Daily Diary + Weekly Planner

Here are the details of how I'm using my daily diary (my Quo Vadis Textagenda that I reviewed yesterday) and my weekly planner (currently using my 2011 Life Book Diary) concurrently.

My weekly planner is Mission Control.  In it I write all my appointments, do my meal planning, plan holidays and otherwise do general planning.  In the Monthly section I see the overview of each month, track bills due and paid, fill in my monthly budget totals, write my monthly goals and monthly reviews.

Even though the day spaces in the weekly planning pages of the Life Book Diary are pretty big, they are still not big enough for everything I want to write each day (which is a lot). So, I ordered up my Textagenda.

I know some people find it redundant to use a weekly planner and a daily diary at the same time.  And then I know other people who use both, or have separate weekly and daily sections in their Filofax.  I'm using a setup similar to how this woman uses her Filofax as her planner, and her notebook for each day's task list. In fact she was my inspiration for using this two-book system, so many thanks to her!

I had a few days to think about how I was going to use my Textagenda while I waited for it to get here, so even though it's only Day 1 of using it, my plan is fully formed:  my Textagenda is all about Today.  My weekly planner is for planning ahead (which I absolutely need a week view to do), my Textagenda is for planning and recording today.

Today's appointments get written in the timed schedule area at the top of the page, and the day's priority goes in the Priority box.

Today's to-do list is written on the lines below. This is the space where I can do a brain dump to get out of my head all of those little details of what I need to do, things to bring with me that day, steps to do in a certain order, and whatever else needs to get done today.

Today's page is also today's In-Box. All those little notes, numbers, ideas, whatever comes at me throughout the day gets jotted on the page.  It's very handy to grab my planner, open it to today's page, and jot anything down rather than dig for a notebook or scrap of paper and then hope I can find that note again later.

Today's expenditures get written on today's page, to capture them immediately (and not rely on my questionable ability to keep all my receipts until the end of the day to tally later). At the end of the week I write totals for each category (groceries, kids' activities, gifts etc.) in my weekly planner, then at the end of the month I total each of these categories for the month.  I find it simplifies my process to have weekly category totals, which makes my monthly totaling much easier to accomplish (and therefore much more likely that I'll actually do it).

Today's record of events like: stuff I want to remember to write in my journal later at home; learning activities and books I read with my kids that day; exercise; the weather; and anything else I want to keep as a record of the day.  Some things (like journaling memories) may get transferred to a different book later, but writing it on today's page is a convenient way to capture it and allows me find it again later easily.

Any appointments or events scheduled while I'm out and about get written into their appropriate date and time, and I also make a note on today's page to write it into my weekly planner at home.

I carry my Textagenda with me everywhere, and my weekly planner stays at home, so at the end of the day I review today's page and transfer anything that needs to be written into my weekly planner. For me, it's very helpful to have only one place, today's page, where everything gets written even if I have to transfer it somewhere else later. That way the information gets captured reliably and I can find it again easily.

There are so many ways to use a daily book.  I love this article on the At-A-Glance blog about various ways to use a day per page diary (some of which I have incorporated into my Textagenda usage).  You'll notice my comment on that blog post, which refers to my post When Is A Planner Not A Planner? that has more ideas for how to use a daily book.