Guest Post: Paulien's review of the Quo Vadis Space 24

Many thanks to Paulien (writer of the Girl In Maths blog) for this excellent review of the Quo Vadis Space 24 weekly planner! I've been considering this planner for a couple of years, but I don't care for the green-tinted paper (same as in the Journal 21). But it looks so nice, I may have to reconsider!

After a conversation on twitter with Laurie in which I expressed my love of the quo vadis space 24, and she mentioned her doubts about the greenish tint of the paper, I proposed to write a review of the planner and show how I use it. So, here it goes.

The space 24 planner is slightly larger than the standard A5 paper size, or the same size as the minister planner and habana notebooks. It is available with several different cover options. I started out with the purple and pink duo cover, which looks lovely but proved less durable than I had hoped. It had dented corners after only a few weeks of use, and if you think the pen loops on a filofax are tight, think again: no pen I had fitted in here, not even my very skinny pilot g-tec c4 pens. So, I switched to the lilac club cover I had lying around from a minister planner I tried out a few years ago. Here you see the outside of the cover with the bookmark elastic I use to keep it closed:

Don’t you think it is a pretty colour?

(Sorry it's sideways, I tried everything! -Laurie)

Inside it starts with the general information page, which are the same as the US version of the minister. These are not very useful to me as a European,  and I almost never look at them. They even wrote the name of my country incorrectly, I don’t live in The Netherland. But this is a very minor issue, as the important parts of the planner more than make up for it. Here you see the monthly views:

I think they could be useful to write longer-term deadlines and travel in it. I had never used them until about a week ago, when I started the 30 day shred exercise dvd program. I now note which exercises I did. Any other ideas for using them are more than welcome of course.

Now for the most important part of the planner: the weekly pages. Here you see an empty week view, which shows the paper colour well I think:

As you can see, the weekdays are on the left page, with time slots from 8:00 to 21:00. I had to get used to the notation of the times, but to the Americans among you they may be more familiar. The weekend days are on the bottom of the right page, with less space and no time slots. I know some people are equally busy on weekdays, but this is perfect for me as I don’t need to write a lot on Saturday and Sunday. And it nicely separates the week from the weekend. The largest part of the right page is left for notes, which I love. The paper is cream, with maybe the slightest hint of green if you look very closely. But if you don’t know it’s there, you might not even see it. It goes well with the blue printing, and with the blue ink of my pilot pens.

To see how I use these pages, look at this picture:

You see my weeks are more filled with tasks, with very few appointments. I use the weekly part with slots to write in those few appointments, and to block out time for larger todos. At the top of the daily space I note any important information for that day, like a birthday or unusual work hours of my husband. Then on the right you see the tasks I have to do for that week. Having them there keeps them visible, and I get a complete overview of the week and what I still have left to do. The times printed on the page give me the opportunity to block out larger amounts of time, and to see how much time is left open in the week. I couldn’t do this with a week+notes version without times, such as the moleskine one, and so they never worked for me.

The other features of this planner are familiar to anyone who has seen a quo vadis minister. There are maps, payments pages and an address book that I don’t use. I may replace this with a notes insert, as I think this is the only thing missing in this planner.

I hope you have enjoyed the look into my space 24 planner, and most of all, I hope I have convinced Laurie to give it a try. Thank you for reading.