A Second Planner?

You know that I am a one planner girl, right?

But I am thinking of becoming a two planner girl! (And the second planner is a Franklin Covey Classic zip up planner.)

Hold your applause.

Look, as a general rule, I think that limiting yourself to one planner serves most people well. Since there is little or no duplication, you are unlikely to miss a scheduling conflict or forget to copy something. All of us have only 24 hours in a day, so two planners won't create more time.

But I do believe there should be exceptions to the one planner rule.

1. If you have confidential information that you need to track, use a separate planner. 

This applies to lawyers, medical professionals, teachers, counselors, people who work for big corporations, etc. When I worked for the state, my planner was discoverable as a public record. I certainly did not want to have to turn over my personal planner if someone made a public records request. So I needed one planner for work and one planner for home.

TIP: If you use a work and a personal planner, always write in only one planner, except for duplicating work scheduling stuff that goes outside of the normal work day and personal stuff that happens during the work day.

EXAMPLE: Let's say I work weekdays from 8 a.m. until 4 p.m. and have a dentist appointment Tuesday at 9:45 a.m. and fly out of town for an overnight work event Wednesday at 6 p.m.

Personal entries: Tues: Work 8 - 4, Dentist 9:45; Wed: Work 8 - 4, Flight 6 p.m.

Work entries: Tues: Out of office 9:30 - lunch, 2 p.m. Meeting with Todd, 2:45 p.m. Budget Meeting; Wed: Flight 6 p.m.

2. If you have information that never leaves one location (like home or work), a separate planner will keep your personal planner lighter and easier-to-carry.

For example, a home management binder might track emergency routines, your menu, your recipes, your chore lists, and your yearly maintenance on your home. Since all those things are done at home, there is no need to carry them everywhere.

If you do this, you should not duplicate any information. That is, your schedule should still go in your personal planner. No need to copy it over to your home binder and risk getting it wrong.

3. If you simply have a ton of information to carry, you might need a separate planner.

When I was teaching school, I keep a separate planner in my teacher tote bag, complete with lesson plans, attendance sheets, parent contact information, seating charts, and a behavior log. Note that my substitute contact list, since I sometimes needed it away from school, went in my personal planner.

I am currently looking at doing some legal work (which must be, by its very nature, keep confidential), I will be working from home 90% of the time (so my second planner would basically stay in one place, meaning I can use bigger pages), and I will need a central location to keep up with the research projects. All three of the criteria above are met, so a second planner is reasonable for me, if I do end up doing the legal work.

Tune in tomorrow to see the details of my work planner set-up. I plan to copy my personal planner set-up, mostly, but will have a couple of sections that are different for work purposes. To subscribe to Giftie Etcetera and receive an e-mail when I post tomorrow, simple add your e-mail address in the space in the right gutter.

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