Time Design Question

It's that time of year again for me to order my organizer pages for next year. I've been seriously considering Time/Design mostly because of those cool Reverse folding activity sheets, but I've resisted placing the order partly due to the blandness of the pages. The last several years I have been using exclusively vertical 2-pages-per-week formats because that is the way I plan, but I think I'm going back to 2-pages-per-day because I just need the extra writing and logging space now. I like that with TD you get both daily pages and vertical weekly planning pages also.

I have been studying the pics of the pages online, and am considering ordering the refill, the project worksheets, the meeting checklists, communications worksheets, accounting worksheet, and client worksheets.

My main question is with regard to the daily pages. I'd like to hear positives about the format from people who use them. Just looking at them online, I don't know how useful some of the sections would be...ie the contact, solutions, and the odd schedule format.

I'd appreciate comments from anyone who use any of the forms I'm considering ordering. My other option is FC design your own pages with tasks and notes taking up the full left hand side and a full schedule page on the right. I'd still order the foldover activity sheets for my Next Action lists.

Thanks!
 
No direct experience with the day-on-two-pages format, I prefer the week-on-two-pages format - I don't have that much going on during most days.

I played with the T/D fold-out actions sheets, which I thought were very cool... Then switched back to vanilla DayTimer ruled pages. I also use their week-on-two-pages form, with appointments on the left and reminders on the right. Works great.

From T/D I use their yearly planning forms (fold out) and perpetual calendar. I use them with their usage procedure: On each new month I pull and archive the oldest month, add pages for the new month, and copy over items from the current year's planning page plus perpetual calendar. Simple. I keep about three months of pages, though with day-on-two-pages you'll have less.

I'm curious to know what you'll use the extra space for. I've found that using the calendar for note-taking isn't a great practice. I believe this originates with the original Franklin Planner, which was very calendar-centric (see Hyrum Smith's book "10 Natural Laws of Successful Time and Life Management")...

Re: T/D, you might enjoy this article, esp. the section on "Time/Design's forms":

Some thoughts from attending Time/Design's trainer certification
http://ideamatt.blogspot.com/2007/04/some-thoughts-from-attending.html
 
I use time/design with 2 pages per day in a5/classic size. for me the reason is that i have a big and illegibel hand writeing style and need a lot of space

the big pro of time/design over other planners are:
a)the fold over actions lists
b) their linear style of montly calendars, a very smart design

the time/design daily pages have the note section on the left side and the schedule on rightern side in the binder. FC planners have the oposite. if you write with your rightern hand, the middle of the binder with the rings will be in a little akward position for writeing with the time/design layout.

I have modified my planner with several diy forms

The FC planner have many smart features too
a) a weekly compass that can be designed as a weekly task or schedule
b) if you use you calendar for collecting important notes, there is a feature for generating an monthly index that let you easy go back to particular days with important notes.

with time/design I pick out earlier days with important notes and archive them seperately, each time I replace used daily pages with new
 
Daily Pages

As a long time user I find the Daily Pages extremely helpful in implementing GTD.

The page on the right contains your appointments and day-specific actions which allows the fold-over Activities Checklists to fit nicely and work together. The left hand page can be used for day-specific information.

For weekly planning they have a generic form which might help supplement the Daily Pages.

For me and my situation I've found it to be the best all-around system for my basic GTD lists - next actions, projects, someday, calendar, etc.

I'd vote for giving it a try!

Mark
 
Thanks for the suggestions...

Thanks to all of you who replied. I think I am indeed going to go for it.

To the person who suggested Daytimer, I appreciate the suggestion and have considered them. I don't find their refills to be much different in price than FC, and while I like the pictures and themes of their pages, they don't have any page formats that I like. Their decorative 2 pg per week formats are horizontal, and I only use vertical. Their two pg per day format has the schedule on the left, which won't work with the TD foldover activity pages that I am determined to try this year.

Cornell asked what I am planning to use all the extra space for. This year I have been struggling with keeping food/feelings type journals because I am developing some new allergies and am having to track symptoms. Also, because of my volunteer work I am now hip deep in learning and using spanish on a daily basis. I've been advised to try to keep a log of successes there for when it is feeling like an insurmountable obstacle. I am hoping that 2-pgs per day can accomodate all the brief logging/journalling I am doing now in several different locations.

I am not sure how I will use all the seperate sections that TD uses on it's 2 pg a day format, but I am going to trust those of you who said it is helpful in implementing GTD.

Just a brief note for those who don't like FC's schedule being on the right for a right handed individual. I don't like this feature on their general pages either, but they have Design Your Own pages where you can tweak the page layouts (2 per day, 1 per day, and 2 per week) in a bunch of different ways including swapping the appt side and getting extra room for tasks, expenses, etc. They will also pre-print up to 3 events per day onto your calendar. I love those pages and almost ordered them this year along with TD activity pages to work together, but I decided that I would do better using the entire TD system for this first year.

Thanks again to everyone who replied!!
 
Clarification

I mistyped and can't seem to edit the post. I meant the FC has an option for people who don't like having their appt schedule on the left side if they are a right handed individual. I hate writing anything up against the rings on the left hand side of the page (including for mid week on my 2 pg per week formats) and I usually have to pull the page out of the rings for writing and then put it back in. Very irritating to me. But the DYO pages let you flip things around so that you can put your appt schedule on the right instead.
 
Next Action lists

For those using Time/Design planners, I have a question about the activity checklist sheets that fold over. Do you try to combine contexts onto one or two sheets, just list everything, or use a separate fold over sheet for each context? I've tried just using two sheets, one for personal one for work, but the sheets fill up faster than I can complete the actions. But if I try to do a sheet per context, it gets rather cumbersome with so many fold over sheets. Using half a sheet per context limits the number of pages, but means I'm guaranteed to run out of room with one of the contexts. Do some of you skip the activity checklist sheet all together and just use a tab in the binder and note or lined sheets for your action lists?
 
Usefulness of fold-out/fold-over forms?

Now that this old thread has been bumped back to the top, I might just post another question, one that has bothered me for a while:

Could someone please explain to me the general usefulness of the fold-out/fold-over next action forms?
I've been thinking about this system for some time, but I don't quite "get" it.

Of the four pages of such a form, only one seems really useful to me (and its usefulness even depends on the form being filed on the left or right hand side, resp.). It's the page you see when you "fold out" the form. The other three pages look wasted to me.
Even the page you see when you "fold it over" doesn't seem very useful, because it will mask one of the two pages of your calendar.
The two inner pages (where the holes are) of the next action form seem to be completely useless, because they're not easily accessible.

The same problem applies to all other fold-out/fold-over forms, like yearly/monthly plans, waiting for etc. It's even worse with some of those, because the hard-to-access parts are likely to carry some essential information (like the second part of the year).

I looked at T/D's quick start guide as well as their online manual, but I don't understand this system.
 
fiestaforever;59441 said:
Now that this old thread has been bumped back to the top, I might just post another question, one that has bothered me for a while:

Could someone please explain to me the general usefulness of the fold-out/fold-over next action forms?
I've been thinking about this system for some time, but I don't quite "get" it.

Do you use the week forms or the daily forms? The fold-over works much better with the 2 page per day daily forms as the day is always on the right, and the notes on the left, so if you have the action form folded over, it will never be on top of your schedule. With the week on two pages though, I think it doesn't work as well. I am currently using the compact size planner, and it has only one page per day so the fold over doesn't work well here either, unless I use the side that is visible when it is unfolded, so it sticks out to the left. This is ok to view the actions on it, but it is more cumbersome to write anything new on it.
 
I have a binder with weekly forms, although I don't use it ATM.
I can't quite justify using daily forms (too few appointments), though I'd like to have a notes page every day.
I got this binder (unused) cheaply.
ATM I use Outlook at work and a small weekly pocket calendar for my personal stuff, but I'm thinking about going all paper for everything.
 
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