When I entered the Filofax world last year, I knew I should start off with just one, and see how it worked for me. Believe me I drooled over many of the planners, but I wanted to have just one place to house everything. In the past having information scattered throughout various notebooks and journals led to disaster, so I wanted to keep it simple.
But for the last few weeks I have been having a niggling feeling that I needed to get another planner. My Apex was filling up fast and getting bulky, and I also felt like I wasn't getting as much business planning done as I should. In February I tried to use an A4 sized binder for business planning, but I really didn't like the larger size; it just took up too much room on my desk and work table.
So I took the plunge this week and got a new A5 Metropol, just for business stuff: that is my two shops on Etsy.
My plan is to use it for overall business development, goal planning, setting business goals, and working on product development. Here's what's in there (so far)
At the front is my 2014 year planner from DIYFish.
I use it to map out the year, and analyse last year's sales, as well as plan sales/product cycles for 2014
Next is a monthly calendar for planning big events, important tasks and product launches for that month.
The next section is where I get into the details of events and projects for each week. Less than an hour after I ordered the new planner, I found a post on Facebook about the DIYFish Life Mapping planners specifically meant for tracking events and small projects.
Total aha moment for me, and after reading some more about it, I realised it would be a good system for drilling down my projects, and doing more of the business planning I know I needed to do. I ordered a three month set to try it out.
Using the weekly planning sheet, I was able to break down a big project into the steps I need to take, and plan which day each bit would be done next week.
After that I have sections for big picture planning
product development and a notes section for all the business development classes I take online.
Now my Apex is primarily for my daily to-do lists, blog planning and keeping note of general ideas and things to remember. I'm only just getting started on this new dual planner system, so we'll see how it's working in a couple months.
Do you have more than one planner? Why, or why not? Leave me a note in the comments, then click over to see what Monika is writing about this month.
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