Maybe you could get it custom-printed?
You usually can't ask for the pages to occur in a different order. You can just customize within certain parameters.
Jammies did suggest just creating my own and printing it out. But then the paper quality won't be nice! And the book binding! And... and...I'm glad mine was restocked.
With string, a glue gun, a big needle, and an old wine press, you can bind your own book.
Or indeed visit condign punishment on the people who stopped printing the book you like.
Was my entry so boring that you all missed the exciting conclusion? my planner was resurrected. At least for now.
I saw the happy ending, but the point I took is that you remain at the mercy of whimsical manufacturers.
Fair point. The real point was to weep with me at their cruelty.
Or canonically, the cruelty is the point.
Or to seize the means of production! Or at least to move one step up the ladder, since custom book-printing is more likely to stick around.
This story sounds a lot like my wife. Every so often we go to Staples and she goes through the calendar/planners there and explains why each one is inadequate. Maybe sometimes one is ok and she buys it. More likely they will all be wrong, and she winds up ordering one from Amazon, which also turns to be flawed, but she makes do.
I've never used a calendar/planner in my life, so I don't have any idea what she's going on about.
I did recently learn how to use the calendar on my phone to give myself reminders. That is helpful sometimes.
But what about my miniscule attention span and lack of diligence towards longterm goals?
You could set your phone to remind you to buya calendar.
I don't like using a calendar on my phone. I do use reminders on my phone, though. Apple really wants you to use their calendar, so they sabotaged their reminders a few years ago. Now you can only set reminders for up to 24 hours in advance, or else you have to make it a weekly reminder.
So I have millions of weekly reminders that go off every week for some single event that happened weeks ago, that needed more than 24 hours planning in advance. I'm a dummy.
I've never had a paper calendar. It wouldn't help because I would forget to look at it. I went directly from no calendar at all to phone calendar around age 30 when I started a TT job and started to have more things happening than I could easily keep in my head at all times.
I started using a paper calendar before I had a smart phone. Actually, in college I used essentially an infinite receipt scroll, which worked surprisingly well. In high school I just forgot tons of stuff all the time. Then in grad school I switched to a planner.
I appreciate the picky preference blogging (I don't personally use planners, but it's always interesting to see which elements matter to someone)
One problem with my phone is that the rituals associated with the paper planner help me keep track of everything. On Mondays during the school year, the first thing I do (after posting on Unfogged) is look at the week on the monthly calendar, and transfer the details to the weekly page, and make a to-do list of all the extra crap that comes with the week. Then I'm mostly working from that to-do list and weekly plan for the next five days.
What about having a monthly calendar on paper and changing the ritual to transferring from monthly to computer calendar?
I so approve this post. I don't understand the need for book binding rather than spiral but as a verified anal OCD freak about things like this I don't question other people's sticking points. I still use a DOS calendar program (Calendar Creator). Bit of a pita with using DOS box and another program that enables me to print the calendars (CC wants an LPT) but it lets me do month, week and my favorite the two-week calendar. And I don't need to learn anything new, which has been my lodestar when dealing with computers for the past 30 years.
I've never used a planner since maybe 2004. But I'm a little bit addicted to buying Moleskine stuff.
19: The book binding is because it mostly lives in my backpack, and spirals don't seem to survive the whole year without starting to unravel near the ends or catch on things.
18: I don't have a good reason, but the idea gives me a visceral recoiling. I think my ability to stay organized is so fragile that any deviation threatens to destabilize.
I hate and fear calendar apps because when people use them there seems to be an expectation that you should allow other people to put things on your schedule or at least to see them, and I don't want anyone interfering with my ability to manage my own time.
I used to use paper planners, but now I just use a very long text file. Plain text. I write down dates and appointments and to-do lists and whatnot in it, and if I scroll up I can see the hundreds or maybe thousands of things I intended to do in the past and failed to do, none of which had disastrous repercussions, which is somehow liberating.
Actually I use two text files. The very long one, and a very short one which consists only of important deadlines, so that I don't overlook them in the all the mess of the other file.
The phone is so much easier. So, on Monday I'll get a reminder to get an appointment for a colonoscopy. It will go off and I'll re-do it for the following Monday.
I used to use a paper planner that I was very picky about (although I liked one smaller in size than heebie's, and with a spiral binding so it would lay flat). In my current job, my stellar assistant meticulously goes through my work emails and whenever I mention a plan, she notates it in my Outlook calendar. I've become very dependent on that, and therefore have abandoned paper calendaring. But I also have some appointments that are made through Google, which Google automatically adds to my Google Calendar, so I now have to remember to check that as well. Finally, I have personal appointments that I keep on an unshared calendar app on my phone. This is to say that yesterday I realized I double scheduled an evening next week, and both events are very important to me and neither can be moved. :(
I do actually have just a long to-do list on my phone, which I use for less structured days. It suffices in the summer.
I had a good one that I liked that was French or something. I have to use Outlook for work. There is an expectation that other people can schedule my time if it's not blocked off.
I use google calendar for personal stuff. I'd like to have better one month and whole-week views do that I could do what heebie does electronically.
There is an expectation that other people can schedule my time if it's not blocked off.
Omg. I'd be livid. Or I'd adjust. But on my way to adjusting, I'd be livid.
People can request meetings with me, but I can decline.
I bet most calendar apps propose linking up with other people as part of their added value, but Google Calendar is pretty self-contained and sharing is more discrete item by item by default; I'd have to look up how to share my full calendar with someone.
Once in a while, Microsoft sends me emails congratulating me for things like not having appointments outside of working hours or uploading pictures of Hunter Biden's penis to SharePoint.
I appreciate the picky preference blogging
Me too. Sometimes you learn that you should be annoyed by something you never noticed before, but often, you solve a problem that you didn't know had a solution.
Still, I will never adopt a paper planner -- those became outmoded about the same time that paper news went out of style. You might as well work with a Rolodex.
Outlook, nonetheless, has failed me in an important way. Somehow, Microsoft has decided that graphically, a whole hour should be blocked off for a meeting that begins at half-past. I am periodically a half-hour early for meetings, including one yesterday.
There's a company that I like for paper goods, here is their bound planner. English day labels, you fill in dates, that is this a perennial rather than annually reprinted book.
https://shop.papelote.cz/p/nedatovany-diar-vega-a5/cerna/
My wife has very specific planner preferences, too. I don't, but I do have very very specific preferences re: notebooks. I used them quite a lot, especially if I'm working with clients directly or am on-site, and I use handwriting as a tool for concentration. So, they must be:
* B5. This is the strongest preference. A4 or Letter is too big to fit in a small shoulder bag or a large pocket, and A5 is too cramped to get enough words per line or for sketching.
* Softbound. Not ring bound or hardcover. For more or less the same reason as Heebie re: ring-binding.
* Paper must be off-white, or at least not that really cheap looking 'blue' white
* Paper should handle fountain pen ink without bleeding or showing through too badly.
* Dot-grid rather than lined or plain. Squared is also OK, if the squares are faint.
* Should have a cloth bookmark, or two
* Should open more or less flat.
Luckily, Leuchtturm and Rhodia both make more or less exactly that, and there's some Moleskine pads that are pretty close. Also some Japanese ones that are really nice, but which I don't spot as often.
I have similarly specific preferences re: pens (fountain or gel rollerball, medium nib, should be quite a wet line), which again, luckily, there's a lot of inexpensive pens that are fine for.
paper news went out of style
splutter moment followed by seething
I have similarly specific preferences re: pens (fountain or gel rollerball, medium nib, should be quite a wet line), which again, luckily, there's a lot of inexpensive pens that are fine for.
Zebra brand till I die or whenever there's something crappier but nearer to my hand.
I used Outlook for work related planning, plus Reminders on my phone. We also have a shared family paper calendar in the kitchen that we all add things to. So I have no need for an individual planner for myself.
I do work better on paper, though, so while I do use note-taking tools and outliners* on the computer, I do a lot of my note-taking in meetings and my problem solving on paper.
* LogSeq, for the moment, although there are others that are just as good.
* Softbound. Not ring bound or hardcover. For more or less the same reason as Heebie re: ring-binding.
Softbound is a better word for what I want than bookbound.
I also have a very specific preference re: notebooks. My specific preference is that I refuse to pay for them For the last 30 years, I've been stealing steno notebooks from work to use for my personal diary. Please don't turn me in.
I can only listen if I'm taking notes, so I take notes anytime I'm not staring off into space. Then for years I just acquired piles of notes to never look at again. Finally I started photographing the notes and putting them somewhere moderately appropriate on Google Drive, to never look at again, but now I can throw out the notes without remorse. So it's a win.
I admire those re-usable journals where you use the special pen, and then photograph and upload the pictures, but I'd lose the special pen very quickly.
Similarly, I love how deft some of my students are about doing their homework and notes on a tablet. It's very cool how they play with the zooming and act like they've got a giant posterboard to work with. But I'm not consistently in any situation where that kind of thing is needed, so I haven't bothered to adopt it for myself.
I haven't used a paper planner since I think high school (maybe college). I use Outlook to keep track of work stuff and it works fine but we've discussed getting Microsoft Project or something similar to keep better track of specific project details. For personal stuff we use Google Calendar as a family. When it was just the two of us we used Apple Calendar but the twins are adamant about sticking with Android phones so we switched.
36: As a youth in the Baltimore-Washington area, I had access to four daily newspapers,* and would pretty frequently get two or three of them in a given day. As the Internet developed, I felt quite certain I would never give up printed news.
Maybe 20 years ago, there was an article that I needed to read in the Wall Street Journal for work reasons. On the train home, I looked it up and read it on my Blackberry before realizing that I had the actual print newspaper in my lap.
That was when I knew I was soon going to be done with print.
*Washington Post, Baltimore Sun, Baltimore News American, Washington Star and after the Star closed, the Washington Times.
My dad always took at the papers he could. This was usually two daily papers and a weekly.
needed to read
Yes, internet sources are great for this. Being able to pick something up and leaf through it, especially if there's something well-written or a longer piece with good context, those are different. IMO the economics of dailies anymore is bad, but good weeklies or monthlies in paper form are still staples for me. In other news, I am not a youth.
44: I subscribed to the paper Washington Post for the three years I lived in MoCo, '06-09, but I remember being pretty unimpressed with it. (I more recently subscribed digitally and think higher of it, but I have more news junkie needs now.)
My mom still snail mails me articles I might find interesting, which I love. Often I saw them already but not always.
I also use paper - handwriting does help me focus, and I enjoy listing the items that need to be addressed, then checking them off. I got introduced to Bullet Journaling by friends, which is basically a build your own planner/calendar concept. Some of them still do interesting things - doodle cool art in empty spaces and the like, while mine gains and sheds features depending on what I didn't actually use in the previous year.
For several years, I had a series of big picture month plans at the front, which I'd transfer into weekly to-do lists like Heebie mentions as her Monday routine. I realized last year that my longer range planning - both personal vacations and work meetings -- were getting set and coordinated on the computer, so I didn't allocate calendar pages this year. I mostly have a list of things to accomplish, marked down on the day they're assigned to me, with a due date in the right margin, and a little space to check it off when it's done (or otherwise mark if it's reassigned, etc.)
It works well for me, even though it's shed just about all of the bullet journal special "stop and think", be mindful, and organize your week at the beginning of the week advantages... I kept finding that I wasn't doing the Sunday night/Monday morning prep to get the extra advantages out of it.
For the book's format, I really prefer dotted grids or light grid lines, but am currently making do with a blank page leftover journal.
My mom still snail mails me articles I might find interesting, which I love. Often I saw them already but not always.
My mom does the same thing. She includes a little post-it note in the corner with a handwritten message. It's charming.
In high school I just forgot tons of stuff all the time.
This is my current system. Mostly I remember things pretty good, except when I don't.
Occasionally I will jot down some upcoming events on a piece of paper, and then lose the paper.
Sometimes I go digital and jot things down in a text file that I lose.
The company whose paper planners I liked was Quo Vadis. I also really liked getting an academic planner so that I didn't have to worry about switching in December/January around the holidays.
36: splutter moment followed by seething
Splutter moment followed by unemployment, but ok, same same.
54: I didn't realize he was still alive and am now sad that he has died.
Hobonichi techo planner for life! Monthly/weekly/daily in a book binding with a nice ribbon. https://www.1101.com/store/techo/en/
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You know you're old when...
A 30-year-old asks you if you've heard of the Beatles.
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So I put "x.com" into the address bar, and sure enough, it sent me to Twitter.
The difference between Musk and Trump is that Musk is going to be smacked down by reality, while Trump makes reality.
57: It was Ringo Starr's group project.