How I use my A5 Osterley

Oh how I love this planner.

It was an ebay bargain; really, I couldn't believe my luck at getting this for just £75. It's hardwearing but flexible, and the leather has a lovely finish; and of course, that orange is just gorgeous.

I use the A5 as my business planner, and I'm going to give you a little tour through it.

And here we are. The photo is orientated the wrong way, but hey; it's just a DIFFERENT way. I could not get on as well in my business as I do without this; it's my schedule, my braindump, and my planner for courses and programmes. It's a catchall for my entire business, where my hypnotherapy practice notes live in a Deskfax. This A5 holds information for all three brands in my hypnocoaching; Me and Mrs Jones Hypnotherapy (which is self-explanatory), Coach Class which is teaching coaches and therapists how to create their own programmes and courses, and Sugarbox, which is an extension of my hypnotherapy, and works with success story people who suffer with confidence issues. So, as you can imagine, I have a lot of organising to do, and I need to keep all the aspects of my business up to date and as uncomplicated as I can. So that's why I am so reliant on my Filofax. I do have back up, but this is everything in one place, and I love it.

There's not a lot going on in the pockets here at the moment; just some notes that I need to file, my dashboard and my cover sheet, along with the all-important contact info in case my Filo ever gets lost. 

After that there's a sheet that has my favourite poem; it's by Philip Larkin, and it's called "This Be the Verse." I haven't included it here, because it's sweary, but you can always look it up. It's there because it makes me laugh. But, back to business; above is my calendar/agenda; I use Leonie Dawson's month on a page business planner, and then I use the Filofax professional pack for my calendar. It has an interesting week layout, with room for goals, appointments, key tasks, and so on. It also comes with project planners for each month, but I don't use those. 

As you can see, here's the layout; it suits me much better than the standard Filofax inserts of 2 weeks to a page, or a week with time slots. 

My dividers are labelled with a Brother P-Touch label maker, and I'm really happy with the dividers; there are so many talented people on etsy who make lovely dividers, you could spend all day looking and barely getting any work done......

My first section is Projects, and this is a brain dump really, a bright ideas page. This set up is relatively new for me; I have some other dividers with cute Japanese characters on them, and custom wording, but they don't work for me quite right now; "Brainwaves" and "Meetings" are just not quite right for my current way of working. So, this is much better. 

The next is blog ideas, and this is for all of the three brands; again it's a brain dump for title and post ideas, and I have a loose posting schedule in here for the ideas when they become real blog posts. I use these great owl to do lists for that, but I also have an editorial/posting calendar that I use online.

 My courses tab has outlines of all the courses I create or am planning to write. I use sticky notes to get my ideas together (I create a 3d mindmap with them on my desk) and then once it's in the order I want, I hand write it first into my filofax. The reason I do this is that what gets written down gets done; the processing that our brains go through when we write our ideas down is more concrete than just typing it into a document.

I have 2 more tabs; Webinars and YouTube. I run lots of webinars, and the Webinars tab contains my schedule for live calls, my schedule for replays, and an ideas list for new webinars.

The YouTube tab contains To-Dos for my 3 channels, videos I need to record, whether they are talking head videos or screencasts, and my recording and posting schedule.

The final section is for Me and Mrs Jones Hypnotherapy, and again, it's a catch-all and brain dump area. 

Then, right at the back I have a zip lock pocket full of stickers; although I'm not really into page decoration so much, a girl has gotta have her stickers. 

 And finally, the big diskette pocket at the back holds my business insurance certificates for professional indemnity and public liability.

So, that's it on this little tour of my Osterley. It doesn't have a name or gender; I don't name my Filofaxes; it does sometimes get cuddled though, or gazed at adoringly. I really appreciate how good this Filo is, and it's an integral part of my daily life, and gets carried from room to room.

Hope you enjoyed this, please let me know in the comments, and if you have any questions, fire away.

See you soon.

Paula

New Richmond Deskfax

The Deskfax is the Filofax that saves us all from having to buy A4, but could do with the ring configuration of that size. Still, it is a great size and as it's discontinued, they are pretty rare.

I picked up my Ebay win of a Richmond Deskfax today, heading to Masham in North Yorkshire and having coffee and a bacon and mushroom roll while we waited.

The seller turned up with a carrier bag containing my lovely vintage Richmond, and a bag stuffed full of inserts for it; they were actually the main attraction as I plan to have a lot of my hypnotherapy work stored in this Deskfax; the inserts are perfect for that. Some of the duplicates I'm going to give away in the Deskfax Facebook group. 

It's in great vintage condition and I'm really pleased with it; adding it to another black Deskfax and a tan York Director as my small collection. 

I have dyslexia and I find it easier to work if I combine my digital technology and my written schedules. I believe it more if I have my calendar synced to Exchange and my appointments written in my handwriting (and in multiple places). I have a poor short term memory so this helps me hugely. The Filofax is the perfect system for me to ensure I'm on time, never double booked, and do my job efficiently. 

Huge amounts of inserts......

My new Maldens

Oh hello my pretties...

So, when I got the opportunity to snap up these two lovelies, I had to take it. I've had the A5 Malden in Grey for ages; I got it from TK Maxx, it had been reduced for ages but I finally got it when it was down to it's last reduced price of £20. Absolutely brilliant price, and I love it more than I thought I would.

And I'm not disappointed in these Personals either. The grey is smooth and huggable, the black is slightly more rugged and pebbled, they both smell gorgeous. They now live in my office with their sibling, the purple personal Malden. 

I do love a bargain, and I rarely pay full price for my organisers; these two were no exceptions. I was astonished to find the grey at all. 

I have no plans with what to do with them yet; I swap them out like you'd swap out a handbag, so we'll see how it goes and what I decide to move into next. 

Well, hellooooo

I haven't had a personal blog since my old Livejournal days, but I thought it was about time.

I have three work blogs and I write for Birds on the Blog, but this is for me, my life, my thoughts, bits and pieces about my business and my love of my Filofaxes, organising myself despite my dyslexia, and anything else I think of.

I enjoy being part of the Filofax enthusiasts community and I'm looking forward to having my own little corner on the interwebs once more where I can just talk about anything I like and without having to have a theme for work. YAY!

So here we go. I'm Paula, I'm 44, I'm married and I am a coach and a hypnotherapist; a hypno-coach, actually; and I mostly work with phobias and confidence; I also of course work with people who want to lose weight, stop smoking, etc. I utterly love my job; anything that allows me to have Filofaxes can only be good. I also wear Converse trainers and have nearly as many pairs of those as I have organisers.

I'm also writing a book but it's in its early stages.

And, by way of getting into the first of my personal themes, please welcome part of my Filofax collection:

I love these so much and they all get used at some point or other. I also have three Deskfaxes and a number of A5s.

My other love is the Midori Traveler's Notebook, and I have a real Midori, a Raydori and a couple from an ebay seller. So, that's my stationery/notebook/organisation issues taken care of.

I also love music and play several instruments; in my to do list for this year is learning the violin. I am also learning to draw. Just trying to get some new skills.

So, if you're here, welcome.

Back soon.