DIY Planner

Have you ever wanted to make your own planner instead of forking out the money to buy yourself a moleskin, filofax or such? Well, I have. On various occasions. I've made my very own but they were never really inspiring and never really worked any better than what was already offered on the market. I mean, I just duplicated the same old format. I may have changed and personalised the pages but the method of diarising was still the same.

Okay, this may come as such a surprise to you all since I am just a technogeek. I have used a PDA and I have an iPhone but I still really do like the feel of paper and I really wanted one that worked for me not only for inspiration but to keep up with all the various parts of my busy life. I haven't found an App that would work and the PDA, well, that was oh-so-last-decade!

Life at work was getting a little out of hand and I was slowly feeling things slip. Forgetting things and putting my neck out twice in the last month are clear indications that I needed to get in control. At work, I work with the computer diary (which is essential), I also have weekly meetings with a table of sorts to keep up with my team, and I have my trusty A4 notebook which serves as my brain. Yesterday while in a meeting, it occurred to me that I really needed something that worked for me. Something that would allow me to keep up with all the deadlines, keep up with what and where my team was up to as well as enable me to have a good weekly snap shot of things. I figured that someone out there would have been faced with this problem and would have come up with a solution. I did a quick google search and guess what I found?



I was instantly enticed by its catchy line: The best thing in printing since Gutenberg! What a claim. Was it true? So I put it to the test. I searched "weekly planner". Up came a hundred million results. Many interesting. Some quirky. All templates or formats or methods were posted by members who were all aiming to help in your quest to organise your life. I looked through a number of pages and there it was. The one for me. It gave me what I needed from it and more. A weekly planner that I can print out. It not only allows me to keep track of my own deadlines, it also allows me to keep track of my team! Watch out girls, Adelyn is putting on her manager hat!



The depths of this website is amazing. There are planners to help with scene writing and other creative pursuits, medical planners, work life balance planners and lots more! I have only licked the top layer off of this really totally yummy website!

Now, what is really intriguing about this website, other than the hundreds of planner templates offered for free, is the method currently being developed by one of the members called Middle Way Method. It is a totally different creature to the Action Method by Behance I had previously blogged about. The Middle Way Method is not your usual planner. It involves setting goals, visions and personal mission statements. It is a lot more driven. A lot more life management than time management. I'm rather taken by this and will trial this just to see if I have the discipline and drive to do a weekly personal review of where I am, where I want to be and how I will get there. So this is my plan: I'm going to try it for two months. See what I like and don't like about it, make some modifications and see if I can find something that will give me some control back in my life.

I'll keep you informed along the way. I'm off to organise the world!