New poll: How important is acid-free paper in your planner or notebook?

Please vote in my new poll over there in my sidebar: how important is it to you that the paper in your planner and/ or notebook is acid-free?

Acid-free paper is less likely to break down over time and fade your inks, so it is an indicator of archival quality paper.  Many brands specifically say they use acid-free paper (click here see my post on which brands I know of that use acid-free paper).

Personally, I specifically look for planners and notebooks that use acid-free paper. I keep my planners and notebooks forever, and I want to be able to read them decades from now. 

In fact, acid-free paper is so important to me that I'll buy a product I otherwise don't prefer (for example, Moleskine with its too-dark paper and boring black covers) because I know the paper is acid-free.

What about you? Will you only buy a product if you know the paper is acid-free? Is it an added bonus for you if the paper is acid-free, but if it's not you'd buy the product anyway? Or is acid-free paper not at all important in your purchasing decision?  Please vote!

Poll results: What type of cover do you prefer for your planner?

Here are the results, out of 74 votes:

Black	16 (21%)
Color	44 (59%)
Pattern or design	11 (14%)
Photo or image	2 (2%)
No preference	1 (1%)

I'm very surprised there aren't more people who prefer black covers!  No wonder Moleskine is branching out into colored covers for some of their 2013 planners.

I hope planner/ diary companies will see this poll and make more colored covers for their planners!

Many thanks to everyone who voted!

2013 Quo Vadis planners catalog!

Yes I know it's only barely March, but I'm already getting excited about next year's planners!

I dug around with Google and found the Quo Vadis 2012-2013 catalog:

http://issuu.com/exaclair/docs/qvexcatalog2013

There are some exciting new covers and colors coming for 2013!  And, a new weekly planner called the Hebdo which will also have monthly calendars too.  Hooray!

PS I saw on the Quo Vadis blog that Quo Vadis academic-year planners will ship to retailers April 1, and will be shipping to customers soon after.  It's never too early to plan your planning!

Quo Vadis Executive weekly planner

I've been curious to try this planner for a long time, so I finally ordered one from Alkos.com. This is the Quo Vadis Executive weekly planner (click here for the Quo Vadis product page for more info).

In the past I have successfully used the Quo Vadis Minister, which is a larger version of the Executive, and the larger Trinote which has a very similar format. I wanted to try the Executive for a more portable version of this extremely efficient week + notes format.

First, some details. The Executive is 6 1/4 inches (16 cm) square, making it very portable in any bag. It's a 13 month weekly planner, starting at the beginning of December and going all the way through the end of the following December. I find this very handy because I usually travel over the Christmas holidays and this way I don't have to switch planners in the middle of my trip.

The paper used in the Executive is my very favorite paper in the world: Clairefontaine 90 gsm, extra white, super-smooth. It is designed for fountain pen use, and gives a wonderful writing experience. It is acid-free for archiving, chlorine-free and sustainably sourced.

I chose the brown Soya cover because I love the smooth leather-like feel, but the Executive is also available with Club or Vinyl covers in a selection of colors.

At the front of the planner are some information pages including international dialing codes, which I use and really appreciate!  (Click on photos for larger views.)

Near the front of the planner is a two-page spread of the entire year with months as columns. This Anno-Planner is a fantastic way to map out the year and plan travel, holidays, bills due and deadlines.  There is also an Anno-Planner for the following year at the back of the planner.

The weekly format has an excellent structure that allows you to see what you need to do and when you have time to do it. The timed daily columns have a Priority box at the top for the key event or reminder for the day. 

Holidays, phases of the moon and reminders such as Daylight Savings Time are pre-printed, which I appreciate enormously because otherwise I would have to write in all of this information.

Below is a closeup of the dashboard for categorized lists including To Call, To Email, Pay/Receive and Notes.

The corners are perforated to tear off at the end of each week, to find the current week easily.

Sundays are located under all the other days, to maximize space for the other days of the week and to allow room for the lists. 

After the weekly pages there are loads of maps including an excellent time zones map, and continent maps.

After that are several Pay/ Receive pages, which I never use and would rather have for notes or, especially, monthly calendars.

At the back of the planner there is a reference calendar for last-this-next year, and a removable address book.

This is an excellent, powerful planner with an extremely efficient weekly format, annual overviews, and spectacular paper in a compact and portable size. Another winning planner from Quo Vadis!

No Pinterest

I forbid all images and all content from Plannerisms and my Flickr account to be pinned on Pinterest. I have stated this in my sidebar, and also have added a "no Pinterest" image to try to get the message across.

Pinning images on Pinterest violates the copyright of my blog. If you have pinned images from Plannerisms on Pinterest, please remove them.   I have contacted Pinterest directly to remove all Plannerisms images, and I expect them to do so immediately.

I know Pinterest seems like a fun way to share images you like, but it's not all fun and games.

Please click here to read Steve's excellent article about why he is against Pinterest. I'm against it for all the same reasons.  I'm also against it for personal privacy issues for users, which you can read about in my comment here on the Quo Vadis Blog.

When I first discovered that my images were pinned on Pinterest, I got very angry. My first thought was to completely erase all of my content and images on Plannerisms, Facebook and Flickr. I'm still considering this, actually.  I love Plannerisms and I would miss it very much if I had to destroy it because of some intrusive website like Pinterest.

So please, don't pin my stuff.

New Poll: What type of cover do you prefer for your planner?

Please vote in my new poll, over there in the sidebar. ---->

Some people prefer black covers. I have to admit, they do look professional. But I find them boring at best, and depressing at worst. So whenever I'm using a planner with a black cover I either let my kids decorate it, or buy a cover for it.

I prefer colored covers, especially purple. I don't normally go for patterns or photos, but I've seen some really pretty ones.

I didn't include texture in my poll, but I always prefer a soft texture. Either soft and smooth leather or leather-like, or fuzzy (like suede or felt).

What type of cover do you prefer for your planner?  Or do you have any preference?

Journal + Planner in one book?

For a couple of years now, I haven't been journaling. Which is a shame, because I'm missing out on things I want to capture. But for some reason, I'm just not opening up my journal and writing about my day.

Part of this problem, I have determined, is that I intend to write in my journal at the end of the day. By then I'm too tired and nothing gets written.

One solution is to carry my journal around with me during the day. But that means one more book in my already overly-heavy bag.

So awhile back I did a mini-experiment with a daily planner + journal in one, using my Large daily Moleskine planner (which I intended to use as my daily journal this year but never seem to get around to it). Some backstory: I used my large daily Mole as a planner + journal for a little while back in December 2010 for the same reason, I wasn't journaling and wanted to incorporate journaling into every day. The experiment quickly failed due to lack of forward-planning. But later I wished I had used the large daily long-term, because while I used it I captured things that I otherwise wouldn't have written.

So anyway, this time around I thought I'd be more structured about it and designate specific areas of the page for planning vs. journaling. I used the top half of each page as my planner, and the bottom half of each page as my journal.

As soon as I wrote in the first day, I realized it was less than ideal.  Half the page gave me less space per day than the pages of my pocket daily Moleskine planner, and of course only half the page for journaling. Less space for both seemed silly. If only I could make myself write in my journal!

Recently I tried another experiment: using my Jottrr notebook as a self-made 2 pages per day planner + journal. The lined page on the right holds the day's schedule, and the blank page on the left is my journal page for the day.

This works really well. There's tons of space to write, so I don't have to worry about whether I should write something or not for fear of filling up the pages too early in the day. While using this I've definitely been capturing much more than I was before.

But to be honest, it's a little TOO much space. My days are not eventful enough to need two full size pages every day, and there's a lot of blank space.  Also, I find myself over-scheduling myself with the full-size scheduling page, writing in more than I can accomplish in a day.

So now I'm back to square one. My Pocket size daily Moleskine is a really good size as a daily planner and logbook, because each page holds about as much as I can accomplish in a day, and the small size is very portable.  Also I love it because of the pictures my kids drew throughout the pages!  So, I don't really want to give it up.

The answer, of course, is to be disciplined enough to sit down and write in my journal at a time when I'm not too busy and/ or tired to do it.  This might mean bringing my journal with me to write in while I'm waiting to pick my kids up at school.

Or maybe I should try the Large Moleskine combined planner + journal on one page thing again.

Does anyone use a planner or notebook as a combined daily planner and journal?  If so, what planner or notebook do you use, and how do you use it?