Trolls have found my blog, from time to time, and made comments about my excessive intake of alcohol (I drink about a half glass of wine about once a month...silly trolls), my addiction to coffee (okay, I'll own that one), and why I should purchase enhancements products. (This is where they get ridiculous. I mean, seriously, have you seen how cute I am for a woman approaching 40?!?)
I delete them, of course. But this time, I do expect passionate disagreement and I won't be deleting those (totally valid) comments. You see, I am here to argue that weekly pages are far superior to daily pages. I won't be swayed, but I will allow disagreement. It's just like when my husband (whom I love dearly) thinks he is right, but I KNOW that I am right. I nod, and smile, and listen compassionately to his point of view. I love my Loyal Readers in much the same way. After all, only you know which method of planning works for you. {*cough* usemymethoditisthebest *cough*}
I've always been a fan of weekly pages. Daily pages have a valid use, in my opinion, for people who do more than five appointments or activities on three or mores days of the week. For example, a lawyer scheduling clients, court, and meetings might need daily pages to list those meetings. For everyone else, though, I think that monthlies are the way to go for appointments. (One of my favorite bloggers in the world - you know who you are - disagrees with me.)
But weeklies are so balanced. They take up less ring space in the planner, so you are not carrying around a brick and can carry more days than you ever could with dailies. They show you an overview of what needs to happen all in one place, so you can make wise decisions. They don't require flipping through papers. Just open to this week and put your planner next to your laptop or cup of hot tea. There is less to archive.
The best thing about weeklies, though, is the limit that the layout naturally creates on your task list.
Take a look at everything that I did during the first half of this week.
Can you seriously imagine doing even more than that in four days? Daily pages can trick you into planning a whole lot, but not getting a whole lot accomplished. The limited space in weeklies, though, means that you can only plan so much. Since humans can only do so much, this creates a good balance.
Plus, I contend that there is plenty of room to write on weeklies.
Of course, I do like a good daily plan on hectic days. Sometimes, the day is just too busy to use a small square. In those cases, I just slip in a sheet of graph paper and make a daily page that makes sense for that particular day. The great thing about this method is that the format of the daily sheet can be whatever I want it to be and can vary in format from day to day. Depending on the day, it might be schedule heavy, task heavy, or note heavy.
Another reason that weeklies work for me is that I plan projects in a separate area. Not only does this leave extra space on the weekly pages, but it forces my brain to think about each project as an ongoing, comprehensive plan towards one goal, instead of a mere series of tasks and deadlines. I make better decisions because all of the information is in one place.
Weekly pages make you a more thoughtful planner. I'll agree to disagree, but for now, I'll stick to weeklies as the meat of my planner.
Etcetera.
P.S. At the request of some Loyal Readers, I am disabling captcha so that people can comment from their cell phones. Of course, if the trolls find me, I'll be forced to reenable it.
27 comments:
Yaaaaaay!!! I can comment!!! Thank you thank you thank you!!!
I have never done well with weeklies, then again I hadn't realized I needed to make time to plan and review. But thanks to your blog I've seen the error of my ways and am now using my DIY'd weeklies to look at my week and focus. I've been very productive this week, well I've focused on getting my planner ready for 2014 so time getting my crafty and nerdy on is always productive.
I agree. But not really. Im in a total dilemma and keep switching. My week works very well as a week on 2 pages until I hit Tuesday and Thursdays when I run a cadet detachment so need a full page for them 2 days.
And WHO disagrees with using monthlies for appts? I'd like a look into their brain actually. I will still disagree but I'd like to hear their reasoning.
Some people prefer the whole picture of appointments and tasks on the same page, so they don't use monthlies for appointments. :) You know, the crazy people. ;)
Lorraine - how about a DIY Tuesday/Thursday page in between each week, only 52 a year?
I've been using dailies since September (in a bound planner) and I agree with you. On busy days, they're great but on slow days, it gives me a false sense of security seeing so much white space! It's my first time using dailies and I miss seeing the "big picture" of a week. I'll definitely use the piece of paper between the weeklies tip.
Although, I personally don't use monthlies for appointments. I put them on my daily pages. I just never look at my monthly pages. :( However, when I go back to weeklies, I'll definitely make use of the monthlies.
Since I started reading your blog I have been thinking about going back to weekly pages. You've given me so many great ideas and haven't steered me wrong yet. I may need to find some free weekly pages to try out. I love writing in the appts on the monthlies.
This would be a big change as I'm using a 2ppd set-up right now. The 2nd page is my journal.
Got a huge kick out of the troll comment. One particular troll was very disturbing indeed. Especially having lived in Sonoma County CA (wine country) for a few years.
Is the person you enjoy reading a secret? Always looking for good ideas!
Since I started reading your blog I have been thinking about going back to weekly pages. You've given me so many great ideas and haven't steered me wrong yet. I may need to find some free weekly pages to try out. I love writing in the appts on the monthlies.
This would be a big change as I'm using a 2ppd set-up right now. The 2nd page is my journal.
Got a huge kick out of the troll comment. One particular troll was very disturbing indeed. Especially having lived in Sonoma County CA (wine country) for a few years.
Is the person you enjoy reading a secret? Always looking for good ideas!
Haha! Just un time! I just wrote a post about forcing myself to use daily pages!
Oh, no, Debralyn, Laurie from Plannerisms is not a secret. Ha ha! I've even linked her blog before. Along with Patti from Homemakers Daily and Philofaxy, she is one of my top three favorite bloggers!
My Summer Touch - :)
First of all, boo to all the negative comments. So sorry you have to put up with those. Secondly, to contribute to the great debate- weeklies vs. dailies- I have to say, I always want to use dailies but I always end up just using the weeklies that come with my planners. I agree with you that people with very detailed and appointment packed daily schedules probably do need dailies, but I do ok with my dailies supplemented by blank note pages I can use as dailies on crazy busy days. BTW, yesterday's hacks were great. I then stayed up way too late watching your youtube videos, and I learned something new from each one :)
YAY! I thought my phone was just being stupid!!! Or me! LOL! You don't know how much this post helped me! Weeklies are often not enough, so I'll switch to dailies and then I don't really need them, so I switch back. And forth. And back. And forth! Fries the brain! The number of appointments you set helped my retentive brain, and the DUH moment with the extra sheet helped SOOO much! I'm blaming this on brain fog. Right as I'm setting up for the new year! NOW, my last problem....the plum Osterley which is gorgeous but thin and stiff, or the divine Day-Timer Malibu which is SOOO crazy soft but not pretty....please tell me you have an answer for that too!?
I've only seen a Filofax in real life once, from afar, so I'd go with the Daytimer. :) But that is really about the feel for you.
Thank you for removing the Captcha. Sometimes I don't interact simply because I don't want to bother with it (i.e., having to make multiple attempts to post before I can decipher the Captcha). I hope that you don't get slammed with spam so that you can keep it like this.
And you are correct that you are cute. I noticed that when watching your videos.
Now, do I dare try to argue with a trained attorney? ;) Of course, my intent is not to sway you because you have found a system that works for you. I just think that a daily page can also create limits--you are limited by the number of waking hours on your page. When you're planning your day, if your number of tasks are greater than your available hours then you know you are going to have to put some of those tasks on the backburner (or maybe diminish some of those projects so that "organize the office" becomes "spend an hour organizing the office").
Thank you, once again, for some great planner related reading.
What about people who work, especially in standard office jobs? I could see weeklies being more suitable for SAHMs like yourself, but for someone like me with a deskbound job as an administrative assistant, I am not so sure. I use FC 2 page per day right now, and use mostly the tasks column and the right page for extensive notes. I don't use the appt. column very much, as the few meetings I do have are scheduled in Outlook.
I would LIKE to make weeklies work if at all possible though, because they take up far less space. I'm just not sure if I can? Do you think a page or 2 between the weeks would be enough, in my situation?
PS when you slip in that sheet of graph paper for extra busy days, do you put it between the weekly pages (where it would block the view of the whole week), or in a separate section?
I agree completely! I finally went down from a day on two pages to a week on two pages when I realized that over-planning/under-achieving was driving me mad! So instead, I've been just using weeklies and then using a piece of scratch paper to outline my day each day (including tasks and appts on the daily plan).
The only thing I don't agree with is the monthlies - since I carry the full year of weekly pages with me, I tend to only use the monthlies to track longer term, multi-day items like vacations, etc!
RobbieKay - You did a nice job. Lol.
Songbird - I usually put it between the weeks, but sometimes just on my dashboard.
As soon as you start needed two or three middle pages, though, you might as well use dailies, unless it's a really unusual circumstance.
I use all 3. Monthlies because I often need to see notes about upcoming and past activities or timelines and appointments. This helps me not to over plan or over commit. I can see so much at a glance without flipping a bunch of pages. Then a week on 2 pages where I transfer any appointments from monthly and any other major notes prior to each week. Then at times a day sheet so I can see the hours/minutes and the priority' to do' list.
I am a working mom supervising children's programs at several locations and attending accelerated college courses. Deadlines and meetings and lots of surprises are in my schedule.
I love my Wo2P, but have realised I really need a Mo2P as well, to give me that slightly bigger picture. I plan to slot the entire year's worth of inserts, in both formats, into my Filo on New Year's Day.
Well, I hate to do it, but I have to disagree. I would dearly love to use weeklies, for all the very good reasons you mentioned, but I can't make them work.
I have ADHD and need to write EVERYTHING down. If all I did was write down the four or five "extra" things I did or top priorities, I might be able to do it. But my list includes routine stuff like make dinner, do laundry, blog, tidy & sweep, etc. if I don't put those things on my list, I'm likely to forget to do them.
I don't have very many appointments, but I use the appointment schedule on my daily page to record my appointments for the day and when I plan to do things. It helps me see what my day looks like (again, part of ADHD)and how much time I actually have.
Then I use the Notes page to write down anything and everything. It's rare that my page isn't full by the end of the day. Oh, and I do some journaling on the Notes page - not thoughts and feelings kind of stuff, but interesting things that happen, especially with the grandkids. I also record information from phone calls or other conversations.
So as much as I would like to, I can't use weeklies. I've been using 2ppd for 20+ years and it works for me.
However, that being said, I think most people do very well with weeklies. My daughter has tried dailies but they drove her nuts. She needed to see the week. So she switched back.
By the way, I do use a monthly calendar in my planner to give me the big picture. So I use monthly and daily. Once in a while, if I have a LOT going on, I make a weekly page to sketch out the week and figure out when and how I can do things. Then I transfer the info to my dailies. It's kind of like a worksheet. I don't usually look at it again.
Enjoyed your post and thanks for liking my blog!
If any of my readers don't read Homemaker's Daily's blog, go read it. She has excellent use of daily pages (even if she disagrees with me ;) ).
:)
HI, just found your blog through YouTube via Cari and the Frat House. I have been using a planner for 28 years (when my oldest was born). I have gone through many seasons in my life and experienced being a SAH, an SAH/college, and a Payroll mom. Now a Paroll mom/grandma/college.
For the last 2 years, I have used Day on 2 page, Week on 2 page (verical times), monthly, and a fold-out yearly. With the many areas of my life (home, work, school, community involvement, and being an athlete), I need to see from the micro to the macro.
Planning this Saturday to film my first video and post on YT. Hope to come back and share that victory with you soon!
I agree with you! I have always used weekly pages... since I got my first Day Planner in the 7th grade! There's more room to write, put to say... and most importantly, more room to decorate! LOL. You won't find me using daily pages... no not me! That's what notepad paper, graph paper, index cards & sticky notes are for! Great blog post!
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