Bear with, I am very new to this. As in, very, very new. I’ve read a lot about filofax/planner set ups and thought that the start of a new year was a good a time as any to… well, set mine up. You may remember that I bought my little personal sized filofax in March last year, and told you about how it had helped me stay a tad bit more organised, but around August, I hadn’t used it anywhere near as much as I thought I would and it saddened me. From the start of uni again in September, right through to the last day of 2015, it was more a glorified date-book than anything else.

🙁 

SO. I’m investing more of what precious little time I have before exams and deadlines in setting it up so that it’s an effective way for me to organise and keep on track of things. Obviously it’s going to have important dates in, but it can be so much more. And I have so many packs of stickers.

Any of you who use planners on the regular give me tips! Hints! Links!?!?! Please I’d love to hear how you guys set them up. :))

the sections: 

personal/academic

The first section of my filofax is for personal and academic things – so things to remember on the uni side of life: deadlines, class changes, exams dates and times, EASsoc related appointments, birthdays,  gym dates, and time with friends. I’ve got the ‘week on 2 pages’ format (mostly because I couldn’t find a lot of alternatives for the personal size), and as my handwriting is quite small I can fit multiple things for a day in the little boxes. 

blog

For my planner this year, I also decided to get a ‘week on a page’ set so that I could have a ‘blog’ space in my filofax. I don’t always travel with my blog calendar on trains as it’s quite large, and I prefer to have it sitting on my desk in case I lose things, so adding this section to my planner for 2016 will hopefully help me keep up with one of my 2016 goals of planning for the blog more. If I have any ideas while travelling or sitting in the library or coffee shops, then I can write little notes to myself. 

misc

As my planner is not the largest (seriously, the rings in the personal size are a little tight for two refills) I’ve only got a small amount of extra paper for notes. I have a couple of ‘to-do list’ sheets, some of the coloured lined paper, square paper – just in case – and a few contact sheets. I’m not sure how much I’m going to end up using this space, but I’m keeping it there for writing the odd item down I see in stores, or deal on camera lenses or something I need to follow up. 

colours:

I loveeee coloured pens. Like super duper love coloured pens and giving colours to things. All my uni modules have a set colour that helps me identify them easily in my Folder of Work for Final Year, and those colours carry over into my planner set up. I also have set colours for birthdays, deadlines, appointments, etc… so that my planner isn’t just black or navy ink on white. 

In high school I discovered that I was very much a visual learner, so colours and neat notes appeal to me greatly, and they definitely help me remember important things more easily. By putting all the information that will not change in it’s set colour, it helps me identify the important things quickly. 

For 2016 I’m hoping that I’ll be sensible enough to grab blue or black ink for daily notes that go into the pages, so that there isn’t any random clashing or something that shouldn’t be, say, orange, being orange. 

Blog-wise if a post is definite, it’ll be written in in green, no changes, no swapsies (unless it’s an emergency). The rest will pretty much follow the same colour-coded outline, chats, deadlines, emails I need to reply to, youtube ideas… 

stickers:

Another love of mine. I adored the ridiculously extensive range of stickers available in South Korea, and most of them are for diaries, planners, and organisational endeavours rather than ‘ooh cuteness’. Since there aren’t that many sticker sets for filofax set-ups in the same way that there are for other planners, I’m going to actually start using the planner stickers that I already have 😀 It’s totes not just an excuse to buy more.

It’s not. Hmph. 

I also have quite a few sets of mini post-it notes from years of stockpiling stationery that I think will be quite useful with this year’s setup. If an appointment isn’t concrete or an idea not firm, then I can write it down on a post-it and move it around as I please. Super useful for blog editorial calendars too, I know a few people already use that trick. 

Alrighty then! That’s the initial 2016 planner. If you have any comments or things you think I’ve missed then please let me know, I’m totally new to this so any tips or tricks would be a massive help! 

♥

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