Saturday, February 28, 2009

Uncalendar Planner

This past fall I had a calendar/planner crisis. I run into trouble with planners because I have to keep my daily schedule in Outlook. My boss requires it and my coworkers need to be able to see my calendar. I don't want to keep a paper and Outlook calendar because of the inevitable discrepancies that will appear. Planners that have appointment times in them are pointless for me.

I do like to have a written to-do list and due to the number of voice mails I receive I found it best if I keep track of them to make sure I return calls. I hated my system of keeping track of my daily to-do list, voice mails, etc. because everything was in separate books. I had used the uncalendar planner in several years ago. I was hesitant to go back to it because I wanted to try something new. I searched all over the internet and in stores, but I didn't find what I wanted. I even tried to create my own calendar pages to have them bound at staples, but to no avail. So I went back to the uncalendar.
Here is the instruction page of how to use the uncalendar. I don't use the system like this, but I thought others may find it interesting. This system is capable of many more things than I use it for. Each section explains how to maximize the usage of that section, but I ignore most of that. That is the main reason why I do like using this, because I can do whatever I want with it, despite the instructions. This is a shot of what one week looks like for me. I use a section for voice-mails, notes, and on the right side where appointments would go, I use it as a to-do section. There is also plenty of room for doodles, which is critically important.

The pens used on this vary. On Monday and Tuesday I have a purple slicci and a blue/black one, Tuesday the words PTO4 are written with a fountain pen, it didn't do well on the yellow color. (In my experience fountain pens do bleed a bit on this paper but are typically too wide of a point to make them usable for this planner.) Friday, that is a Hi-Tec-C multipen. The maroon color that appears all over is a .4 Zebra Sarasa Red/Black, which is currently one of my favorite pens.

There is some bleed through from the following week on the lower right. That is from a preppy sign pen and a liquid Sharpie highlighter. I don't notice a ton of regular ink bleeding through, problems only occur with markers, highlighters or elaborate doodling.

It has a blank calendar in back, which I never use.

Some sort of goal planning sheets.

Notes pages. I actually have a whole notebook like this that doesn't seem to be made by the company anymore. I think it was called the notekeeper.


Overall, I really like this system for the flexibility it has. I can use it differently every week if I wanted to, and I know my usage of the system will evolve over time. If I could change anything, it would be higher quality paper and less use of primary colors. It will be nice if there were other color schemes to choose from.




2 comments:

  1. Wow, very neat and I like your use of the different pens. I would really like one of these I don't think I have ever seen any planners like this before, thanks for sharing :).

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  2. This is an interesting system, I'm not sure I could get used to doing it that way, but still pretty cool. Thanks for sharing...always happy to see something new like this...at least new to me. :)

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