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Moleskine Pocket Weekly Planner layout - How to make the best use of it?
alxwz | Apr 20 2007
Some weeks ago I decided to jump on the "back to paper" bandwagon, and bought one of the last Moleskine 2007 Pocket Weekly Planners I could find. The layout has the week on the left pages with one lined page for notes on the right hand side next to each week. I like the week-at-a-glance layout and never felt I needed a two-page spread for one week in my calendar, so this seemed perfect. I read some ideas for weekly Pocket Moleskines that I wanted to adopt, like I came up with a really convoluted setup to use the planner for GTD (with some Covey-type prioritization thrown in) which tried to optimize the use of that cramped space. The general idea was to put appontments, deadlines and recurring tasks into a two-column-layout in the calendar on the left pages while putting a next actions list (with markup for contexts) and a separate errands list, both running from the top to the bottom, in another two-column layout on the right hand pages. From the bottom up I intended to write footnotes for the calendar items and a separate "Waiting for" list. "Someday/Maybe" items should go on the separate notes pages in the back. However, when I tried to put in the first weeks and the action lists, I realized that it's probably way too small for what I wanted. It might work if you don't have many appointments and, more importantly, not too many action items. So I'm back to the drawing board. It looks like I'll need an additional tool like a hPDA, and the combination has been discussed in this thread: http://board.43folders.com/showthread.php?t=307 But I still don't know what to use the notes pages in the Moleskine itself (for each week and in the back) for. They'll probably still be too small for meeting notes and wasted if I only put some random phone number in there every once in a while. Does anyone here use such a planner (or something similar in layout and size) and have any recommendations? 7 Comments
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 I know you've already plunked...Submitted by mdl on April 20, 2007 - 10:38am.
I know you've already plunked down money on the planner, but I would recommend using a blank, lined, or grid-formatted Moleskine instead of the planner. The planner doesn't have enough room for lists or collections. Besides, you're locked into a single Moleskine for the entire year. With a regular pocket Moleskine, you can start a new one at any time during the year after you've filled the old one. A lot of people divide of the Moleskine into separate sections--calendar, collection, actions, projects. If you google "GTD Moleskine hack," you're likely to see a lot of these. My recommendation: 1) Calendar in front (draw six horizontal lines to create weekly pages). I would recommend appr. 3-4 months (taking up 12-16 pages, or 6-8 sheets). You can always create more calendar pages later in the Moleskine if necessary. 2) Collection in middle after calendar ("Superbuch" style). 3) Lists begin from the back and move towards the middle. I would recommend one type of list per page. (Number these pages as necessary.) Use the very back page as an index for open lists. For example, Projects: 2, 5 Incubate: 1, 7 Computer: 3, 9 Errands: 4, 6 Home: 8 Phone: 10 And so on. When you run out of room on one type of list, then simply continue the list on the next available page and note the number in your index. If you don't have many open items left on a page, then transfer them to the new page and cross out the defunct page. Make sure to cross out any dead pages on your index; the index should be a list only of open pages. If you want to, you can also use the list area for project plans, designating these in your index. Also, you could easily change the location of any of these sections: e.g., lists after the calendar, with collection from back to front. Though I eventually moved to the hipster PDA because I became hooked on index cards for academic notetaking, this was the most efficient way I could find to set up a completely portable GTD system in a pocket Moleskine. » POSTED IN:
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