Hello Philofaxy!

My name is Szabolcs, and I’m from Hungary. I’ve been learning English for quite a long time with varying success, but for translating this document I decided to rely on a language model instead.

I have been following your blog for quite some time, and I’d like to share my own story with you.

Back in the early 1990s, a remarkable man from “the great America” visited us. His name doesn’t matter here, but his presence certainly did.

He radiated an incredible elegance, and imagine this: he carried a black leather zippered organizer under his arm. He only stayed in Hungary for a few days, yet he honored our small community in Szekszárd by sharing his business experience with us.

When he put his organizer on the table and opened it, I was mesmerized by the colorful dividers he used to organize his tasks, projects, and contacts. At the time, I had no idea what it was, but I knew deep down that I wanted one for myself. Our little town has always had a rather limited selection in the shops. Back then I had to wait quite a long time until I finally found a ring binder in a stationery store—with a puffy plastic cover. Today I know it was “personal size,” but it was made especially for children, complete with class schedules, classmates’ lists, and teachers’ names. I still have those inserts untouched to this day—how I wish I had used them back then!

Since then, I’ve bought several ring organizers, but all of them ended up gathering dust on the shelves or in the attic, untouched. Then one day, something happened…

As an adult, I started my university studies. By that time, I already had five professions, but only a high school diploma. At the age of 41, I managed to get accepted into a technical university—it was time to take things a bit more seriously. On eBay (by then I was already working in the printing industry as a printer and graphic layout designer), I came across a fantastic organizer. Even second-hand, its price was half of my monthly salary. But I got it! And that was when the magic began.This is the organizer I still use today: a brown Filofax Personal Hampstead. Its genuine leather interior offers plenty of useful options, which I happily make use of.
Because I was studying engineering (and as you may notice from the first photo, I like to stick to old but reliable tools), I used to keep a small slide rule in the mesh pocket at the back. Older readers will remember this as the ancestor of modern calculators.Since I worked in the graphics industry, I wanted to customize my organizer to make it as colorful and unique as possible—partly out of my love for printing. My knowledge of editing software allowed me to design completely accurate, custom-made inserts for myself. Please allow me to share some photos of what I used back then.The colorful dividers were grouped into three sets.

The top row contained everyday essentials: my Agenda, the original TODAY ruler, and my Timetable, which was crucial for university lectures.

The side tabs were dedicated to my university studies: Bus Schedules (I commuted from another town), Books (mandatory and recommended readings in technical sciences), Tasks (homework and assignments), Students (contacts of my university groupmates), and Supplies (a checklist I ticked off before each trip—umbrella, sweater, etc.).

At the same time, I was also working as a temporary system administrator at a local vocational school (with the serious responsibility of configuring teachers’ computers, the network, and printers). For this role, I had dividers for: the Website server configuration (file and database access), Printer settings, Router configurations, all teachers’ PC setups (technical details, addresses, fixed IPs, MAC addresses…), and finally, Notes.


Over the years I created countless custom inserts depending on what I needed them for.


My wife is a culinary instructor (cook, chef) at a school for students with disabilities. Since I (at the age of 51) still can’t cook, I also enrolled in a professional cooking course (after all, four hungry mouths wait for my wife to come home in the evenings). Meanwhile, my main job is in the field of cybersecurity.

Imagine this: I completely restructured my Filofax for these important aspects of life: Tasks, Challenges, Ideas, Study Materials, and Notes. At the same time, I’ve been struggling with health issues for quite a while, so I had to include daily health-tracking inserts as well: Blood Pressure, Blood Sugar, Doctors’ contacts, and Medical Appointments.Bit by bit, I am shaping my own structure so that my Filofax becomes a true companion in my daily life.In our small town, I also managed to find an original A5 Zip Metropol, which I truly love. However, it’s far too big to take with me to work every day or to carry everywhere. Unfortunately, it had been sitting in the shop for too long, and its transparent ruler got damaged, so I’ll need to replace it with a black six-hole TODAY ruler. For some reason, these have disappeared from shops in Hungary. They are available on eBay, but the TODAY print has vanished from them… Sadly, I can no longer find the Hampstead organizer anywhere (not on eBay, not on Amazon). If it were available in A5 size, I would certainly invest in one. Unfortunately, the Metropol zip design makes it even bulkier than the traditional A5, which affects its portability. My wife’s favorite color is purple (violet). When she became a teacher, I gave her a ring binder with Professor inserts. Since Filofax is not available in the shops of our small town, I surprised her at Christmas with a Saturnus binder. It came with inserts designed specifically for teachers, making it useful in her daily work. Unfortunately, I could only buy it in red—the one color she doesn’t particularly like. Recently, I found a Hungarian retailer that offered it in purple, with the option of adding her name. I ordered it for her, and she was absolutely radiant with joy. That meant I could “move into” the red binder myself, and now I use it to collect recipes—either ones my wife shows me, or those I’ll be learning at school in my late years.



Please allow me to offer my help: if anyone needs custom inserts (or dividers), I would be happy to design them in professional print software during my free time. I can export them to PDF format, making them easy to print at home—I’d just need a simple sketch to get the dimensions of the tables right from the start.

Thank you for letting me share this noisy but precious companion of my life. I’ll be happy if my story could bring even a moment of joy to someone.

I remain your follower, and I sincerely respect the work you do:

Szabolcs Szabó
Szekszárd, Hungary

It was thirty years ago this month in December 1986 possibly this week in December that year that I became the owner of a Filofax Winchester.

Life was very different back then for me. I was in my late 20's I was about to become a father for the one and only time within the next few weeks. We had moved in to our family home earlier that year. I was working in an office in Central London, I commuted up to London each morning.

At home we had no computers, although I used one at work. We only had four channels to watch on TV. We bought newspapers and magazines from the newsagents, borrowed books from the local library. Sounds a bit primitive I suppose!

By early 1987 my briefcase would have looked something like this.


My Filofax Winchester, a pager, my Texas Instruments (TI56) calculator, a Walkman for music from cassette or radio, and the daily papers.  May be a book or two and my lunch!

Before you ask why have I still got newspapers from 1987... they date from the day my son was born. On that day in 1987 one of the front page stories was about the kidnapping of Terry Waite the Archbishop of Canterbury's Special Envoy who was trying to negotiate with people in Beirut who had taken hostages, only to become one himself.

I had seen an article in one of the Sunday newspaper supplements about Filofax organisers and how they were the 'latest must have' for 'Young Upwardly Mobile People' and I had to have one!

So my Filofax Winchester was a Christmas gift I think, I really can't remember! But I recall struggling to understand what all the different inserts available where and trying to figure out the diary insert options. I did have a catalogue which I had picked up from a shop in Kingsway in London.

My Winchester has stood the test of time quite well I think. The plastic cap on the popper cracked and fell off a few years ago, but I cleaned up the metal cap that was left behind and painted it with a spot of enamel paint.


The edges give away its age quite a bit if you look really close under strong lighting. And the edges and the corners have some 'curl' to them. The calf leather has a lovely shine to it from all the handling it has had over the years. The dividers and A-Z index tabs are the original ones I bought back then.


Organisers came empty back then so you had to decide what you wanted to fill it with.  I use it these days as a store for my diary pages from 1987-1989.


The Winchester only has an ID pocket in the front inside cover, there are no credit card slots, just pockets. The large flap covering the pockets at the front and back also act as ring protectors.

The credit card insert is also an original one from the 1980's


It has a fairly small single pen loop underneath the clasp.

The rings measure seven eighths of an inch (approx 23mm) in size. They still close nice and tightly. I did venture underneath the cover plate for a Philofaxy post a few years ago, but they have never been taken out.

Diary inserts didn't have any information pages, you could buy National and International Data Sets for each year to add to your organiser.


During 1987 I used a week on two pages with white paper, but in 1988 I went over to a cotton cream paper insert. As you can see the pages have gone quite brown in colour giving the passing of time.


I've photoshopped out the notes on the pages! My notes during 1987 make interesting reading mainly about our son and his arrival in to the world and what I was doing at work and at home.  I really wasn't using it as a planner at all, more a journal. I hadn't learnt how to use it correctly!

By the early 1990's I had moved over to using an electronic Casio Diary for reminders and appointments, and then later a Psion 5mx and other electronic gadgets. So the Winchester sat in my desk at home un-used but not forgotten about.

When I started my new job in 2005 I started using it again because 'personal electronic devices' where not permitted in the office because of the security around the job I was doing at the time. But a Filofax was ok. So I rediscovered my Winchester and started to using it again.

I think by 2006 I had bought a Finsbury A5 because it was easier for me to print inserts for it and then by accident I discovered Philofaxy.....  Nan invited me to join her and Laurie in 2009 and the rest is history I suppose!

Naturally I could never part with the Winchester, so many memories, it will keep going for another 30 years or more.


Not that I can say the same for the pager, you can only set the date up to 2004, after that it goes back to 1984!

Thank you to Lynn for this guest post. Lynn has her own blog over at My Filofax Blog which has featured a lot in recent web finds posts. 

The generation of Baby Boomers is now nearing or is already at retiring age. Having lived through the ‘swinging sixties’ many of us are still going strong, loving life and looking forward to many more years ahead, albeit with a mountain of pills and replacement bits and pieces.

During my working life my organisers were all to do with my work in education and I never contemplated using one in my home-life. I wanted to step out of the rat race and leave all that behind. After retirement I happily pursued all my hobbies and it was only by chance that I acquired a Filofax style personal planner from one of my forays in a Charity Shop.

That planner started me on my Filofax journey, researching different sizes and types of planners, set-ups and ways of organising. A new world opened up especially when I found Philofaxy and saw that others shared my enthusiasm for a Filofax.

Needless to say my first proper Filofax followed the look-a-like and a new hobby was born. Who would have thought that I would still enjoy using my working skills - organising, categorising, researching, planning for projects, filing and juggling commitments in my retirement years!

I now own (ahem) more than one Filofax and the collection continues to grow as I find ways to use them all. By far the main way of using the Filofax is as an organiser and planner of everyday life and I read mostly articles written by the younger generation, people using a Filofax to run a busy home, organise work or student life or run a business.


There are not many articles, blogs, vlogs or YT videos produced by us ‘oldies’ showing a Filofax in action for our age group, although thank you to the wonderful ‘older’ lady on YT who showed off her Filofax containing her bus pass, medication list, and shopping trolley coin - you inspired me greatly!

I have often wondered how many of us baby boomers benefit from having a Filofax in our lives, how many call in here looking for inspiration? Our generation still enjoys fashion, music and alternative ideas.

We like to live life to the full and with innovative planning and organising in a Filofax we can achieve this and so much more.

Thank you to Joanny for this guest post. 


My set up has changed twice since I bought it but it is still working for me now.
You can read about my very first set up here and my current set up here.

A few months into my Filofax journey, I started thinking about getting another one but the truth is I'm not a multiple Filofax girl. I can only use one at a time for now. But I stumbled across a mini Metropol for sale in Ryman and I didn't think twice before picking it up.
I now use it as my wallet.
You can read about my set up here.
So it's been over a year now and never ever have I regretted that decision. I find that writing things down helps me remember and I love the idea of having all my lists, planner, tasks, appointments all together in one book. Having a Filofax has also brought out the creativity in me. A part of me I never knew I had. I was also pleased to discover a whole community out here made of planner enthusiasts. It's amazing to connect with like minded people.

I am still enjoying using my two Filos but I will be off to uni soon and I am search of the perfect compact Filo because I think a pocket size would be too small for me and a personal size just a bit big. In other words, my Filofax journey still continues.

Hope you enjoyed reading a bit about my Filofax journey.

This post has been a looooooong time coming.

First up, I don’t know exactly how I got lost in my obsession for planners, and everything planner related.

However, I do know that it started in October when I was in Japan. I guess being overseas gives you time to think about things, and I was thinking about things I needed to do when I got home. This led to thinking about how to plan said things, which lead to thinking how I don’t like using my iPhone calendar anymore as I am sick of reminders constantly going off and I never do what they reminding me of.

I was at the point where I was ready to start planning my life properly. I was already in the process of moving away from using my iPhone calendar and going back to an old school paper and pen diary to plan my personal life and blog posts. However, it was heavy to carry around, and I still wasn’t using it properly.

So all this thinking led to research, which led to learning about how people plan, which led to the wide, wide world of Filofax love and decoration, which led to writing a post about planning to plan. So now it’s finally time to move forward from the planning to the actual doing.

After frantically looking for a planner in Japan to no avail, I ordered a Filofax A5 Calipso organiser in purple on Amazon.

After watching many YouTube videos, reading blog posts, and looking at Filofax communities, I’ve finally started to set my planner up.

Here’s how I’ve set it up

Planner pockets

My Filofax has six card sleeves and a pouch at the front, and a zipped pouch at the back.

The only section I use is the pouch at the front, which holds my calendar legend (shown in the image below and discussed in detail later) and bills. I don’t think I’ll use the other sections as I don’t want to add too much bulk to my planner.

Dashboard

This is the first thing you see when you open my planner.

It’s something that I saw a lot of when I was doing research on how to set my planner up.

I don’t intend on using any of the items on my dashboard, they’re basically there to pretty my planner up.


Categories

At this stage I have five categories or areas that I’ll be using my planner for. Each category is identified by decorative scrapbook paper, which I cut to size and have inserted into an A5 plastic sleeve.

Below are the categories that I have. I already have the feeling that some will be replaced with something else, which I’ll work out once I start using my planner properly.

• Calendar
• Blog
• OLW
• Lists
• Expenses

Calendar

The inserts are from Kikki K and are a month to a page and a week to two pages.

I use the month page to plot out blog posts, and the weekly pages to show what’s happening each day.

I colour code each area that needs to be put on my weekly pages, the legend detailing the colours is stored in the pouch at the front of my planner, and can be seen on the image of the dashboard.

My area’s colour codes are:

• Peach – blog
• Blue – personal
• Green – garden
• Yellow – meals planned for dinner
• Orange – grocery shopping
• Birthday washi – birthdays
• Purple – health and work

When I put something on my weekly pages I use washi tape in the corresponding colour instead of writing them in pen. As I’m always rescheduling things it’s much neater to move things around when they’re on washi tape, as opposed to crossing it out if they’re written in pen. There is the occasional thing that I may write in pen, but this doesn’t happen often.

Blog

I will use this section to write down any blog post ideas that I have, or to store any magazine inspiration that I find.

OLW

OLW stands for one little word, which is how I set goals for my year. If you’d like to learn more about this please click here.

This year my one little word is focus. I intend to use this section to write down my focus goals, and write down anything focus orientated that will keep me inspired.

I have already made an insert with my focus goals on it, which will always be in my current weekly page.  You can view this in the image below.

Lists

I’m crazy for lists, so this section will definitely stay.

At the moment I have the following lists:

• Garden
• House
• To buy
• Sunday
• Day trips
• Favourite restaurants
• Restaurants to try

Each list has items on it that need doing. For example, some of the things on my garden list include plant herbs, work on shed path, and mulch side of house.

Eventually everything on each of list will be transferred to my weekly calendar and ticked off the list. New things will be added to each list as they come up.


Expenses

This year one of my one little word goals is to focus on being financially responsible. I’m hoping to track my expenses in this section to allow me to do this.

Decoration

A big part of the Filofax community is planner decoration, which is not only fun, but also keeps you motivated to actually use your planner.



I’m hoping to get better at this, and will be posting each month on what I have done for that month in terms of decoration. I’ll also show weekly photos of this on my Instagram account.

If you’d like to learn more about how to use a planner please visit my Filofax Planner Love Pinterest page

In the meantime, I’d love to hear how you plan out your days.
Thank you Lisa for your guest post, we really appreciate people sharing posts like this on Philofaxy. 

Be sure to visit Lisa's blog The Creative Canvass

Chatting on Skype with David Popely is always enjoyable, although not as enjoyable as meeting him in person and chatting over lunch as we have done once and I look forward to repeating that....

As often happens we get to talk about the set up our organisers and how our set-ups differ. David if he doesn't mind me saying this, is always looking for that little nugget of information that would improve his own set up.

I can only share my own thoughts, I don't have some magical sixth sense and a magic wand to analyse the way someone is using their organiser at the moment and then declare 'this is what you want to do....' and their whole set up magically comes together and they are at peace with their set up and they ride off in to the sunset.... although it would be a nice skill to have!

So my set up... or rather my current set up... has changed over the years, so I think it best if we went back to 1985 when I started using a Filofax and take the trip through the 29 years on how I got to what I'm using today... Don't panic 29 years in one blog post will not become War and Peace in size, well I hope not.

So as a newly married man I bought a Filofax, I had read an article in the Sunday Times and it got me interested, although I don't know why. I can't recall now what I used for a diary back then before I bought my Winchester, if I even used one at all. May be a pocket diary from WH Smiths if that.

However, I got the Filofax bug, the ability to populate this lovely leather ring bound organiser with a diary and a selection of different pages which you could swap and change as you wished.  Looking back now I'm sure I didn't use my Filofax to the full potential at all. To a degree it was a life style accessory more than anything else though, but one that has stayed with me.

So in those first few years I just used a personal size (A5 didn't yet exist!) and we are looking at life in the 1980s, pre Windows, pre internet. However, I did create my own inserts back then, with Wordstar (DOS) and a 24 pin dot matrix printer and some fan fold printer paper that was sold in Rymans stationery stores. [I still have some paper, but not the printer!] The inserts were fairly basic and crude I suppose, but they worked.

In the early 1990's I abandoned my Filofax and slipped in to the world of electronic organisers going from a basic Casio digital diary, to a Psion 5 Mx and finally a HP iPaq Pocket PC machine. The first two I still have and they still work... but not the HP, it no longer works and frankly never really replaced the Psion which I still love for it's simplicity and what it can do with only 16 Megabytes of memory, yes 16Mb! But let's not get too carried away.

Jump forward to 2004 (getting moderately modern now!) and I got made redundant (boo hiss... well not quite) after 11 months off work (my gap year!) I found employment with a UK government department, and I arrived with my new briefcase and smart suit (well for the first day at least) I was still using my iPaq at this point. I was then told 'Sorry you can't use any personal electronic items in the office... security'  Oooo that was a surprise.. but ok what about a Filofax? That was ok. So I dug my Filofax out of my desk, dusted it off, and put in a new diary and off we went again.

I was still using the same Winchester personal from the 1980's, again I wasn't that fussed about the set up or how it worked, I didn't know any better really... or I wasn't until some day in 2007 when I discovered Philofaxy by complete chance I suppose. This got me looking at how I was using my organiser in a lot more detail. Reading the posts and the comments got me hooked again. I started recreating old inserts and inserts for myself and making them available.

I 'graduated' to an A5 Finsbury for the sole reason of it being easier to print inserts myself. I was still predominately using a Week on Two pages like most people. My organiser was always with me, but I didn't use it as much as I do now.

Leap forward to 2010 and I had been a contributor here on Philofaxy for about a year and my wife Alison and I were about to make a big change in our lives. We both gave up our respective secure jobs in UK and we sold our house in UK to move to our house in France. We had owned the house here since 2005, so no big surprises when we moved.

No longer 'working' I started devoting more time to Philofaxy and my other interests (photography, amateur radio etc) and all of a sudden I started to notice I was using my organiser a lot more than at any point in the past.

I went from one thing to another trying to find a set up that would fit my new needs and it took me several attempts to find 'the set up' that worked for me. I was initially still using a diary I had printed off from MS Outlook blank apart from a few birthdays and the public holidays.

One the main changes in my life style when we moved to France was I became more task orientated rather than focused on appointments and deadlines. It took me a little while to realise this, but I got there in the end!

By chance I found a retailer selling off some diary inserts in about May 2011, I managed to buy an A5 Day Per Page Business Style diary insert for £1! This had space for tasks and to-dos as well initially this changed the way I was using my A5 and I was able to keep up with things, although moving things forward to the next day so they didn't get forgotten about was a bit of a pain.

Then I swapped in to the  Week on Two pages insert from the Filofax Time Manager range. This one looks like this:


Lots of spaces as you can see for different reminders and things, but a little limited on space for appointments, also to me the layout seemed the wrong way around, why I don't know, but I tend to think from left to right and would have preferred the pages to have been swapped over. I also didn't like the way that Saturday and Sunday were not equal in size. As I was no longer in paid employment, weekdays and weekends were more or less the same to me.

So I continued to use this set up for the rest of 2011. It still wasn't perfect but I stuggled on with it.

Then along came Ray Blake in 2011 with his own inserts and we started talking about the possibility of expanding the range and sharing them with the community. The first one I designed was a re-design of the Filofax Time Manager Week View which you see below.


As you can see I switched the days to my preferred side. The design evolved with a few minor modifications which I will now highlight.


The first change was to go from five lines per day to four lines per day (although both versions are still available) I found the lines a bit too narrow for my hand writing.

So starting on the left hand page. We have a small column in the time space, this can be used to colour code or symbol appointments if you like to do that.  I add in holidays and birthdays in to my merged file manually before I print it and you can see that on the 1st and 4th in this case.

I did wonder the other day about splitting morning and afternoon by creating two more columns for time and description and narrowing down the existing ones. Easy enough to do if you need more appointment slots.

At the top of the page is a 'This Week' notes area if you are planning or highlighting events or tasks.

Moving across to the right hand page. This is mainly for tasks and reminders with a small tick box to help you spot ones still to be done. Who doesn't get a sense of satisfaction ticking off jobs!

This page like the left hand one has the date range for the week view and calendars for this month and the next month.

The tasks for each day are now labelled with the name of each day with the pages at different heights in my organiser I sometimes found myself writing on a line that didn't correspond to the right day before I added this. However, this could just be my funny 2D eyesight playing tricks on me. But I think it might help most people.

The notes/reminders tend to be general tasks I'm doing around the house or in the garden.  I use the 'communications' heading for blog post ideas, and work in progress on line etc.

The amount of space for each of these two can be easily changed if you found you needed more of one and less of the other.

The 'Coming Up' section at the bottom of the page gives me a 'look forward' reminder without having to turn over the pages.

This insert is of course available on our Diary Inserts page, there is an slimmed down version for Personal size as well there.

My A5 stays on my desk open at either this view or a page per month insert which is used for planning posts here on Philofaxy.

If I am away from my desk/out of the house I carry a personal size organiser. In this organiser I have a week per page insert. Again one of our own designs.


Away from my desk I rarely need the details of my tasks or the tasks around the house, so this insert has the bare essentials of my schedule. I sometimes supplement the diary with an interleaved 'to-do' list for the list of people coming to a meet up, or if I'm travelling my packing list


Additionally in the personal size organiser, I keep various information sheets I either need at home or if I'm travelling ones that will be relevant to the trip (maps, phone details, booking details etc). It is all  information that I might also have in my A5, but it is information that doesn't change that too often.

So although there is some duplication between the two sizes of organiser the overlap isn't too huge and I find that they complement each other nicely and work together well for me.

I've found over time to try and keep the duplicate information in both organisers to the minimum as there is then less chance of the information getting out of date.

I'm in the process of creating my inserts for 2015 at the moment and up dating the information in both organisers when I get a few spare minutes!

If you have any questions about my set up please leave a comment below.

Thank you to Alison for her guest post.