As I mentioned in my binder system post from late October, after about a year with my current binder setup, I’ve realized I need some additional changes. Sometimes I wonder if I should have just stuck with a single notebook, but I do so prefer being able to add, remove, and rearrange pages.
I’ve done a lot of research since my October post, and I’ve pretty much narrowed down what I’m going to try to have ready for the start of the year, with some additional things to incorporate as get comfortable with the new system, maybe quarterly.
What I have now
Since it’s been a while, let me remind you about my current binder setup:
- Work: A personal-sized Filofax where I keep track of my daily tasks and meetings, longer-term projects, and meeting notes when I’m sharing my screen and can’t take them digitally. This is currently my most-used binder.
- Blog: An A5 Kokuyo Pastel Cookie where I plan my schedule, keep track of ideas, log my currently inked pens, and write posts by hand when I’m away from a computer. This binder travels with me the most, because I want to be able to work on blog posts at any time.
- Cat: A mini Filofax where I keep health information for our clowder. I track some of their important test records; when they’re due for tests, vet visits, and vaccinations; and notes for the next appointment so I don’t forget anything.
- Health: A Raymay Fuji M5 with my health information. Basically, an overview/cheat sheet to bring with me to doctor appointments. You’ll have to excuse me for being more vague on this one.
- Books: A cheap personal-sized binder I found on Amazon where I keep my reading tracker and analog book reviews.
- Digital: While not a binder, I also have a Google sheet for some trackers so that I can fill them in wherever I am.
What’s good, bad, and needed
My system isn’t exactly broken — except maybe the books binder — but it’s not working as well as it could be. My biggest issue is how many places I have monthly calendars and trackers. I’m not keeping up with them all, and I don’t like the duplication.
- Work
- Good: My daily layouts, meeting notes setup, long-term projects dashboard, and mini notebook for separating tasks by person(s) they apply to work well.
- Bad: I don’t need the monthly views for tracking important meetings.
- Blog
- Good: I want to keep my currently inked log here for the extra space per page and because the layout serves me well. My blog schedule and ideas sections are working well, too.
- Bad: I don’t like having so many tabs in this binder.
- Cat: Now we get to binders that have significant issues, but still mostly function.
- Good: It’s nice to have an easy-to-grab binder for an overview of cat health information, separated by cat.
- Bad: I tried to track too much here. I don’t need to track every vet visit, and I definitely don’t need monthly calendars just for the cats.
- Health
- Good: Having a binder is nice, and it definitely helped to just hand a nurse a list rather than having to talk through everything. Some of what I tracked was useful for reviewing trends.
- Bad: The way I tracked some items was cumbersome, and I tried to track too much. I also had another monthly calendar set here.
- Books: This is where things really fell apart.
- Good: The genre and books read trackers. My annual stats pages are OK, too.
- Bad: Everything else. The book bingo wasn’t as fun as I thought it would be. I was left feeling like I had homework to finish at the end of the year, rather than just choosing fun books to read. I have to acknowledge, though, that it pulled me out of my Pride and Prejudice variations rut. Other than an initial attempt to fill out info on my digital library and some book reviews, I haven’t touched the rest of the layouts I made.
- Digital
- Good: It’s nice having trackers in one place, to the point that I’d like to consolidate as many as possible. I also enjoyed the “at-a-glance” aspect of “year in pixels” style trackers.
- Having to scroll a lot to enter data in the latter part of the year was annoying.
The Changes
Having considered what is and isn’t working with my current setup, the, perhaps surprising, conclusion I came to is that I need a new binder. I want one place where I can have my monthly calendars and trackers. While the calendars could work in my work binder, I don’t really want them there. I want to keep work as just work.
- Work: I’m going to try tracking important meetings in a list format. I really only need to know when they happened to help with searching for emails, notes, etc.
- Blog: I want to consolidate some tabs and will likely remove some sections. I’m aiming to have as few tabs as possible. I also want to institute a “year in pixels” style tracker, but for every ink I put in a pen during the year. That could be interesting to look back on.
- Cat: While I’m going to remove the items that haven’t been working, the rest of this binder will mostly stay the same. Because I won’t have a calendar to write appointments on anymore, I’m going to add a “dashboard” — a sticky note — where I can note appointments to add to my main calendar when I get home from the vet.
- Health: This is mainly going to turn into a quick reference when I’m at the doctor, rather than an active binder I make regular changes to. My trackers will be in the new binder, and in slightly different formats. I also want to add a notes section to make sure I remember everything I want to discuss when at an appointment.
- Books: I considered just doing away with the books binder and pulling the three remaining items into my new binder. But, I do still want a book binder, so I need to figure out what exactly will go in here.
I’m going to add more monthly stats tracking so I can get a better view of my reading at the end of the year. I don’t need this, but you know I like data, and I’m curious. I’m developing a new rating system, and I need somewhere digital to keep my reviews so they’re searchable. This is one of two main places where I’ll be adding more later, as I’ve seen several types of simple layouts I’m interested in trying. - Digital: I want to make this my backup. I can use it to track things when I’ve forgotten to update my binder so I don’t have to get back up, but I don’t want it to be the primary tracker. If I clear it out monthly, I won’t have to deal with the scrolling issue.
- Personal Life: This will be the new binder, or possibly a binder and a notebook, I haven’t quite decided. So far, it will include:
- Monthly calendars: I will consolidate my three sets of monthly spreads here. While my main calendar system will still be on Google, I like the at-a-glance view that an analog calendar offers, and it won’t include all of the reminders, chores, etc. that Google does.
- Trackers: Almost all of my trackers will be here. I’m not sure yet if I want to keep the book trackers in the book binder, but health trackers, cat trackers, and some new personal life trackers will all be here.
- Task list notebook: I’ve dedicated a small (approximately field notes size) notebook to task lists separated by category. It’s been working so well for work, I wanted to try it for my personal tasks. It’s mostly a way to list tasks that I need to do but am not going to take care of in the next couple of days.
- Life gamification: I may not have time to figure this out and implement it by the start of the new year, but I really want to try life gamification — see JashiiCorrin’s video and The Well-Appointed Desk’s zine. I’m hoping that it will give me extra ammunition in dealing with my ADHD impulse control problems.
- Overall: As I mentioned in my last binder system post, I want to use my decorative stationery — washi tape and stickers — more. To that end, I plan to go all-out in decorating year-long trackers and my book and personal life binders. I also bought a laminator so I can make my own tabbed dividers and dashboards from various things I’ve collected over the years. I’m not into junk journaling, but I want to use the bits and bobs I have.
Phew! With only 24!!!!! days until 2026, I’m definitely feeling like I’ve left myself too many things to do at the end of the year. I know I can manage the work, blog, cat, and health binder adjustments, but I don’t know how much I’ll get done for the book and personal life binders.
Wish me luck!
What kind of paper system do you use? Do you have any suggestions for me based on your own experiences? Let me know in the comments! I’d love to hear from you.
Thanks for reading to the end, I hope you enjoyed my post. Make sure to subscribe to my blog or follow me on Instagram so you don’t miss any posts. I generally post at least once a week.
Attribution: The image I used in the share images for Instagram and Facebook is “Mind Map” by Miguel Angel, licensed through Vecteezy.com.
