Time Traveler 2013 day per page planner

Here is the Time Traveler 2013 day per page planner in Firenze Red that I hope will solve my day per page dilemma! I've been going back and forth for months on which day per page planner to use, and I really hope this will be The One. I've used and loved Time Traveler day per page planners in the past so I have high hopes for this one!

This planner is approximately A5 size, nearly 6 inches wide by 8 1/2 inches tall closed. It's nearly an inch wider than my large Moleskine day per page planner:

I love the wider pages, that extra almost-inch on each page makes a huge difference in writing space!

It has a full page for every day, even Saturday and Sunday (which is very important to me).

Times are printed down the side from 8 am to 7 pm with lines for the half hours too. Below 7 pm are several lines for scheduling later in the evening or notes. Holidays are printed on the day pages. At the bottom of the page are month calendars for the entire year with the current month highlighted.

There are also month per page calendars, which are so hard to find in day per page books!

**Update: I'm using these daily spaces in the monthly calendars as a reference of events similar to how Patty uses her Franklin Covey Index Pages.

Holidays for the US and Canada are printed on the days.

 The cover is so soft and flexible! I love to touch it.

I tried to get a shot of the texture of the cover. It's very soft and feels really nice in my hands. I'm very tactile so this is very important to me!

There are TONS of features in this planner. Here are just some:

Planning calendars and holidays for the current year and next two years:

 International holidays, weights and measurements:

I really like this page: birthdays and anniversaries. I'll write birthdays and gift ideas on the lines. My daughter is interested in the signs of the zodiac and is always asking me which signs are for which birthdates, and I never remember. Luckily now I have this information in my book!

 I really like this page too. I'll write my kids' sizes so when I'm out and about and see something on sale I'll know I'm getting the right size!

There are also pages with international dialing codes, US area codes, websites and toll-free numbers.

 At the back of the book there is a Forward Planner for all of next year:

Directory pages are bound into the book:

There are a few Notes pages:

Then come the maps! As we all know, I love maps in planners, and Time Traveler planners have some of the best maps. Here is their very accurate Time Zones map, which even shows Nepal is 5 hours 45 minutes ahead of GMT. Most time zone maps don't show this level of detail!

 Gorgeous world map!

 US map:

 And there are maps of every continent!

 Look at this Europe map!

 There's even a map of the North and South Poles! And that's just some of the maps.

Here is the back of the planner, with Time Traveler subtly embossed on the back. I love the red color, which is a little lighter in my photos than in real life, and the stitching. It's colorful yet subtle, and professional looking.

I love the smooth, white paper. I don't have fountain pens, but I did a pen test with my wettest inks. I was especially concerned about the Uni-ball Signo RT, which is usually a problem child on paper because it's so wet.

On extreme closeup, the only ink that had any feathering at all is the Sakura, and even that is not very noticeable.

The show-through to the back is not obnoxious at all (much better than my Moleskine planner) with absolutely no bleed-through, and the ball point pen is hardly visible through the paper at all.

**Edited to add: I have confirmation from the company that their paper is acid-free and FSC certified. Wonderful!!!

**Update: the only thing this planner didn't have that I wished it did was a back pocket. But I fixed that! I trimmed a Planner Pad Insta-Pocket to fit and stuck it inside the back cover.

 Shazam! Now I have a place to tuck papers!  My planner joy is now complete!

In my post on how I use my weekly and daily planners together I talked about why I wanted to move from my Franklin Covey binder into this day per page planner. This book gives me an equivalent amount of space each day as my Franklin Covey two pages per day inserts but in a much slimmer and lighter book than my Franklin Covey binder. It also has the advantages of permanently bound pages and having the entire year in one book.

Time Traveler planners come in weekly and daily formats with all these excellent features. You can see their selection at the Time Traveler website (www.timetravelerusa.com) and can purchase directly from them. I bought this planner at Amazon UK but I had to search 2013 Firenze because it didn't come up under Time Traveler. You can also buy Time Traveler planners at Amazon.com and at Calendars.com (which ships worldwide).

I highly recommend these planners! (Disclosure: I am not affiliated in any way, just a happy customer!)

Cassandra's Franklin Covey Monarch size weekly planner

Huge thanks to Cassandra for this guest post showing how she uses her Franklin Covey Monarch size week on two pages planner!


Hello,
My name is Cassandra and I live in the U.S.A with 4 teenagers, a husband, and Noah’s ark. This year I have combined my day planner, homeschool planner, and Flylady control journal into one. I have been struggling for the last 1 ½ years with seeing my week from 2PPD FC set up that I had been using for 18 years. We made a move and I only go to town on Wednesdays. Items were falling through the crack because I wasn’t getting the whole idea of six more days to be completely ready for. After four months I have finally found a solution to this time of my life. I moved to a Monarch (8 ½” x 11”) Franklin Covey weekly page. I had been using a Classic 2PPD (5.5’ x 8.5”) before, with a homeschool planner book and my Flylady Journal. I hate having to constantly go from one to the other and back again. Insane.  My solution:

A week on two pages, vertical columns and task lists at the bottom. (I love the vertical columns because I have a long drive to town and I forget to plan that into my time and end up shorting myself. Or over planning my Wednesdays, thinking I can get it all done.) The time is from 6 AM-8 PM with empty slots above and below so you can write weird times like my family operates. My husband can leave anytime between 2 AM-7 AM, my first child 4 or 5 AM and my second child works nights so he leaves at 9 PM. (somewhere there should be a disclaimer that says “Do Not Attempt This In Your Own Home”).

Now I write once for the whole week. The weekly pages are not back to back, this is where I fall in love with this planner. On the back of your M-W weekly is the Weekly Tasks sheet which has a ¼” column for you to mark it completed, forwarded, deleted, delegated, or in process. Then there is a ½” column to prioritize ABC and 123. (I know it was brought up what the symbol meant for delegating tasks was on here, you simply write the persons initial, circle it if they are working on it, and then a check mark over them if they have completed it. It gets a little messy looking, but I use it when I delegate to kids/hubby. Comes in very handy when I ask who was supposed to clean the toilet and everyone shrugs and says not me.)

Instead I draw a grid of 1/4” squares, labeling the days across the top.  I have my morning, afternoon and evening Flylady routines on the left side, my two younger kids’ school subjects on the top right and then my weekly items in the bottom right. School items get a checkmark when done or a lesson number if pertinent. Daily Routines and Weeklies just need a checkmark stating it was done this day/week.

This week I also wrote “Goals this week:” at the top, since this is the page I am on 99% of the time, hoping to keep 2-3 items right there where I will see them and hammer them out each week.

 

The notes page after the weekly page:  I simply use to record events/information that may be important to look back on. Quickly jot the date down and a snippet of information or journal entry. Quotes I put at the bottom so I can quickly scan back and read them anytime.

The first page of the planner states which design you have picked and then you have a place to list your personal information in case someone finds your book.

Followed by a page of yearly calendars.

Two page monthly calendars with wonderful laminated tabs that will last all year without getting tore up. I spaced these through the year.

Monthly pages have a note section which I use to remember something coming up that month that does not have a set date. I made a Girl Scout cookie order, putting the child’s name, the number/kind of cookies bought and a total. She does not know when they will be here, just that it will be March. The other item comes from a food mail order. You order two months in advance and I always forget what I ordered, how much, which month, etc. so I started noting that here as well.  There is no set date for it to arrive and now I can quickly see if I have already ordered that item or how much money I need to have on hand that month to pay her when it arrives.

The front of the monthly has the wonderful index. After the month is over I read through my entries and then list the date and a brief description of anything that may need to be quickly found again.

The back of the monthly has a Master Task list with two columns, personal and business. Since I am a stay-at-home mom that homeschools and volunteers I try to separate my personal things on the left and all other things on the right.

At the end there are one month per page calendars for 2014 and then a single page for 2015 with each month and 7 lines for each of them. Very handy and I already have info entered there as well.

One more thing—the shopping list. It is in there, how I make it is another topic. It keeps me on budget and it stays in the binder, otherwise I would lose it! My kids are all big enough now so I just prop my binder in the shopping cart seat and away I go.

No, I do not have a problem carrying this with me. I have a big purse, Mary Poppins bag to be exact, many a person has marveled at all the things I can keep pulling out of there.

It’s your life, your planner; make it work for you--not you working for it!

Cassandra

Thanks again Cassandra for showing us your amazing FC system!

How I use my weekly and daily planners at the same time

Several people have asked me for an updated post on how I use weekly and daily planners at the same time, and I'm happy to oblige!

For years and years I struggled between weekly planners (which didn't have enough writing space for all the details I wanted to record each day) and day per page planners (which didn't allow me to plan ahead). Using the two planners together lets me plan effectively in my weekly and record lots of details in my daily.

I've been using a weekly planner along with a separate daily planner for more than two years now. My system of using these two planners together has evolved over the years. Here is an update on how I use these two types of planners together.

First of all, I use my weekly planner (this year, my Plannerisms planner) for all planning. I use my weekly pages to map out my appointments, any tasks I have to do on specific days, and my prioritized task lists at the bottom of the page under the daily columns. In the last 3 lines of the daily columns I plan my dinner menus.

I use the column before Monday to write my daily goals so I can easily check them off each day when they are done. This gives me a quick and easy visual of how well I'm completing my goals throughout the week.

After years of trying bajillions of different planners, I've found I need the vertical daily columns to map out my days, with space on my weekly pages for my to do lists. This lets me see the layout of my week, what I need to do and when I have time to do it.

I also use the monthly pages in my Plannerisms planner to see the overview of the month, what's coming up, and to note things I need to do that month (like renew my car insurance, schedule dentist appointments, or other things that need to happen that particular month).

I use my Monthly pages for fixed dates like birthdays, travel and appointments.  I don't consult my monthly pages every day, just when I need an overview.

Also in my Plannerisms planner I plan all of my goals: annual, quarterly, monthly, weekly and daily. I wrote a big post on using the Plannerisms planner for goals, you can click here to read the details with lots of photos on how to use.

So the weekly planner is used just the way you would normally use a weekly planner. The difference comes in with the daily planner.

The key to using a daily planner with the weekly is that NO FORWARD PLANS GO IN THE DAILY. The daily is for planning and recording TODAY ONLY. In the past I've tried putting appointments and plans into the daily and the weekly then synching them, and things always fall through the cracks. Unless you're really diligent about synching your two books every single day, I highly do not recommend planning in both.

So then how do I use the daily planner? Here's the details:

The day before, I start filling in my daily page with appointments and any tasks that MUST be done that day. I don't write anything that I might do, or could do if I wanted, because if I don't get it done that day I'll have to rewrite it. I only write things that MUST be done THAT DAY. Then during the course of the day, if I get my urgent tasks done and I have time for other tasks, I look at my to do lists on my weekly page and see what else I can fit in today.

I do a lot of recording in my daily pages. I write expenditures (I'm trying to keep track of spending to make an accurate monthly budget). I write in other tasks I did that day so I have a record of when I did things. I note phone calls, make notes of any details, write cute things my kids did and said, note the weather, and anything else I need to record that day on my daily pages.

I change my mind a lot on what day per page planner to use. I want a large page size in a portable book. Right now I'm using Franklin Covey two pages per day:

I like the structure of these pages. I use the task list on the left of the left page to write my to-dos for the day. The appointment schedule goes from before 6 am to after 7 pm and has lines for the half hours so I can map out my day. The lines at the bottom left of the page are where I write expenditures. And the entire right page is for notes, journaling, and recording details.

This two-planner system works with any weekly planner and any daily planner. About two and a half years ago I used my Organised Mum weekly planner with my Quo Vadis Textagenda daily planner (which you can read the details of here), but I was synching them so that system quickly failed.

Several months later I used a self-drawn weekly planner with my pocket size Moleskine day per page planner, and that worked really well. You can see that post here. You can see more details on how I used my Moleskine day per page planner in this post here.

I've continued to use a weekly planner with a daily planner ever since then. For the past several months I've been switching my daily books around a lot. I crave the permanence of a bound book, but have a hard time finding one that's big enough to write enough each day but still light enough in my bag.

I love the structure of the Franklin Covey 2PPD and the ability to have so much information in my binder, but there are several things about it that bug me: the impermanence of the looseleaf pages (I'm bad about switching pages around between binders and losing them), the bulk and weight of the book, and that I can't have the entire year's worth of daily pages in my book at once. But the worst thing about using my FC is that because it's so big and heavy, I don't carry my weekly planner with me which causes me to plan ahead on the monthly pages of my FC, then synch back to my weekly pages. I don't like doing this, I prefer to do all planning in my Plannerisms planner and not go back and forth.

So, predictably, I have ordered a new day per page planner to try. It is A5 size but soft covered so it won't be as heavy as the hard cover A5 daily planners I have. The daily planner I've ordered is a Time Traveler, you can click here to see it. (Updated: my Time Traveler planner has arrived! Click here to see my post about it with loads of photos of the features.)

I have used Time Traveler day per page planners in the past, although in the small size they no longer make. In fact, my favorite planner of all time is a Time Traveler so I have high hopes for this new one! Time Traveler planners have lots of features I love like smooth white paper, loads of full-color maps, notes and information pages.

So anyway, that's how I use my daily and weekly planners together! Please let me know if you have any questions or would like more specific details.

Brush Dance Perennial Grace 2013 date book

I bought this planner just because I had to have it. It's beautiful! This is the Perennial Grace 2013 Date Book from Brush Dance.

The Brush Dance date books are approximately A5 size, with a hard cover and elastic strap closure.

There is a pocket in the front, TABBED months embedded in the weeks, and beautiful art and quotes every month. I especially like the art, colors and quotes in this date book!

At the beginning of each month there is a month calendar with moon phases and holidays for the US, UK, Canada, Mexico, Australia and New Zealand printed on the day spaces. The month's flower, gemstone and theme for the month (Women's History Month etc.) are also indicated at the beginning of each month. The weekly pages begin at the first day of the month and end on the last day of the month.

There is a week per page, and the daily spaces in the weeks also have all the holidays printed in the day spaces, and month reference calendars at the top of the pages. The designs and print colors are beautiful and so pleasant to look at!

At the end of the month there is space for notes.

And at the end of every month there are several pages for notes. The paper in the Brush Dance date books is thick and is fountain pen friendly! Excellent paper.

At the back of the book there is a tab and several pages for Addresses.

I love the positive vibe and sheer beauty of Brush Dance planners and calendars. I have reviewed several Brush Dance planners, and Paul B did a guest post on his Brush Dance planners, click here and scroll down to see them all.

Brush Dance date books and calendars are currently up to 75% off on remaining stock on BrushDance.com. You can also get Brush Dance planners and calendars on Calendars.com, Amazon.com and Amazon.co.uk.

Franklin Covey vegetable tanned leather binder

This is the FC binder I bought off ebay. It arrived just a few minutes ago. I LOVE it. The leather is buttery and smooth.

Sorry for the bright sunlight and janky angles, I took these pictures in haste to get them out to my tweeple.

Smooth tan leather. 

The closure is the flattest I've seen so far on a Franklin Covey binder. It's a small metal stud that fits into a magnetic ring so it opens and closes easily yet holds tight.

 Inside, sorry for the shadows. Secretarial pockets front and back, card pockets front, zip pocket back, elasticated pen loop front.

 Right side.

 Left side.

 I did a total-guts transfer from my Veronica. This binder has 1 3/8 rings and could definitely hold more pages.

 There still some room on them thar rings!

 Gorgeous.

 It's a fatty, but oh so comprehensive.

JUST when I had completely committed to my bound day per page planner. Now what??

February pressure

I'm feeling it. Are you?

I'm feeling the pressure to settle on my planner system for this year. We're just over a month into the year now, and if I can make a final decision now I'll be set for the year (with minimal recopying/ consolidation into my planner of choice).

Luckily I've been set on my weekly planner, which is my Plannerisms planner (of course!).

But I've still been doing some back-and-forth on my day per page planner.

This is the third year I've used a day per page planner for recording each day along with my weekly planner for planning. The system works extremely well for me, but I still have a hard time deciding which day per page to use. I want the biggest page I can get, but in a book that's not huge to carry around.

I've been going back and forth between a bound day per page (one I dated myself in a beautiful Paperblanks notebook, which you can see all about here):

and Franklin Covey Two Pages Per Day inserts.

I recently received a Franklin Covey binder, and even though it's very nice, it's pretty huge. In fact, if I'm honest it's bigger than what I want to carry in my bag everywhere.

I had a great email conversation with Patty of Homemakers Daily, who is my Franklin Covey inspiration. She's been using FC for 20 years and has a system that works well for her. She tracks her finances and archives consistently. I aspire to that level of planner functionality. But in our email conversation, she said I should probably stop struggling to use FC and just keep using what's been working so well for me these past three years: a bound daily book along with my weekly planner. Looseleaf pages make me nervous because I'm so bad about switching them around between binders, causing them to get lost. The permanence of a bound book means I always know where to look for information. Having "permission" from my Planner Guru made me feel free to go back to my bound book.

Is my system perfect? Probably not. But it works well for me in the vast majority of situations. And it's portable, which is extremely important to me for capturing details on the go.

What about you? Have you settled on your planner system for this year? Or are you still figuring out what you need and want from your planner?