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Today I experienced complete planner fail at work.

Let me give you a background to this story. I’ve been happily using my Hobonichi Techo Cousin as my work planner. Last year was so successful that I ordered one for this year as well. I had so many things to track that having numerous calendars and a full diary page was so useful. The lightweight paper made it portable too. I even did a gushing post about this just last month. I had my work life under control and life was beautiful.

Then I changed jobs. I thought to myself, the planner has worked so well and possibly so because I have learned how to manage my work so it should work anywhere. Within a week of starting I found out that the nature of my work would be quite different. I had more project based work so I also decided to supplement this with a Hobonichi A5 notebook. I wanted to give it a chance to work and I think I forced myself to think it did, until today.

I was called into an impromptu meeting with the Chief and he started going over numbers and discussions that we had last week. Since all of this is still new, I wrote everything down. But I couldn’t find where I had written it. I remember putting it in my notebook and indexing as well but, he was running through things so fast, that I didn’t have time to look them up and take notes at the same time. I was blank when he asked me a question and what’s worse I started to fumble about things I did know as well. It was horrifying.

So that’s it, I decided right there that this system was not working. I needed to organize myself in a different way. I needed to have sections for projects and reference and notes. The obvious solution was going back to the old ringed system… the old Filofax. There’s a reason that agenda / organizers like that have worked for years.

I know that the only way I can make it work is in the A5 size and that’s what I will be using. Once I have thought it through, I will set it up and adapt it to my needs. I am slightly skeptical about the weight and I feel that carrying my planner to and from work everyday will be a chore now. But, I am ready to put up with it if it means that I will never experience a day like that again.

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