Tomorrow it will be 2009. Do you know what that means?

That’s right – it’s time for two of my favourite things – goals and planners

Today we’re tying up the series with how I personalise my own diary/ planner/ agenda.

First I want to talk about why I need to personalise my diary.

I have never ever found a perfect diary. I have come really, really close but what I do is this:

I decide what my non-negotiables are and then I adapt the rest.

You need to also decide if you need lots of name and address pages? Or note paper at the back?

My advice to you is decide on your non-negotiables and make peace with the rest. But above all, make sure you love your planner (like I do) so that you want to use it.


Okay, let’s get to the fun part.

Someone commented on one of the earlier posts that they like how grungy an old diary gets just before the new year. Mmmm, so do I! So here’s a pic of my grungy (well-loved) diary.

Part 1
I have some typed pages I print out once a year and stick into my planner:

• my goals for the year
• personal information
• important telephone numbers
• reference numbers (insurance policies, account numbers with various institutions, etc)
• birthday list

What happens when I have to add new numbers during the year?

I simply write them on the sheet. Yes, it looks a bit messy but messy is good

On the 2008 page, I only added 8 numbers. So for the 2009 page, I simply added some of those 8 and deleted the numbers I don’t need, and I reprint.

I do this page in Excel and in the footer, I make a note of the date the page was updated. Very useful especially for changing insurance providers, etc.

Part 2
I paste the top of the birthday list on top of this page so I can flip the page up to see my other events.

Part 3
I paste an envelope on the last page like this so I can keep any business cards (before I enter them in Outlook) and other bits of paper. I also like keeping a couple of sheets of the big Post-It note pad (about 10) so I can make lists that won’t get lost.

Oh, the page on the left is a write-up of my ideal coaching client to keep me focussed

That’s it for me.

Do you personalise your planner? If so, how? Did you get any good ideas today?

P.S. I’ve had some emails from people saying how they’ve enjoyed going through this process with me. Feel free to link to the posts from your blog – let’s spread the happiness

Tags: choose the perfect planner

This entry was posted on Wednesday, December 31st, 2008 at 1:33 pm and is filed under organising tools, time management. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.