. I know... but know your character, huh? I know I won't turn the page, ergo I have to write a summary of it on the one before).
My diary is a bit too private to show you a filled-in version, but this is the basic layout:

'Other' will almost invariably be in the box to the left of 'next week' but the other 'life-areas to block' mapping has been a bit fluid and hasn't quite settled yet (hence not being filled in).

I bought the day stamps from eBay and also spent a bit of time working out the best layout of day name plus date before finally settling on the day being in the top left and the date in a circle in the next box along.

The (hateful) Moleskine cahier is 13cm wide and 21cm tall and each block is 6cm wide and 5cm tall, leaving me a little space to write the date range in, in red.

I've been using this layout in conjunction with time-boxing on a day per page scratch pad - a reporter's notebook using a sheet per day. The sheet is divided vertically, with times pencilled in down the LHS and a list of tasks/space for random jottings etc. on the RHS. In the space on the LHS, the day is divided up using time-boxes with each box being labelled with a life-area. The idea is a) that I spread my time over all the different things I want to do and not end up doing just one or two in a week and b) that I work on the next action for that life-area project during that time-block and if I reach the end of it, I tick it off and start on the next one in that life-area. If I don't finish it, I still try to make myself move on when the time-box topic changes. I can frequently allow a task to fill whatever time I have so knowing that I only have an hour or however long does make me concentrate on getting on with it, rather than dawdling about and spending all day on it.

I've liked the set-up well enough to have cut down some Rhodia cahiers (cheaper than the (hateful) Moleskines and MUCH better!), ready to make a full-year home-made diary for next year. More on that soon.

Haas anyone else been making their own diary for the TJ like this?

Slimline scarlet Adelphi

I saw a scarlet slimline Adelphi on eBay and had a ponder. Would it work for me?

Colour pop? Check.
Personal-size paper? Check.
Small rings? Check.
Card-slots? Check.
Other pockets? Check.

And so I bought it...

I've been trialling it for a few days and am happy so far. Let me walk you through it.

Cover:
The outer has a quilted effect embossed into the leather. I didn't like this when it came out (and was never interested in owning an Adelphi, partly because of the quilted effect) but I actually really like it now. I think it looks more interesting than the plain covers - more classy maybe? Anyway, there is a smooth edge (front only) and then the quilted-effect area. It's more scarlet than my picture shows.

Front cover

Inside left:
On the inside left, there is a covered pocket with 6 credit-card slots with a full-height pocket behind. I had intended to keep coins in the pocket as well as cash plus a few other bits and pieces, but I prefer to see my coins so I know if I have enough or if I need to break a note, so they have stayed in the zipped pencil case that is punched and on the rings at the back of the binder. It takes up a bit of real estate on the rings, but I prefer it. The popper on the pocket holds everything securely contained.
The next two pictures show the colour much better.

Inside: Covered pocket. You can see the zipped pencil case
peeping out at the back

Pocket opened. 6 credit card slots plus a full height pocket behind

The card slots are the simple cut type, rather than ones with a turned edge. I prefer the turned-edge versions and these were a bit of a wriggle to get the cards in but they might not have been used much by the previous owner.

Rings:
There are oval rings with a 13mm diameter in the widest plane (left to right). I couldn't cope with 11mm rings and 15mm are easier, but the 13mm are okay.

Inside right:
There is a full height slip pocket in the back cover.

The pen loop:
Well. It has a diameter of about 3mm! I think (think...) it is designed so that just a pen clip fits in it - the loop is 1/4 down the cover rather than mid-way. And tiny. I can just get the clip of my Zebra Sharbo diary pen/pencil duo in there.

What I have got in it:
Sometimes it's hard to judge how much stuff you can fit on rings so let me try and give you an idea of what fits easily in there for me. At the moment I have:

• paper money plus air mail labels, 3 books of stamps and 3 small cards in the front pocket
• 6 cards in the card slots
• card divider labelled 'notes' (acting as a sheet protector and hiding the sheets behind)
• 4 sheets of standard Filofax (FF) paper for notes
• 1 sheet of pink FF paper with monthly goals on
• 6 months (Jul-Dec 2015) Tomoe River WO2P diary (27 sheets)
• 3 sheets of quadrille paper tracking various things
• 8 sheets of (random) information
• 15 sheets of addresses
• A FF card holder with 6 cards in it
• The zipped pencil case for coins
• [nothing in the back cover as yet]

I've been using it for a few days and so far, I'm really liking it. The colour pop is great and it's small and light but yet holds everything I need at the moment. The pen loop is a bit irritating but I'm getting used to hanging my pen clip on it and trusting that it will stay where it's put. It doesn't have quite all the pockets that the compact Holborn has, but it has the colour pop I seem to need!

[p.s. thank you for all the kind thoughts and good wishes after my surgery. All went well and I might even manage to get back to running soon!]

Short hiatus...

Apologies for the lack of posts recently. There will also be a short hiatus as I go in for heart surgery on Wednesday. Thankfully no open chest type stuff but a teensy bit scary nonetheless.

Hopefully back posting soon as I have a zillion things to review!