How to develop a planner routine using to do lists and be more productive


To-do lists from Paperchase


Did you know that tasks become much easier to complete when you do them on a daily basis? This is because they become habits. Find out how to develop a planner routine using to do lists and be more productive ...

To do lists can end up being your worst enemy if you don't use them in a productive and sensible way. How many times have you written a list and then completely ignored or forgotten about the list? I do this ALL the time!

In this post we're going to look at ways to use to do lists in your planner in a more productive way.


Create daily habits to make tasks easier and get things done


I read an inspiring post on Linkedin about how much easier it is to complete tasks when you incorporate them into your daily routine so that they become a daily habit. 

It goes for all sorts of things in your life, like:

  • writing a post for your blog
  • establishing an exercise routine
  • cleaning your kitchen sink before bed

When you do something everyday, it becomes second nature. 

The task becomes SO familiar that you can even do it without thinking. It becomes part of your everyday life, rather than something you have to plan, remember or find the time to fit it in.

A planner routine can help you pay attention to your to do lists on a regular basis. 


Why to do lists fail


I am a to do list addict. I can't help it. I just LOVE making pointless lists. They are pointless because I make them and then never look at them again.

It got to the point where creating to do lists was actually stressing me out. They were bringing attention to all of the things I knew I was never going to get done!

It didn't help that my lists were long and rambling, full of unnecessary tasks that were completely unrelated to each other, and just causing chaos in my head. 

I was basically creating a lot of pressure and expectation, and I was left feeling overwhelmed knowing that I had lists and lists of unfinished business.

Something had to change.


How to make lists work for you


If you're like me and you love making lists but you'd also like to reduce the stress you are causing yourself and find a way to turn your lists into a useful habit, you have to come up with a planner routine to make sure that you're paying attention to your to do lists.


1. Separate your hobby lists from your immediate goals


'Hobby lists' are those lists you make just for the sake of it. They are called brain-dump lists, and the purpose of them is to just get everything out of your head and onto paper.

Hobby lists could be:

  • books you want to read
  • films you want to watch
  • things you want to buy
  • things you want to do
  • places you want to go
  • projects you want to start

It's fine to make pointless lists, as long as you separate the important tasks on them, and don't put any pressure on yourself to achieve everything on your hobby lists. 

Look at them as a way to clear your mind so that you can stop thinking about all of the things you dream of doing, and work out which of them are achievable.

Good practice is to go back through hobby lists and pick out anything that is actionable right now. 

If you spot an achievable goal, then this could be something you break down into a short to do list of tasks that can be filtered into your day, week or month.


2. Group your to do lists


For some people it's helpful to group to do lists. This way it's easier to focus your mind on one area of your life at a time.

Here are some category ideas for your lists:

  • Work goals/tasks lists
  • Project lists
  • Home goal/tasks lists
  • Shopping lists
  • Wish lists
  • Bucket lists
  • Fun lists
  • Don't forget lists


3. Recognise the difference between a goal and a task


A common mistake is to have a list full of long term goals. This kind of list is never going to get ticked off! If you have a list that looks something like this, you'll drive yourself insane ...

  • lose weight
  • get rich
  • get rid of junk
  • eat healthy
  • quit smoking

The problem with this to do list is that these are all long term goals that need their own lists of short-term tasks or actions. Without actionable tasks, you're not going to achieve anything – they help you to work out HOW you're going to achieve the long term goal.

For example, let's say you want to lose weight by eating healthy. Your to do list might look like this:

  • research healthy recipes
  • make a meal plan
  • create a shopping list
  • do a food shop
  • complete meal prep
  • track weight in a daily tracker


4. Establish a planner routine


It's very easy to make a list, file it away in your planner and forget it's there. But lists are only useful if you refer to them regularly, so you have to create a habit.

It's up to you what your planner routine looks like, but the most important things are:

  1. Keep it simple and achievable
  2. Be consistent
  3. Enjoy the process

My planner routine is quite simple. Once a week I transfer goals and tasks from a master to do list over to a sticky note list that lives on my weekly spreads. Then I move tasks from there into my days throughout the week and tick them off when they are done. That's it! 

I hope these tips and insights will help you to be more productive with your to do lists and come up with your own planner routine. 

Let me know in the comments what your personal experiences are with making lists in your planner!


See you in the next post!









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I Found a New Zipper Pocket Insert for my Midori Traveler's Notebook!



Who needs the original Midori Traveler's Notebook zipper pocket refill when you can just go to your favourite stationery store and find exciting alternatives?

I think I must have just got lucky though. I was browsing the sale section in the flagship Paperchase store in London the other day, and I came across these fabulous traveler's notebooks with plastic zipper pocket covers. I think I paid something like £3 – can you believe it? Maybe I should go back and get more! Who wants one?


What's so great about them?


Well, they fit in my Midori Traveler's Notebook for starters!

They're not a perfect fit, but it definitely works. The zipper pocket bit is slightly wider than the rest of the notebook so it sticks out the side of my Midori slightly. 

But that doesn't bother me, especially when I put the insert into the middle of my Midori so that it doesn't interfere with my pen loop which is stuck to the inside of the back leather cover.




The front inside-left has two long full-length slots and a cool card slot that flips out to the side. 

I suppose now that I think about it, you could actually use it like a page marker to mark where you are at in the notebook!




The back-right has the full length zipper pocket (see picture with ruler below), and on the inside it has various card slots and sticky label slots, plus one full-length slot which I have shown with my ruler again further down.







The whole plastic cover can be used by itself or you can use it like a notebook cover protector. 

Unfortunately the Midori Traveler's Notebook refills are ever so slightly too long height-wise to slip into the cover without the card warping, but only by about a millimetre, so you could just trim the refill cover and then it would slip in easily. 

In all honesty though, you don't need to slip the refill covers into the actual plastic because the notebook is held in place with the Midori elastics anyway.

The cover is a clear and shiny plastic, which means it is fairly sturdy and not floppy. It has a cloud pattern printed on it which I think is rather cute. This means that the colour or design on your refill notebook cover will show through. 

The notebook it comes with has mint green vertical stripes and then coloured stripes going across horizontally with an aeroplane design to show it is intended as a travel journal.






Here is a picture of my beloved brown Midori Traveler's Notebook with the new zipper pocket notebook inserted. 

You can see it does show a little bit at the side, but if you like your Midori stuffed and groaning with goodies then you probably won't mind things sticking out.






I'm currently using the inside front slots to house my favourite stickers for quick and easy access, and I will probably use the zipper pocket at the back to store loose bits of paper, receipts... you know, that sort of thing :)







See you in the next post!

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Midori Traveler's Notebook & Filofax video




This is a rather sleepy video of me showing off my Midori Traveler's Notebook...

Why? Well because I keep meaning to do more videos, and I keep putting it off. But last night, I wasn't having much luck getting to sleep, so I bit the bullet and this was the result. 

I think I will wait until I look a little bit more presentable for the next one though! Sporting a bit of a bedhead.


WATCH THE VIDEO HERE



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Swapping my personal Filofax for a Midori Traveler's Notebook




The appeal of a Midori Traveler's Notebook is the raw and rustic, non-pretentious, gritty realness of it. There's something incredibly honest and humble about a traditional leather notebook cover – it kind of feels like another limb, another part of me – and the more I use it, the more battered and beautiful it becomes.


There's something about a tatty old journal that has lived with you through the good times and the tears that makes them really personal. 

My old journals are all dog-eared and warped having acquired that 'used' look over time. So I knew I was going to fall for a Midori Traveler's Notebook the moment I discovered them.

The thing I love about the Midori is that you can refill it. This means you can have the joy of watching a leather journal age with you, but also enjoy a brand new notebook refill every other month or however often you use it. 

This is perfect because I love old and tatty but I also get excited by a crisp new notebook.

My dilemma is that I am a dedicated Filofax Lover, and I have a blog all about Filofaxes!


How I use a Midori and an A5 Filofax together


Surely there's no need to give up my Filofax system completely though? 

My beautiful A5 Aqua Chameleon Filofax can remain as my 'work' organiser. It's already set up and works well. Plus, because it's big and heavy I keep it at home where I work.

My new TN has more portability so I have decided to use it as my everyday non-work-related planner, journal and sketchbook all rolled into one.






The one ongoing issue I've felt when using a Filofax is the feeling that nothing is fully permanent. 

I think this is because I know that anything can be taken out, replaced, re-ordered etc. While that obviously has its benefits, I've always missed the more permanent nature of a bound notebook, which is why I usually have a separate notebook as my personal journal for thoughts and reflections.

It's is something I can bend on its spine, snuggle up in a chair and get comfortable with, and secretly share all of the thoughts inside my head. 

In a similar way to the Flex by Filofax, the Midori Traveler's Notebook gives me the opportunity to use bound notebook refills and go back to taking a pride in the marks I make on the page because I know they'll be kept forever. And because there is the capacity to use more than one notebook in the same cover it'll be easy to have a journal, a diary and a sketchbook together.

I love seeing how other people personalise the diary pages of their Filofaxes, but I have never really enjoyed decorating pages in a Filofax in the same way that I have enjoyed expressing myself creatively on the bound pages of a notebook ...

...so I'm looking forward to seeing how my everyday personal planner evolves creatively into something that I can enjoy looking back on over the years to remember what was going on in my life at different times.


My Midori Traveler's Notebook setup


Don't ask me how I did it but I managed to fit FOUR refill notebooks into my new leather Midori binder. Yes it's fat n' gorgeous, but still easy to carry around with me.

I love the Midori refill system, it's so simple and clever. The Leather binder comes with a doubled piece of elastic attached to its spine so that you have two pieces of elastic to slip two notebooks through and carry in the leather binder - but you also have the option of doubling-up! 

To do this you get two notebook refills and attach them together by fitting an elastic band down the spine in the centre of the two notebooks so that they are held together. You could just fit the covers of each notebook together with the elastic, but if you do it down the centre they stay together better. 

Then you open them up so that you have one notebook on each side, held together in the middle by the elastic and slip them through one of the elastics attached to the Leather binder. So now you have two notebooks in the binder and part of the doubled-up elastic for two more to be fitted in the same way. 

There are different ways to do it though, that's just mine. I don't know if it makes any sense... I should have included a diagram. 

Anyway... of the four notebook refills in my Midori, one is my personal journal...






As you can see I have many thoughts and I am already into a second refill! 

I like to decorate my journal refills with lots of cuttings from magazines and stickers. I like personalise each one for they all feel different with their own personality. They are like a reflection of who I was at different times in my life. 

It'll be interesting in years to come to look back through my Midori refills to see how much I have changed. I love looking back through old journals. 

In the front of the journal refill I made my own little slip-pocket for my stickers ...






In the back of the journal I stuck an envelope, which is really useful for slipping loose bits of papers in and receipts. 

Also I do this cool thing now when I come to the end of a journal – I like to write myself a little letter as a sort of reflection on the past few weeks. I write about what I think I've learnt, things I want to remember and thoughts or prompts for the future. Just a few things I might find interesting to read back over one day.






I also like to create lots of secret pockets, because they're useful and they make things feel even more personal. So when I tape the envelope to the back of the refill, I only tape the top and bottom, so that I have an extra secret pocket behind the envelope - cool huh?

You can pretty much do this to all your refills and have secret pockets all over the place.

I decided to make my own diary because I like the layout of the Moleskine Diary with a week-on-one-page and the opposite side blank for notes. 

Yes it took a while to draw it all up, but I managed to fit six months in, so I'm sorted until Christmas just about. I filled in each page of the TN refill by hand with a ruler and pen.






I use this refill book as my daily planner in the same way I'd normally have used my everyday Personal Filofax. I love the scrapbook-feel of it. I know that I can't move things around like in my Filofax, but I like the fact that I can stick things in and clip notes here and there with paper-clips to create a kind of organised chaos that only I can decipher.

I also have an artist's sketchbook refill with thicker cartridge paper for sketching and using my watercolours, and an extra home-made refill book at the very back that I just use for scribbling and doodling in.

I find it very easy to section the Midori as a whole. I have a silver leaf pendant attached to the original Midori  string page-marker which I use to mark my place in my personal journal section, and a pink metal bookmark clip from Paperchase that I use to get to my 'Today' page in the planner section. 

That's all I really need, but I do use little silver petal page-marker clips from Waterstones to mark out sections I use regularly like my Artist's sketchbook and general notes section.

I have to say that my Midori has a wonderful way of opening up onto the page I need when I need it.






And that is that! I hope you have enjoy reading my ramblings. Leave your thoughts in the comments, I'd love to read them.


See you in the next post!


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Cool ideas for Moleskine Postal Notebooks

Moleskine Postal Notebooks

I love it when I discover innovative little notebooks! 

Small pocket notebooks are always a tempting purchase, they sort of grab you by surprise. You never usually need yet another pocket notebook, but at the same time, another wouldn't hurt. 

When it has a quirky little feature - like transforming from a notebook into an envelope ready to seal and pop in the post - well, resistance is futile.

Why would you need a pocket notebook/ready-made envelope? Well, who cares... don't you just want one? 

Ideas for how to use the Moleskine Postal Notebook


Encourage children to create storybooks


I have a five year old niece, and being a fan of good old snail-mail service, I developed a penpal hobby with her so that we could write letters back and forth. It was the perfect opportunity for me to go to Paperchase to purchase lots of girly letter-writing sets and stickers. (I always take advantage of reasons to spend money in Paperchase!)

Most of her letters consisted of pictures. I like to think I'm a bit artistic too, and one day I got carried away and wrote a whole mini picture book for her to read. It was about a little owl's first day at school, and I used lots of cute owl stickers. 

I knew she was nervous and excited about moving up the the big school. So I designed and hand-crafted a little pocket storybook specifically to fit into an envelope and pop in the post for her. 

Now if only these Moleskine Postal Notebooks had been available then – they would have been perfect!


Therapeutic 'sealed' journalling


I got into the habit of writing hand-written letters to myself as a form of Journal Therapy while I was going through a break-up. 

I'd write myself a letter and get all the emotional analysis out of my system. Then I would seal the letter and put it at the back of my bookcase and feel SO much better.

I don't know why, but there was just something about finishing the letter, saying everything I needed to say, and sealing the envelope, that felt really good. And then of course not being able to re-read or mull over what I had written.

It was my way of saying that I had dealt with those feelings, said what I needed to say, and that was the end of it. And if I felt the feelings resurface, I would simply write another letter, until one day I got a bit bored of it, had nothing more to say, and miraculously I was over my break up!

You could do the same thing with these Notebooks. When you come to the end of the notebooks, just seal them like a letter, and store them away somewhere for future entertainment or self-reflection. In fact, these Moleskine Postal Notebooks could be dedicated specifically to journal therapy needs. I like it!


Travel pen pals


If you're doing a bit of travelling it would be nice to collect thoughts and scribbles to send back home to friends and family. 

Moleskine Postal Notebooks would be perfect for that. 

Or even if you have a pen-pal that you write to regularly, whether you're travelling about or not, you could still use these notebooks as a fun and alternative way to write your letters.

I know that I would love and treasure a letter if I received it in such a cool form! It would be like a little piece of art or a mini travel-journal – someone else's adventures in a little bound book written specially for me. One of a kind. how wonderful :)

Who knows, maybe 'notebook mail' could be the next big thing? What do you think? Tell me how you'd use a Moleskine Postal Notebook in the comments below...


See you in the next post!









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The time I bought my sister a Filofax... and KEPT it!




I was convinced that I could change my sister's life by converting her to share my secret love-affair with Filofaxes. So I bought her one, but had trouble letting go ...


Like me, my sister is a virgo, and in many ways we are quite similar. She also has the same strange interest in pens and paper that I have, and we both used to keep diaries and scrap books as kids, Although being my younger sister, perhaps she was just being a bit of a copy-cat. 

If I could just get a Filofax into her hands though, I knew it would be contagious.

So I ordered her a beautiful bright red personal Chameleon Filofax. 

I was so excited. Was this just an excuse for me to buy more Filofax Goodies and not feel guilty? Probably. 

The thing is, when my sister's Filofax arrived, I had the pleasure of unwrapping it, and as soon as I had it in my hands – I felt oh-so-confused! 

How could I possibly part with this beautiful thing now that I had seen it?

It was so vibrant, and when I placed it on top of my A5 Aqua Chameleon Filofax I saw something very special indeed. The colour combination was exciting and delicious. There was no way that I could part with it.






As you can see below, that bright vibrant red follows you as you open the Filofax up, it's everywhere. 

Now then, I'm not normally a 'bright red' type of gal – that has always been my sister's thing, which is why I chose the red one for her. 

But I was beginning to think that maybe I could be...






And inside it came with these tutti-fruity coloured numbered tab dividers. 

I was jealous. I wanted them, end of story.







The only thing I could do was go straight back online and purchase another red Filofax for my sister and keep this one for myself. Yes, I was officially purchasing two of the same Filofax. My addiction and insanity was finally confirmed. But what's a girl to do?

I gave my sister the second Filofax last Christmas and she laughed when she opened it, but I had faith that it would soon seduce her, and it did. 

It's all about the personalisation, as you dedicated Filofax lovers know. 

She gradually gave in and made it her own, and then one day she called me up and made me the happiest sister on the planet ...

"Zara," She gasped with angst in her voice, "Zara, I can't find my Filofax! What am I going to do? I don't know what I'm doing tomorrow!"

That's my girl, I thought with a big smile on my face :)






I hope you enjoyed my silly story :)


See you in the next post!


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Unboxing: My new Midori Traveler's Notebook arrives



When you fall in head over heels in love – nothing will stand in your way. No, nothing... Not even a fifty quid price tag! 


I discovered the Midori Traveler's Notebook months ago, and no matter how much I tried to push it to the back of my mind, I knew there would come a day when I would, loaded with guilt, dip my hand into my virtual pocket and part with fifty quid for this slice of leather, some elastic and an over-priced paper notebook refill. It was inevitable.

Last week I had enough of the self-torture. I'd justified it to myself in every way shape and form – for weeks! It was too late for any more consideration. I hit the purchase button ...






It arrived in a matter of days. 

I was so nervous in case it wasn't quite what I was expecting. I've spent many evenings ogling pictures online, and I knew it would arrive in brand spanking new condition, and that the leather would improve the more I use it because that is what attracts so many people to the Midori Traveler's Notebook. So I was preparing myself to initially be a bit disappointed at the newness.

I opened the package and I was very pleased with the simple cardboard container, I knew I'd put that to good use with it's cute elastic band. 

I was equally pleased with the thin canvas pouch that was revealed next when I opened the cardboard packaging up. I took the Journal out of the pouch and this is what it looked like ...






I was prepared for this. I knew about the natural animal fat that would be present on the leather, and I was actually quite relieved to see it, because it showed the product's authenticity. 

How exciting! 

It was very easy to wipe it off with a soft cloth, and the leather underneath was exquisitely... and I don't know what other word to use except... divine! It is velvet black and I am completely in love.

The Leather Journal cover came with one plain notebook insert, extra elastic, and a smell that reminds me of my dad who used to own a small leather factory. 

I felt immediately connected to the journal, and I have a feeling that my Filofaxes have some stiff competition!

You will be hearing a lot more about this little beauty, trust me.


See you in the next post!



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