LET IT BEGIN!!!

Today, November 30, is the day my Quo Vadis Minister begins! Yay! So this week I will be Calling the Dog between it and my Moleskine weekly notebook. I have filled in all of my appointments and To-Dos in both planners, and already I can tell a difference. The most obvious, besides the fact that the Minister's days are columns and the Mole's days are blocks, is that the Minister has much, much more space to write each day than the Mole, especially on the weekend days. A lot more.

Here are the numbers: Saturday and Sunday in the Mole are each 2 1/2 inches wide and 1 1/4 inch tall, but some of that space is taken up by the day, date and holiday notices. By comparison, in the Minister the Saturday column (which is the same size as the weekday columns) is almost 1 1/2 inch wide, and 7 1/2 inches long! And Sunday, even though it is squished under the rest of the week, still has lots more room to write than in my Mole: 1 inch tall but 7 1/2 inches wide! With timed lines!

Having more space per day means there is less space on the page for lists. But something else I have already noticed while using the Minister: I write urgent tasks on the day space, and non-urgent tasks on the lists.In my Mole, there wasn't enough room to write tasks in the day spaces so I wrote all of my tasks on the notes page. Urgent ones were mixed with non-urgent ones, creating confusion. In the Minister my urgent tasks are written directly into the day so I can clearly see what I need to get done first and what can wait until later. And those categorized tasks list boxes keep me much more organized than I would otherwise be.

Another potential effect of having more space to write each day (and also times printed to the half hour) is that I’ll be able to map out my day much more effectively. I think the structure will do me good. Hopefully it will keep me on track with what I need to accomplish each day. Because to be perfectly honest, I've been doing a lot of procrastinating lately! 2010 will be an extremely busy year for me, and I need a planner that can handle the load and keep me on track to meet my goals.

Minister? Mole? There can be only one!!!!!!