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Friday, June 24, 2011

WeekDate planner usage photos

As promised, here are photos of how I'm using my WeekDate weekly planner to track my household cleaning routines (based on FlyLady's Zone work), Happiness Project resolutions, recurring weekly and monthly events, to-dos, meal planning and exercise.  Click on the photos for larger views:
Above is my WeekDate planner open. The top section is the Monthly Recurring section, middle is Daily Specifics for the current week, left is lined space for lists and notes, and bottom is the Weekly Recurring section.  Click on any of the photos in this post to enlarge.

I'll take you through each section of the planner to show you how I'm using it. (For those of you who are unfamiliar with the unique "Only Write It Once" WeekDate system see www.weekdate.com and How It Works.)

Below is the top Monthly Recurring section, showing a couple of recurring events I have (which I circle to stand out as events and not tasks), and mostly how I'm using this section to track house cleaning (similar to the FlyLady Zones).
This is a work in progress and I plan to adapt these work tasks as the weeks go on and I figure out what system works best for me.

Below is the weekly section, showing next week. (Click photo for larger view.)  At the top of each day I write important things for that day. I circle scheduled events so they stand out. At the bottom of each day I write the dinner menu.  Any tasks written on the day space that I don't complete that day get arrowed over to the next day, no re-writing! The days are color-coded so I know which week of the month they correspond to: first, second, third, fourth, fifth and last. So each day I look up to the corresponding day in the Monthly section and down the column to see what I need to do each day, without re-writing anything!

At the left side of the weekly section there is a lined space where I write goals and resolutions for the week.  I also write reminders of things to do daily like laundry, sweep floor, and have the kids pick up their stuff (which I'm trying to train them to do!).  At the bottom of this section I write things to check off or write in daily: learning activities, exercise, and dinner. I like to have a designated space for these types of things, to encourage me to do them so I can fill in the space.  I'm trying to establish habits and routines, which I do not normally follow so I like having these daily reminders to guide me into what I'm supposed to be doing.
Another way I've thought of using this lined space is to have a set general daily schedule listed. I might try that on a different week. This might help me establish habits like exercise and house cleaning if I do them at the same time each day.

The bottom section is the Recurring Weekly section where I write all my weekly recurring events, and also keep my weekly housecleaning schedule. I generally have upstairs things scheduled early in the week and downstairs things later in the week, so when we have people over the spaces they will see have been cleaned most recently. I love having the reminders of what to do each day without having to rewrite them each week! 
Even things that happen every day get written only once. See above there's soccer every day Monday-Friday. I wrote it once and arrowed it over across the week. In my weekly section I made a note of when is the last day. On that day I'll erase the scheduled event. After two weeks of soccer my son decided he didn't want to do the remaining 4 weeks. So I wrote it once, and I erased it once, without having to flip through and write and erase on weeks of pages!

At the left of the Recurring Weekly section is a space to record Monthly Set Days. I have the day my visa card payment is due, paydays, and reminders to do my mid-month and monthly reviews.

The back sides of the weekly pages are lined, and I use this space for my weekly lists. The page is in three columns, and some of these I divide further to give space for my categorized lists, space to record financial expenditures and bank totals, and learning activities for the week.

Here is a view of the main sections, with the top and bottom sections pulled out of the plastic cover so you can see them better.  So now you can see how I look at today in the current week, look up to the corresponding color-coded day in the monthly section, and look down the column to the recurring weekly section to see everything I need to do each day. I only write each thing once, ever. And nothing slips through the cracks because there's no re-writing or copying over week to week. I write it once, and it stays in front of me even for future planning. So when I flip weeks ahead to schedule an appointment, my recurring schedule is already there in front of me for reference so there's no chance of double-booking or overlapping schedules.

And here it is in the plastic cover. You can see the clear plastic holds the cover in place without impeding your view of what's written (it's just a little shiny from the light reflection into the camera).

Click here to read my original review of the WeekDate planner to see more of the planner's features like the tear-off weekly tabs, Annual record, Phone list, pre-printed holidays, annual calendars and more.

If you want to try out this system, you're in luck! The 2011 WeekDate planners are still available, click here for the product page.

And, you can pre-order your 2012 WeekDate planner now for August delivery, click here for the 2012 WeekDate planners.

If you have any questions about the WeekDate planners or how I'm using mine, please post a comment!

9 comments:

  1. 1. GENIUS. Both you and WD.

    2. Such a good idea for the Zone Work, I would need the constant reminder to know where to be working. So much easier than putting all that in your Control Journal!

    3. I love how the days are color coded to correspond to the week of the month. One of the things I don't like about weekly layouts is that I lose the perspective on where I am in the month.

    4. Habits and routines can be so comforting, especially when your kids are small and/or you're stressed to the max.

    5. Thanks for this post!! I'm so NOT original, and it helps so much to see how other people use their planners! I always see something and think "Oh! I could use that to..."

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  2. Laurie--great post! Thanks for explaining your system. Very, very helpful to me.

    Rori! Your comments mirror my thoughts on the matter. :) I could see this working better than my current Control Journal as well.

    The color coding of days is brilliant, and as a visual-oriented person seeing the "big picture" would help me immensely.

    Still debating the desk or wall version--might do the wall so all could see the information without searching out my desk version. This would be a "home base" scheduler, so I guess I just answered my own question... ;-)

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  3. Hey, Laurie - I have put up a post on my Filofax journey as a sub-page on my blog: http://terriknits.wordpress.com/organization/ if you want to have a look! Thanks for all the inspiration!

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  4. Rori: thank you! :) My favorite thing is to see how people use their planners, and get ideas of how to use mine.

    Sandra, the wall version would be excellent for planning household stuff like this. In fact when my WeekDate Wall calendar gets here I think I'll transfer the household cleaning routines to it and use my planner just for planning stuff.

    terriknits thank you for the link! I've posted a comment. I love seeing how your planners have changed over the years!

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  5. Oh, Laurie! No!! I'm on a staycation and have spent the last two days buying six different planners (two monthly only and four monthly and weekly) and returning five of them! (I had to bring them all home with me in order to really get a sense of whether or not they would work) And now you post this! Ack! It looks so... productive! I can see using the top part for large projects, too, that are too onerous to tackle all at once. However, here's my question for you... do you incorporate a monthly calendar?? And if so, how? Thanks!!

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  6. LOL Nancy! I do find I work best when I have a monthly calendar for forward planning school breaks, holidays and travel. There are a couple of ways to do it:

    One is to use a monthly wall calendar extensively.

    Another is to have a separate monthly planner. There are several brands of just monthly planners out there. (I'm curious which brands of monthly calendars you bought!) Quo Vadis makes a large one. Moleskine has monthly calendars in pocket, large and Extra Large sizes that have pages for notes. I wish I had one of these for this year but missed the boat, so I have one on the way for 2012. In the meantime I'm using an undated month on two pages and filling it in. It's a Japanese brand I found here, but I bet you could find an undated monthly at Staples or Office Max. Uncalendar makes an undated monthly calendar that has 8 1/2 x 11 inch pages if you want a really big monthly view.

    I'd love to hear what all the planners were that you bought, and why you returned the ones you did! And the big question: what's the one you kept??

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  7. THANKS for the reply! I ended up with a 5x8 (approx) bound monthly/weekly from DayRunner in fuschia with a matching ribbon page marker and elastic band closure! It's gorgeous - rounded corrners, nice feel to the cover (simulated leather) and, amazingly, LARGE, UNLINED boxes for the days of the month (Sat and Sun are stacked) and large, UNLINED rectangles for the weekly view (with Sunday getting equal space!). It's so pretty, I love it inside and out. I tried finding it online but I can't even find it at the DayRunner site! It's number 826-200A. I found it at Staples. I passed on a couple of month-only Day-At-A-Glance when I decided to use the weekly view to track workouts, diet and alcohol use. I ALMOST kept the in-house Office Max weekly/monthly view and was tempted by a very girly, pink themed Mead weekly/monthly with unlined boxes for the week, but when I spotted this fuschia hardbound item (all the others were spiral except for one monthly which was stapled), it won out.

    Now, however... not sure what I'll do. I might keep it (oh, and it's an academic calendar - happy happy joy joy) and use the monthly view for a larger overview of workouts, I dunno... because now I'm really tempted by the WeekDate. HOWEVER. It has to feel good in my hands in order for me to keep at it. I have a padfolio by Ativa Mobil-IT (from Office Max) which hold my moleskine cahier (used as a daily planner - love it) and the whole thing feels great in my hands. So, this WeekDate thing. Let me ask you - how does the paper feel? Is it slick? I hate writing on slick paper. Also, can you completely fold back the left side of the spiral-bound pages, the middle, left section?

    Thanks!!!!

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  8. Hi Nancy! The DayRunner you found sounds fantastic! Is it completely hard bound, or is it a wire bound book inside a cover? I didn't know DayRunner did actual bound books. And are the monthly calendars across the two-page spread? That is so hard to find. Moleskine's daily and weekly planners have monthly calendars now but they are on one page (so there's two months per view) but I prefer the month on two pages.

    So to answer your WeekDate questions: the paper is not slick at all and it's thick so there's no interference when writing on both sides of the pages. And, the weekly pages do fold completely around to the back which is convenient.

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  9. Thanks for the reply re: the paper. Gosh. Now WHAT?! :-)

    Here's a post for you with photos galore on my new DayRunner: http://senseofgravity.blogspot.com/2011/06/dayrunner-monthlyweekly-bound-planner.html

    Enjoy!

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