The Planner Challenge...
If some of you have been reading my blog (please, please say yes...) I participated in the Home Office Desk Challenge that Ariane started a few weeks ago... which prompted a few new things for me...
1. I was able to meet (via cyber-space) a few organizers that I am coming to truly admire and have met some organizers that I thought I would never ever meet... that's you Marcia...
So a few weeks ago I got an email from an "organiser" in South Africa... how cool is that! Marcia emailed me asking about the desk challenge and wondered if I would be interested in getting a planner challenge going.
The really ironic thing about this "Planner Challenge" is exactly when she emailed me I was in the process of writing out my new planner, so I kind of felt compelled to get it going. So here is the scoop...
As an organizer and someone who loves technology you may find it interesting that I am now using both paper and electronic products for my planner organization. Planner organization, I believe includes calendar, address book and task lists. Some may need to include things like expenses and maybe other reporting information.
The key to good planning is knowing what you love and what your style is. For me... I love paper (if you read my last blog you know why...) and I love technology. I have used a Palm Pilot for the last... 14 years or so...
Here is what I love about the Palm:- It's small.
- It stores everything.
- It sync's with my PC.
- I can update on either the PC or the handheld.
- It has games.
- I finally learned the shortcut stroke.
- I am a poor stylus user.
- It's difficult for me to see the week/month at a glance on a handheld.I can't write the detail that I love to have - it takes too long.
- The screen gets funky and it's hard to access information.
- The window for technology is getting smaller and smaller while the price is getting higher and higher.
- When the battery dies I have no information.
- The alarms can be bothersome.
I also got one of those stylish rubber bands to hold all those important sticky pads and past/completed pages. Not to mention my pen stays in there quite nicely. As I mentioned, I have the daily pages, note pages, composition notebook already. I am going to get the Mini-Calendar set that includes month, week and day pages, plus those awesome little people tracker pages for business cards.
What I love about paper planners:
- I can write everything down as I am thinking of it... without too much effort.
- I can see things at a glance (week/month) much easier than a palm.
- The battery will never die.
- It's not too expensive to maintain.
What I don't like about paper planners:
- There is no way that I am going to write out all my contacts into a paper planner... way too many!
- I can't sync with my pc.
- If it's lost... it's gone forever!
- It's a little bigger than I like, but I can deal.. it's so totally cute. Chocolate Brown Binder.. hello!
Planners are like.... clothing... you are the one who has to use it... so what other people love has nothing to do with you... it's really all about what you like.
HERE IS THE CHALLENGE: Take a moment to post your planner (please make sure to share it with me by posting a comment on this listing). Use pictures if you can, or you can just describe if that's too much. Tell me what you like what you don't like about what you are using. If you are in a crisis and are thinking about wanting to change or you need ideas on some different solutions... you are barking up the right tree... let me know. Thanks Marcia for encouraging me to do this. It was fun!
Lately I've been planning "in the cloud." I use Google calendars and RemembertheMilk.com (a marvelous to-do list website). RTM has widgets that show up on my iGoogle page and on my gmail page. Both the calendar and the task list sync to my pda (OggSync.com syncs the calendar, RTM syncs the tasks). I like being able to enter tasks/events from anywhere and have them sync up, and I like knowing that if one device fails I can still recover the data. Plus, I can type more easily than I can write, and I can easily insert hyperlinks, copy/pasted notes from email, and so on. I'm sitting in front of my computer many hours a day anyway--might as well use it to stay organized.
I have always been a fan of using technology for tracking information. There is something so seamless about being paperless that appeals to me, however I can't seem to find that mobile device that will allow me to see all the details on a tiny screen - - enter the paper planner!
Thanks for stopping and sharing! I love A-L-L of these services and am thrilled that you like them too!