Cheating

I have a confession to make.

I’m not proud, but I am happy.

I’m cheating on my iPad. And my Mini. AND my iPhone.

I’ve gone back to using a paper planner.

(Ahh… it feels so good to get that off my chest.)

Now, I haven’t ditched my digital calendar/task list combination. I can’t. Truth be told, I’m addicted. I’ve downloaded a ridiculous number of various calendars and todo apps. I finally have a todo app with which I’m completely in love (2do… go look, I’ll wait). I rely on my calendar app (which changes about once a month) because I run The Frat House and its residents’ chaotic schedules, and Mike’s schedule shows up automatically on my calendar, and as he’s all over the place lately, that’s mighty handy.

But I’ll always harbor a deep-seated love of paper. Beautiful, quality paper with a little bit of heft that can take the ink from an awesome pen with the respect it deserves. I got my iPad almost a year ago, and I haven’t missed my paper planner in the least until about three weeks ago.

I blame YouTube, where I somehow stumbled upon a whole slew of videos of people showing off their personal Filofaxes. Suddenly I had the itch again.

I still would rather read on my iPad or Mini (I can keep everything in one place and, the BIGGIE, read at night on the darkened screen while I’m awake with the baby), but I haven’t been good about *planning* on my iPad. The baby is getting older, I’m working from home, I’m going back to school, and we have seven kids. I need a planning system that I will USE.

It’s a huge hack, a far cry from my pristine Franklin Covey planner of years ago; a Day-Timer Desk Size (8-1/2″x5-1/2″), month on two pages and day on two pages. I personally love having a week on two pages, preferably with vertical columns for each day, with blocks of time color-coded for each Borg’s– I mean, kid’s–activities, but I can’t see the point in having both the week and day calendars in my planner. I love the Week view in the Week Calendar app on my iDevices, so I use that when I want to see a good Week view.

I used to detest the look of the classic Day-Timer pages– plain white with green lines. But the layout provides space for appointments, task list, communications to make, and financials on the left-hand page, with the right-hand page left empty for notes. I use a ruler to mark every other line on the right-hand page so they line up with the times in the schedule on the left-hand page; the left page schedule is places I (or any of The Borg I’m chauffeuring) need to be at specific times, and I fill in the right-hand page with everything I do during each day. That way, when I do my weekly review (don’t be confused, I’ll get to that in a later post), I can see exactly where my time went, especially when I’m feeling like I didn’t accomplish enough.

As for not liking the plain green-and-white pages? Easily fixed! I bought *stickers*, people! AND scrapbooking paper. I do not scrapbook, but Liam and I had a ton of fun perusing all of the gorgeous paper at a local store last week. I cut some scrapbook paper to match the size of leftover planner insert pages that I wasn’t going to use, and glued the scrapbook paper to the front and back of those pages (to give it the heft of card stock without having to actually track any down). I added Post-It tabs to each one and had myself some Tabbed Dividers–categorized by color, of course! I decorated my “Today” marker with fabric stickers, and made a fly leaf for the front of the planner using the same technique I used for the dividers. I haven’t played with scissors and glue this much since Jack was wee little!

Now I have the planner pretty much the way I want it, and I’m better about using it than any planner I’ve ever owned. And that’s saying something, considering how many times, years ago, I drove Dakota and Clayton almost an hour away so I could visit the closest Franklin Covey store.

If you’re a true planner geek (like me), you’re always interested in someone else’s process. I’ll get to that next time.