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Advice for organizers/planners (Franklin Covey, At-a-glance, etc.)
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Anonymous
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I am looking into getting a planner where I can actually write everything down and have it in one place.
Does anyone have a good recommendation? I would use it for professional and personal planning. Any preferences on the binder verses spiral bound versions? Thanks so much! |
Anonymous
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Blackberry - revolutionized my personal life. Synch calendars on google with my spouse.
If you don't want to go that route, I would recommend binder, not spiral - otherwise you can't replace pages, or add pages when you have a busy day. |
Anonymous
I use the Busy Body Book (see http://www.busybodybook.com/) and it really works for me. Question for the PP, how do you handle synching with home and work computers? Is this easily done? |
Lab
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I think you ought to investigate different approaches to keeping organized (there are many) and pick one that speaks to you, and then choose the organizer/planner that fits your style. Otherwise, you may be trying to force yourself to keep organized in a way that is frustrating and likely to fail.
Here is an article I read recently about organizers: http://www.lifehack.org/articles/productivity/10-great-notebooks-productive-people-love.html . Lots of people really love those moleskein spiral binders; I think it's a "Getting Things Done" habit, but I'm not sure. The whole Lifehack website is good for organization tips without being too dogmatic about any one style. There's also a site called 43Folders (or 49Folders or something like that) that's good. (EDIT: Here's the hipster PDA at 43Folders: http://www.43folders.com/2004/09/03/introducing-the-hipster-pda). My own method is to use Outlook to the max -- contacts, calendar, dated task lists, color coding, category tagging, etc. I carry a Blackberry at all times (although other devices would work) and everything gets plugged into Outlook immediately. I try to minimize paper because I just lose it or forget to enter the data later (although I carry some paper to catch stray thoughts if using the BB is not feasible). I also use lots of Google Apps to coordinate with my partner -- Google Docs and Google Notebook are especially good. Google Docs is a file cabinet of things we both access and add input to, such as our running grocery list and our budget, and you can access it on-the-go from the Blackberry or most other smartphones. Google Notebook is good for catching and storing random thoughts and keeping them organized. Lots of other good Google Apps also make sense but I have not learned how to use them well enough yet to incorporate them. Until you decide what's right for you, try the "hipster PDA" to get a feel for what you like/dislike. Good luck! |
Anonymous
| I'm a visual person and I need to see things on paper to be organized. I have an "August to August Calendar Organizer" which fits in my purse, has a page that shows the entire month before the pages that show the weeks. I can see at a glance what's going on for my month, and I can write down the details like time, address, phone number, on the particular day. Also, they come in nice colors. |
Anonymous
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synching work and home.
Can't be done in my case for security reasons. I don't even want to synch home and work. I don't want work on my home blackberry. That email can be FOIAd, so I don't want people writing me there. I put any important work appts on the personal bb. I use google for synching. |
Lab
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| I think you can set Outlook to sync with Google Calendar automatically, but I've never done it so not sure how. You could keep work on Outlook and set it to sync with home on Google. Or, you could just put everything on Google Calendar using the BB's browser. Check here: http://www.google.com/mobile/ |