GTD .vs OCD

[eLady]

Is there a thin line between the two? Or is it me?
For weeks I have been trying to find the systems that works for me. I have spent countless hours & quite a few dollars in the process.

I dont think that I require much; however what I'm needing, I'm unable to find & am about to give up, unless someone else here can relate and/or help.

I have in front of me 4 planners that I've purchased, (I have returned 3 others) all spiral bound. I need a month & week view along with generous blank note pages, preferably smaller than 8.5x11. I would like to carry one device.
After reading about the PlannerPad, I downloaded & used a similar form from DIYplanner.com. After a week with this form, I knew that I had found the answer to planner needs. Well, I received my Planner Pad yesterday... only to discover its a brick! I had no idea it was that heavy. (Executive version) I love the layout but I cannot carry it everywhere.

I found a very nice planner from Walmart, Collins Leadership i-Pro. It looks & feels great, however there's no note pages for notes & ToDos.

The closest to perfection that I've found is At-A-Glance Monthly Action Planner http://www.ataglance.com/webapp/wcs/stores/servlet/product3_10052_10002_137841_-1_false_10052##. It looks great and is comfortable to carry and has an extremely generous amount of notes AND todo pages!.... however the month version has no week view & the weekly version has no month view.

I am so frustrated that I have said forget it & will carry my Motorola Q & a Franklin Covey zippered 3x5 notepad from Target.

Am I too obsessed with this??

 

[mcogilvie]

Is there a thin line between the two? Or is it me?
For weeks I have been trying to find the systems that works for me. I have spent countless hours & quite a few dollars in the process.

I dont think that I require much; however what I'm needing, I'm unable to find & am about to give up, unless someone else here can relate and/or help.
...
I am so frustrated that I have said forget it & will carry my Motorola Q & a Franklin Covey zippered 3x5 notepad from Target.

Am I too obsessed with this??

Well, yes, and so am I, but I think we have plenty of company. Somewhere I have a massive Franklin-Covey binder with 2" rings. The promise was that you really could pour your entire life into a binder like that. The quest for a thin, complete, and flexible planner has also driven many into the arms of Levenger, where their money is extricated with heady visions of organization luxury. It's all hype. You can't fit your life into a Palm, an iPhone, a paper planner, or whatever. I've looked at just about all the calendars/planners around, and they are all deficient in some way. So we just need to get over it, and use what we need to get around it. I'm using a web calendar (30boxes.com) supplemented with the weekly Action calendar. I'm not thrilled, but what are you gonna do?

 

[sdann]

Part of the heaviness of a paper-based system is also the case itself. I had a case that was very rigid. I now have a lighter, more flexible yet sturdy planner - desk-sized with 3 rings. There are some very beautiful cases out there, but I would need the weight before I buy. The 3-rings have also been of tremendous help. I can fit pretty much any multi-holed punch paper system. For any pages that need holes, I was able to manually move the hold punch thingies on a standard 3-hole punch - there are screws to do that (actually a colleague showed me how.) I used to use a hole-puncher from one of these planning companies, but they only punched one page at a time and I had to use all my might.

Last year the monthly and weekly pages were from two different companies; this year they are from the same. I bought unmarked tabs and labelled them Notes, Projects, Checklists, Horizons, Reference, and 2 others I needed. After using an organizer for many years, my system is very customized to my needs. No one planner organization could ever develop a system as I need.

I don't think creating a system to match your needs in any way constitutes OCD. If you don't present any other OCD systems, I think you are in the clear. This opinion comes from a person with absolutely no psychiatric education - not even one class in college.

 

[12hourhalfday]

Am I too obsessed with this??

Yes, your system has to be complex enough to handle the complexity of your life and simple enough to handle the complexity of your life.

Now that i made my self giggle I will share my personal perspective:

I started off with a Franklin Covey planner which I lugged around and barely entered in because it was bulky and a pain and it broke easily, which turned into a 3 inch binder which was just as bad. I have since graduated to the hipster PDA (stack of index cards held together with a binder clip). Now all I have is a pocket journal, my hipster, a letter sized memo pad for project planning, and my blackberry.

So to conclude, what you have no sounds find. Try everything, drop what you hate, keep what you love, and it will continue to evolve. Give it time, it isn't going to happen like magic.