Saturday 9 July 2011

Cheating on my filofaxes...

Oh dear, now I feel guilty! I have recently been thinking about Moleskine notebooks and I do feel like I'm betraying my filos!

Here's my train of thought:
When I first invested in my initial filofax(es) I intended to use it/them as an everything book. Notebook, diary, journal, reference book, lists, quick notes for uni etc etc. But now I realise I can't use them for all this. My realisation of the limitations of my filofaxes (not the limitations of the filofaxes themselves, as they can pretty much do whatever you ask of them, but the limitations of my own way of using them) has led me to realise that I need to develop a new way of dealing with things my filofaxes can't. After thinking about it, here's how I put my life to paper.
I hope you can follow my logic here:
My filofaxes are for PLANNING
A4 folders or my laptop are for UNIVERSITY WRITING
Moleskine pocket notebook(s) for everyday NOTE-TAKING.

Daily planner: personal-sized Malden (switching between Crimson and Ochre as I fancy). Diary, to-dos, reference sheets (e.g. my mum's working rota), also a finance section, which I need to improve. I also have a 'Home' section, but this needs changing, I'm not sure how. The diary, to-dos and reference sheets are fine, I think this is what my daily filofax is brilliant for. It works for me. The finance section hopefully will stay in here too! I PLAN my today and my future.
BUT the problem area is the notes section. I just can't use it properly. I think my filofax is too nice for my scribbly notes. During the majority of the day, I am walking around, on my way to or from uni or around campus. During my rush around campus, I can't just stop to lean on something to write my notes, I'm writing and walking at the same time, which leads to messy handwriting. And I don't want to plague my beautiful filos, or the expensive filofax notepaper, with my scruffy writing.
SO I need a notebook!! One that is portable, that I don't mind getting scruffy and scribbling in. Like a catch-all place for everything. Even things that do need to go into my daily filofax, but I can't write in right now because I'm not sitting down or my filo's in my bag etc. For this I would like a pocket Moleskine notebook.

Dissertation/Module planner: my A5 Finsburies. For PLANNING my Dissertation or modules- writing down assignment titles, deadlines, books I've used etc, and then planning what I have to do next and when I am going to do it.
They don't (or won't seeing as how I haven't set up my module planner yet) have a section for note-taking. Different reason than above, this is because if I used an A5 filo to put notes in, e.g. lecture notes, notes from books/articles I've read, extensive ideas for assignments or my dissertation/draft paragraphs= UNIVERSITY WRITING it would be too much for even the 30mm rings of the Finsbury!! I would need waaaay more space than these could provide!
So, these notes etc will go either into an A4 folder, or on my computer. I WON'T be putting them into a Moleskine because they are so damned expensive! I would need about 20 of them for my dissertation! Even if I had that kind of money I couldn't justify that!

I'm also thinking about writing something called an Egyptology-bible. I'll tell you about that when I've thought about it more. This will be in a large lined Moleskine.
Moleskines are generally very expensive. However, they are considerably cheaper on Amazon, which is where I think I'll be getting them from, although this does involve a wait for them to be delivered :(

As you can see, I intend to use Moleskines in conjunction with my filofaxes, I won't be rejecting my filos, and they won't be made redundant. I promise I still love my filos!! When September/October comes I'll be using my filos more than ever! I hope the Moleskines will help improve their workability; I'll be doing a post on how I'm going to be using them together soon. And when I'm happy with my daily filofax set-up (which keeps changing every week, hence why I haven't posted about it yet) I'll write a post detailing that :)

Have a lovely weekend!

1 comment:

  1. I compartmentalize my Filofaxes and other notebooks as well. It is maddening to ask the wrong notebook for the job to step up and make things easier. Doesn't work. Ever.

    I so enjoy your posts! But now I need to stop procrastinating and get work done around here. That dissertation isn't going to write itself! :)

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