This is a topic I've written about before, asking whether people prefer holidays pre-printed into the day spaces in planners. I used to like as much holiday information as possible in planners. When I was living in unfamiliar countries I wanted to know local holidays, public holidays back in the US (where I'm from), European holidays, etc. I wanted to know what was going on everywhere in the world. I think that stemmed from not knowing what was going on around me most of the time, and the desire to feel like I was still a part of countries I used to live in but didn't any longer.
Now that I've been living in Scotland for a few years, I've found I don't want every holiday and religious observance under the sun taking up space in my planner pages. It's not that I don't care about what's happening around the world, it's just less relevant to my day to day life.
Now I want UK and US holidays, and that's pretty much it. I need to know when the holidays are here in the UK, and when my family and friends in the US have days off. There are several planners with US and UK holidays, but they tend to have Canadian and Australian holidays too.
Some planners have loads of international holiday information and observances of several religions in the day spaces, but I can see how that would be annoying for people it doesn't apply to. Other planners, like Moleskine, don't have holidays in the day spaces at all so you have to write them all in yourself.
Where do you come down on holidays in planners? Do you like seeing international holidays and religious observances? Do you want the holidays of just your own country? Or are you willing to write in all holidays yourself so you see only what is pertinent to you?
Just the holidays for my own country. And I definitely want them in my planner. I prefer when they're light so I can write over them if I want to.
ReplyDeleteI want them in my planner, but just for my country...at the bottom of the calendar only. I don't need them on the day pages.
ReplyDeleteI only need personally relevant holidays on the calendar - US and Mexico, since I live right on the border - though I enjoy reading reference lists of international holidays
ReplyDeleteI like the US holidays (nothing more annoying than driving for an hour to find out its a holiday and the bank/PO are closed), but I used DIYfish last year and survived writing them in. If you want to sell internationally, I'd leave them out as they are easily accessable via internet and it really does not take long to write them in. The reason I dislike Daytimer monthlies is that they type it right snack dab in the middle of the box, put it at the top or the bottom. Also, I dislike FC placing them in the first time slot of the day on their vertical weeklies, I want that space. (Sorry for the gripe session!)
ReplyDeleteCassandra I completely agree, I hate it when they put a holiday in a timed space. It's a timed space! I need holidays to be visible but out of the way at the top of the day, preferably in its own space.
DeleteSomething else I meant to add is the difference between just putting in public holidays when things will be closed and other holidays like Halloween, which I like. I've even seen where Good Friday and Easter Monday are shown as holidays (here in the UK) but Easter itself is not marked, because it's on Sunday so the office-closure doesn't apply. I guess it's hard for planner manufacturers to know how much detail people want or don't.
ReplyDeleteI like having the lists of holidays separate in the front of the bound planner, or as a page in the inserts, and then writing the ones I need in.
ReplyDeleteI need US and Canada, and there are very few planners that have both. And if they do, they have EVERYTHING, which is overkill!
I like to put them all in myself. I only add a holiday if it affects my life. (So April Fool's Day gets added, but not Memorial Day when we worked at a place without that day off.)
ReplyDeleteBut it's not make or break for buying inserts. I'd buy them with holidays; it's just not so important to me.
If they were not pre-printed I would most certainly NOT write them in and would miss all of them. I find the way that filofax handles them on the weekly diaries to be perfectly acceptable and to work well. International information in the planner comes in handy, particularly if you work with people in other countries or travel frequently. Ditto for time zone maps.
ReplyDeleteI need, as a minimum, US, UK and HK holidays in my planner. I've got family scattered across 4 continents and 6 countries so even with just those 3 I'm missing a few that would be important to some to the less-close branches of my family. Oh, and across my family we also observe at least 3 separate religions, only one of which is Abrahamic, and I have close friends of the other main Abrahamic religions as well. So I like to know the important dates for those too. Given the very specific nature of the dates I want to mark, I prefer to write them in myself. That way I've *only* got the ones I'm interested in, and don't have a lot of stuff cluttering up the other days!
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ReplyDeleteUS and religious preprinted with light colored ink & at the top of monthlies so I can washi long events at bottom.
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