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Carry Planner All the Time??

One of the tenets I thought David Allen put forward was to carry what ever you used as your planner (notebook or PDA) at all times. I can see the value of capturing something that comes to me at dinner, but using either of these mechanisms seems a bit much. What sort of balance do you strike?

mshea's picture

Moleskine

I use a Moleskine plain pocket notebook as my number one "inbox" or UCD. I always have it on me.

Currently all of my contextual action lists, project lists, full year calendar, contacts lists, someday maybe lists, agendas, and other lists are all in a 5" by 8" Franklin Covey leather planner. It's big but I don't have too much of a hard time lugging it around during the work day. At home it sits on a desk.

It isn't nearly as mobile as a hipster PDA but I found two problems with the hipster PDA:

1. It doesn't do calendars out beyond the next couple of weeks. I like having a full year's worth on hand.

2. It doesn't have a very elegant way to do contacts. I don't want twenty six cards for contacts in my hipster PDA.

I'm trying to figure out a way to hack a Moleskine into a Hipster PDA + system but the full year calendar and the lack of a contacts list hurts it.

The year diary a few years back came with a simple contacts list that tucked into the back pocket but it wasn't big enough to hold more than two pages per letter. That would fill up too fast for me. I suppose its worth rewriting your contacts once a year or so to keep it trim.

Here's a thought. What if I got a Moleskine weekly planner with the notebook part. The notebook page is the "inbox", I use 3x5 cards for the lists, the contacts are in the contacts insert, and the weekly planner is the year-out calendar. That might do it all in one. You'd have to be sure to process your inbox items every day and ensure you don't have more than one page per day of new items.

Frankly, I wish they made some sort of loose leaf Moleskine. That would solve all of my problems.

Anyway, if anyone has any other suggestions for hacking up a Moleskine and adding some 3x5 cards for a Hipster Moleskine PDA + system, let me know.

 
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