Welcome back everyone for the 3rd part of my Filofax Tour. Check out the first and second parts if you missed them. This week it’s all about my To Do section and how I use my daily pages within the section to keep myself from going crazy every day.

I’m going to give a bit of a backstory first to let you guys know how I arrived at this lovely set up which works incredibly well for me, so bear with me. {Feel free to skip down further to the Daily Page part, if you aren’t concerned with the history.}

I used to be a Moleskine user years ago before I stumbled upon Filofax. There was something about the artsy, adorable planner pictures on Flickr that made me fall in love, and before I knew it, I bought one, and the popular TriPlus Fineliners to go with them. My Moleskine planner was awesome until I found Filofax.

I started off with a pink personal Domino, and after using it for a while, I agreed to let myself upgrade to a grey personal Malden. Everything was going smoothly until I decided the personal size was too big. At the time, I was only using it to hold a Wo2P calendar, so it was always fairly empty. I bought a pocket-sized Malden, but I immediately decided was too small. {I swear they look larger online.} At that point, a Moleskine seemed like a great option again, so back to Moleskine it was. This time I bought a Week Plus Notes planner AND the Color a Month daily set. Any due dates went into the Monthly/Weekly Moleskine, and I tucked the Color a Month planner for that month into the week to write my daily to do list.

So that’s how I ended up with my set up, but how did I end up back in a Filofax…

I had moved into my Moleskine because the personal sized Filofax was too big. The pocket size was too small. In theory, the Moleskine should have been just right {this story is beginning to sound like Goldilocks and the 3 Bears}. BUT… thanks to some enabling from the Filofax community, I saw organizedlikejen‘s Filofax videos, and then audreyswifelife’s video, I decided having projects and goals in life was something I needed to start doing. Of course my Moleskine had no place for any of that, and I ordered an A5 Domino in Deep Pink that came with atrocious rings which many of you will probably have seen on Flickr. I returned it and got an A5 Malden in grey instead.

{Admittedly I’m simplifying this a bit. There was an Erin Condren planner thrown in there for a period of time as well, but it sadly didn’t last.}

I ended up getting a Week per page with notes for my A5 along with the Month per View inserts. I continued sticking my Color a Month page into the planner as I had with the Moleskine. As luck would have it, it worked, but as everyone knows, A5’s are HEAVY, so the quest for the perfect planner wasn’t over, and I started to wonder if I could make the Personal size work again now that I had more than a calendar to put in it. Sadly when I went back to my Malden, the rings weren’t so fantastic. {Teaser: Stay tuned for the Malden Saga next week.} I requested a replacement, but also bought myself a Personal Osterley for Christmas which I can say has worked perfectly and is how I arrived with this set up.

My To Do Section

The day I realized I could use a daily planner as a to do list rather than a typical planner for events was a great discovery for me. I tried every time of time management system around. I tried the time blocking method and tried scheduling my tasks too, but I don’t like having my days scheduled completely. Having everything scheduled drives me crazy. I do however like to have a daily to do list. Even if I don’t do them all or any of them, at least I have a plan and an idea of what I could do.

The way I use my daily pages isn’t how Filofax or Moleskine set them up. I really do ignore the formatting and I’ve done this ever since I started using the Color a Month Moleskine books. I’ve considered just using lined paper, but I’m lazy and don’t want to write the days.

At the very top, I put any all day things like bills, the forecast, what I wore, or general reminders (like a coworker being off). The first line (8am) marks where I put any meetings or events for the day. Starting at around the 1oam mark, I start writing my to do list. Of course, as with everything in my planner, it’s all color coded.

I check off anything I accomplish with black pen thats a bit thicker than my Coleto so that it stands out. If I didn’t accomplish a task but I still want to do it, I put an arrow through it to indicate it’s been moved forward. Tasks I no longer need to do but didn’t accomplish or events that I didn’t attend get crossed out with a wavy line. Lastly, I’ve just started indicating that a task has already been moved forward with an arrow in front of the checkbox because I tend to  move tasks from day to day and some seem to never get done. {For instance, I’m fairly pale so I try to use some sort of self tanner so that I don’t look ill, but I think it’s been moved forward each day for about 2 weeks now because applying self tanner is messy and also quite cold during the winter.}

Whew! That was a long post. I hope you enjoyed the final part of my tour. Have a great weekend!